This is, at least, my private interpretation of the Dipylon and the Tirynthian representation. But it is offered with diffidence, and is not shared by Mr. R. M. Dawkins, the Director of the British School of Athens. He "does not believe that the Dipylon women's dress is necessarily a tight one," and attributes the wasp waists to the limited skill of the early artist, thinking that if he had to draw a woman in a loose flowing dress he would still give her a tiny waist, because a small waist is one of the conspicuous points in the female figure. In the effort to give as much information as possible he would draw the small waist even if it were concealed by a loose dress. The primitive artist draws not from models, but from mental images. There is much truth in this; for example, the ladies in a palaeolithic rock-painting[9] have very slim waists, clearly exaggerated, above skirts with a crescentine scoop at the bottom. But the primitive artist certainly draws under the domination of a convention which differs in different places. The woman whose figure is repeated in the clay disk from Phaestus[10] has no more waist than the stout person in a princess frock from Tiryns. The Dipylon artists may be continuing the Aegean convention of the wasp waist; though the designer of the princess frock is as candid as the Phaestos artist. Thus the reader must interpret the Dipylon waist as he pleases. We next reach the "archaic" art of, say, the seventh to sixth centuries. The chief article of female dress, as described by Homer, was the peplos, "a square or rectangular piece of material which," like the men's outer mantle, "could be used for various purposes." It was fastened by pins or brooches (_περόναι, ἐνεταί_), and the _περόνη_ was sometimes a fibula or safety pin, the cover adorned by art, as in the case of the _περόνη_ of Odysseus (_Od_. xix.). But when (_Iliad_, v. 425) Athene mockingly tells Zeus that the wounded Aphrodite must have scratched her hand, while caressing some Achaean woman, on her _περόνη_, the term "_safety_ pin," or _fibula,_ does not apply. We think rather of one of the long sharp stiletto-like pins found in Egyptian deposits of from about 1450 to 1200 B.C. and also at Enkomi in Cyprus, and at Sparta in the Orthia sanctuary from 900 to 500 B.C.[11] Fibulae of the same date also occur. These great pins had ribbed handles, and below the handle was a perforation or a metallic loop.[12] Now very long pins, also with ribbed handles, but without the aperture in the middle, fasten the peplos of one of the Fates on the Francis vase, which Mr. Evans dates in "the seventh century," but Mr. Walters--from the characters in the inscriptions on the vase--dates about 570-550 B.C.[13] The Spartan evidence for the pin and fibulae covers the later range of dates. [Illustration: Fig. 10.--Metope of Athene, Olympia _Photo: English Photographic Co., Athens._]