Reichel, we must add, could not argue securely from the absence of actual corslets in grave-furniture of the Aegean age. Though hauberks occur constantly in the art, they are not found in the _graves_ of the sixth to fifth centuries, in Greece; and even plate corslets are extremely rare. In Reichel's second edition, which he, unfortunately, left incomplete at his regretted death, "he contemplated an important change of ground.... He regards the thin gold plates found on the breasts of the skeletons at Mykene as possibly the funereal representatives of metal sewn on to the chiton, and thus forming a prae-Ionic corslet."[14] Had he lived, he would have seen an undeniable "prae-Ionic corslet," no hauberk but a cuirass of plate, on the Minoan seal impressions of Haghia Triada. But the evidence for the non-existence of prae-Ionic corslets based on their absence from tombs, even if it were absolute, which it is not, would have been of little avail. How many Ionic plate corslets are in actual existence, to our knowledge? Only fragments of one, as far as I am aware, and that one is not "Ionic," it was found at Olympia, and is "archaic." The fragments are of bronze plate, with decorations in the archaic style, figures of men and women in archaic costume.[15] Thus the non-existence of objects represented often in the art of remote ages cannot be demonstrated by our failure to discover specimens of them. Reichel proceeds from the imaginary postulate that a man who has a body-covering shield dispenses with body armour. As a matter of historical fact he often does not.[16] Next, the Aegean shield, being heavy, made chariots necessary. (But chariots have been used in war by races with small shields, and the great shield is worn by Aias and Odysseus who had no chariots.) Next, says Reichel, parrying bucklers coming in as early as the archaic art (say 700-620 B.C.), big shields went out, and for protection the corslet, metal girdle, and _mitrê_, a mailed kirtle, were adopted about 700 B.C. As it was now ridiculous, says Reichel, to think of a man fighting only in his shirt, late poets introduced body armour into old portions of the _Iliad_, made when body armour was unknown. Of course, by parity of reasoning, the new poets ought also to have got rid of chariots, bronze weapons, cairn-burial, the bride-price, Homeric chitons, and so forth, all of them obsolete or little used things in the age (700-600 B.C.) of corslets, greaves, and body armour. Their warriors should also have worn the contemporary tight fleshings, with the _cypassis_, and _parameridia, cuisses_, tight thigh pieces (the "taslets" of 1640 A.D.). That did not happen; Homer knows no thigh pieces or _parameridia_, so common in Greek armour of the sixth century; but, says Mr. Murray, "all the heroes were summarily provided with breast-plates, _θώρηκες_."[17] Mr. Leaf, on the other hand, denies this; "the corslet is given to some only, and that in the most capricious fashion."[18]