If the armour was written into the poem late, if in the earliest lays the men wore no armour but the shield, the change to hauberk, zoster, and plated flaps was made by late poets about the end of the sixth century or the beginning of the fifth, but the old huge shield with baldric was left unchanged. Meanwhile, as the tight cypassis scarcely reaching below the buttocks is the usual warrior's costume of the seventh to early or mid-sixth century, the loose chiton, like the variegated hauberk,--the chiton being "a loosely fitting garment, reaching apparently as low as the knees, but gathered up into the belt for active exertion,"[30]--must also have been interpolated into the poems about the middle of the sixth century, when the cypassis was beginning to go out of favour. It is strange that these facts--the seventh century armour and costume are un-Homeric (though we cannot prove that Homer knew _only_ the hauberk clasped in front), the sixth to fifth century armour and costume answer closely to Homeric descriptions--have not been observed either by Reichel or his English following. Nor do they notice that the thigh pieces of seventh to sixth century art never occur in Homer, as, on the Reichelian theory, they ought to do; practical warriors would expect to hear of them from the late minstrels. We now prove Homer's knowledge of the hauberk, clasped at front and back. There is a passage in the _Iliad_ (iv. 132-140) which vexes critics; we give it in Mr. Leaf's translation. To ruin the Trojans, Athene makes Pandarus break the oath of truce, and shoot at Menelaus. She then guides the arrow so that it may merely draw blood. "Her own hand guided it where the golden buckles of the belt were clasped and the doubled breast-plate met them. So the bitter arrow lighted (ἔπεσε) upon the firm belt; through the inwrought (δαιδαλέοιο) belt it sped, and through the curiously wrought breast-plate it pressed on, and through the taslet"[31] (μίτρη, plated kirtle) "he wore to shield his flesh, a barrier against darts; and this best shielded him, yet it passed on even through this," and drew blood. The arrow-head was of iron, not bronze, as was usual, and of a primitive pattern, inserted into the wood of the shaft, and "whipped" with sinew (νεῦρον, Iliad, iv. 151). When the arrow is extracted (line 216) the corslet is not mentioned, as I suppose because the arrow passed through the place where the corslet clasped in front. When the corslet was unclasped, the arrow had only to be pulled out of the belt and kirtle. [Illustration: Fig. 6.--Warriors arming--Red Figure Vase, Vienna Museum]