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Updated: May 11, 2025
It really does appear that Reichel's logic, his power of visualising simple things and processes, and his knowledge of the evolution of defensive armour everywhere, were not equal to his industry and classical erudition.
Instead of summoning a Conference of ministers and deputies, he summoned a Conference consisting of ministers only; the American laymen had no chance of expressing their opinions; and, therefore, acting under Reichel's influence, the Conference passed the astounding resolution that "in no sense shall the societies of awakened, affiliated as the fruit of the former extensive itinerations, be regarded as preparatory to the organisation of congregations, and that membership in these societies does not at all carry with it communicant membership or preparation for it."
No mortal ever dreamt that this was so till Reichel tried to make out that the original poet describes no armour except the large Mycenaean shield and the mitre, and that all corslets in the poems were of much later introduction. Possibly they were, but they had plenty of time wherein to be evolved long before the eighth century, Reichel's date for corslets.
Such things have been found in Euboea and in Italy. Mr. Reichel's arguments against corslets "militate just as strongly against the presence of such a mitre, which is, in fact, just the lower half of a corslet.... The conclusion is that the metallic mitre is just as much an intruder into the armament of the Epos as the corslet." The process of evolution was, Mr.
How the new poets could conceive of warriors as always in chariots, whereas in practice they knew no war chariots, and yet could not conceive of them without corslets which the original poet never saw, is Reichel's secret. The new poets had in the old lays a plain example to follow. They did follow it as to chariots and shields; as to corslets and greaves they reversed it.
Reichel's hypothesis is that the heroes of the original poet had no defensive armour except the great Mycenaean shields; that the ponderous shield made the use of chariots imperatively necessary; that, after the Mycenaean age, a small buckler and a corslet superseded the unwieldy shield; that chariots were no longer used; that, by the seventh century B.C., a warrior could not be thought of without a breastplate; and that new poets thrust corslets and greaves into songs both new and old.
The really surprising fact would be if late poets, who knew only small round bucklers, never introduced them into the poems, but always spoke of enormous shields, while they at the same time did introduce corslets, unknown to the early poems which they continued. Clearly Reichel's theory is ill inspired and inconsistent.
But, after the appearance of Reichel's speculations, the Homeric words for "round" and "circular" have been explained as meaning something else, and Mr. Thus does science fluctuate!
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