Now the whole passage is explained by a red figure vase in the Vienna Museum (Atlas, figs. 71 a, b, c) (fig. 6). Here we see first, a warrior in helmet and flowing chiton, putting on his greaves. Next him is a warrior clasping his variegated hauberk of scales, or small plates, _in front_, above his mailed kirtle, or flaps; below which floats the lower part of his chiton; the shoulder-plates of his corslet are still unclasped, and stand up behind his shoulders. For this arrangement see also Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol. ii. p. 176, fig. 137. In _Iliad_, xx. 413-417, Achilles sends his spear through the clasping plate of belt, buckle, and hauberk at the back. In the third picture (fig. 7), a warrior, fully armed, has his hand in the richly adorned belt (_zoster_) which he is fixing over the juncture of corslet and mailed kirtle. If an arrow lights on the central clasp of this belt (1) it will pass through the meeting-place in front of his corslet, (2) and then will encounter, especially if it be a dropping arrow, (3) his mailed flaps or kirtle, exactly as in the case of Menelaus.[32] Nothing of this kind could occur with the plain plate corslets of the seventh to sixth centuries, which laced at the sides, and had no mailed kirtle or flaps, and no belt or _zoster_. Thus Homer's armour, in this passage, is precisely that of, say, 520-470 B.C. Meanwhile the arrow-head, whipped with sinew into the wooden shaft, is of a primitive pattern; and the accompanying reference to the art of Maeonian and Carian women, in staining ivory red, "a treasure for a king," shows no notion of the Ionians in Maeonia and Caria, or of the republics of 510-470 B.C.[33] If, then, in the late sixth or early fifth century, a poet introduced the latest type of armour, he also preserved the primitive arrow, and the political and geographical conditions prior to the Ionian settlements in Asia. This combined innovation and conservatism are incredible.[34] The general conclusion seems to be that there was, in men's dress and armour, a break of several centuries during which un-Homeric costume and armour existed, and that--about the time just preceding the Persian wars and later--Greece reverted to the Homeric types or men's dress and body armour, while the Homeric shield was _never_ revived. It was invented as an umbrella against arrows in far off days, when the bow, rather than the spear, was the chief weapon of attack, when arrow-heads were of stone; and it went out when glory was only to be won at close quarters. Why the plain plate corslet tended to go out, about the time of the Persian war, while the flimsy but highly decorated mail hauberk came in, a mere _jascran_, it is not easy to conjecture; but probably the hauberk was adapted from Assyrian and Egyptian armour of the period. The _jaseran_ went out again, and the plate corslets of our Museums came in again, in the fifth to fourth centuries.