The discussion of such details
is beyond our purpose, and it is sufficient to say that the poems
seem to contemplate both forms of defensive equipment, the old
form of large shield and light body armour, and the later form of
small shield and metal panoply, as being in common use, while on
the question of iron versus bronze, the evidence seems to indicate
that the age contemplated by the bulk of the references is, in the
main, a bronze-using one, though the knowledge of the superiority
of iron is beginning to make itself evident.
But the point which is of importance for our present purpose is the
magnificence with which the arms of the Hellenic heroes, when of
metal, are wrought and decorated. The polished helmets, with their
horse-hair plumes of various colours, the in-wrought breastplates,
and the greaves with their silver fastenings, are not only weapons,
but works of art as well. The supreme instance is, of course, the
armour of Achilles, fabricated, according to the poet, by the hands
of Hephaestos, but none the less to be regarded as the ideal of
what the highly wrought armour of the time should be. The shield
of Achilles, with its gorgeous representations of various scenes
of peace and war, seems almost to transcend the possibilities of
actual metal work at such a period; yet we may believe that the
poet was not merely drawing upon his imagination, but giving a
heightened picture of what he had himself witnessed in the way
of the armourer's art.
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