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With him they came, fleet of foot and wearing their hair long behind, brave warriors, who would ever strive to tear open the corslets of their foes with their long ashen spears. Of these there came fifty ships.
It was, in sooth, a goodly sight to see the long and brilliant procession formed by the fourteen knights, each so gallantly mounted, so splendidly accoutred, and accompanied by such a host of gentlemen ushers, pages, yeomen, and grooms, some on horseback, and some on foot; and the eye of the looker-on was never wearied of noticing the diversity of their habiliments, some of the knights having cuirasses and helmets, polished as silver, and reflecting the sun's rays as from a mirror, some, russet-coloured armour, some, blue harness, some, fluted, some, corslets damaskeened with gold, and richly ornamented, others, black and lacquered breastplates, as was the case with the harness of Prince Charles, and one, a dead black coat of mail, in the instance of Sir Giles Mompesson.
Now it was evening, and Pelopidas and his party were preparing themselves, in the house, and had already got their corslets on, and had girt on their swords. Suddenly, a knock was heard at the door. One of them ran out, and hearing the servant say that Charon had been sent for by the polemarchs, he in great trepidation brought the news to the rest.
The most glorious and magnificent spectacle of all was the tent of Timoleon, round which booty of every kind was piled up in heaps, among which were a thousand corslets of exquisite workmanship, and ten thousand shields. As they were but few to gather the plunder of so many, and as they fell in with such riches, it was only on the third day that they managed to erect a trophy of their victory.
"Late" poets, if really late, certainly in every-day life knew small parrying bucklers worn on the left arm, and huge body-covering shields perhaps they rarely saw in use. They also knew, and the original poet, we are told, did not know bronze corslets and greaves.
Many causes contributed to this splendid triumph. The Turkish ships, inferior in number, were also worse manned than those of their adversaries; and their men were worse armed. Every bullet of the Christians told on muslin turbans and embroidered tunics, while the arrows of the Moslems fell harmless on the casques and corslets of their foes.
All these shields are manifestly post-Homeric; the first type is the most common in the Dipylon art; the third survived in the eighth- century buckler. No "practicable" breastplates, hauberks, corslets, or any things of the kind have so far been discovered in graves of the Mycenaean prime. But does this prove anything?
And Idomeneus captain of the Cretans answered, "You will find one spear, or twenty if you so please, standing up against the end wall of my tent. I have taken them from Trojans whom I have killed, for I am not one to keep my enemy at arm's length; therefore I have spears, bossed shields, helmets, and burnished corslets."
The knights of the eleventh century A.D., in addition to very large shields, wore ponderous hauberks or byrnies, as we shall prove presently. As this combination of great shield with corslet was common and natural, we cannot agree with Mr. Shields never make corslets superfluous when men can manufacture corslets.
Such is the Reichelian theory. As regards armour, controversy is waged over the shield, corslet, and bronze greaves. In Homer the shield is of leather, plated with bronze, and of bronze is the corslet. No shields of bronze plating and no bronze corslets have been found in Mycenaean excavations.
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