The _κυπυσσις_ is mentioned by Alcaeus (611 B.C.) and prayed for by Hipponax, an Ephesian poet contemporary with Croesus: in art we find it represented from the eighth to the sixth century.[4] Such a dress, with a very broad belt, is a male costume common for archers and men at work, in the Assyrian art of the eighth to seventh centuries and in Aztec art![5] It is a good dress for fighting men; its fashion changes, and finally it divides down the front, below the belt, with embroidered borders, in Assyrian and archaic Greek art. In some cases it does not suffice for decency. This is not the Homeric chiton, especially if that reached to the feet, and needed to be girdled when a man went about active work. At peaceful festivals, Ionians wore the "trailing chiton," in active life the un-Homeric tight curt garment. We may understand, I think, that between the age when the Homeric poems were composed, and the eighth century B.C., men's costume had greatly altered. The Homeric chiton did not cease to exist, but it was worn by men merely on festive occasions, and by old men; while the dress in active life reverted towards the Aegean costume, the bathing-drawers, or even loin-cloth; or more usually became the short tight jersey, covering the trunk and the upper part of the thigh. This is a natural reversion. The Achaean invaders from the colder north had practically worn smock and plaid, chiton and chlaina. In the warmer south they found the tight and curt _cypassis_ more suitable. In the sixth to fifth century the chiton gradually reasserts itself, as we see in the late black figure, and still more manifestly in the red figure vases. The chiton is a more graceful, decent, and civilised dress than the short tight _cypassis_. Either this was the course of evolution, or "late" poets inserted the chiton as worn both in peace and war into every part of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; though, in fact, they saw only old men, or men on formal occasions, wearing the chiton. Or they applied the word "chiton," in poetry, to the tight curt garments which were not in the least like the chiton of Homer. The alternative explanation is that Homer's men actually wore the fairly long smock which needed to be girdled up for active work; and that the word and the thing itself survived in the poems through an age when men in general wore the tight curt jerkin, or even the loin-cloth or bathing-drawers. The _chlaina_ of the Homeric men was a mantle, usually of wool, fastened with a golden fibula, like that of Odysseus. On the cover of the pin was represented to the life a hound catching a fawn.[6] This _chlaina_ was red in colour and was double-folded. The great overgarment, the _pharos_, was usually of linen; and both these articles were unshaped and unsewn, mere pieces of material, also used for blankets in bed. [Illustration: Fig. 2.--Dagger with Lion-Hunters--Mycenaean Shield]