Meriones, who is an archer (XIII. 650), lends to Odysseus his bow and quiver and a sword. He also gives him "a helm made of leather; and with many a thong it was stiffly wrought within, while without the white teeth of a boar of flashing tusks were arrayed, thick set on either side well and cunningly... ." Here Reichel perceives that the ignorant poet is describing a piece of ancient headgear represented in Mycenaean art, while the boars' teeth were found by Schliemann, to the number of sixty, in Grave IV. at Mycenae. Each of them had "the reverse side cut perfectly flat, and with the borings to attach them to some other object." They were "in a veritable funereal armoury." The manner of setting the tusks on the cap is shown on an ivory head of a warrior from Mycenae. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, 196-197.]
Reichel recognises that the poet's description in Book X. is excellent, "_ebenso klar als eingehend_." He publishes another ivory head from Spata, with the same helmet set with boars' tusks. [Footnote: Reichel, pp. 102-104] Mr. Leaf decides that this description by the poet, wholly ignorant of heroic costume, as Reichel thinks him, must be "another instance of the archaic and archaeologising tendency so notable in Book X." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 629.]
At the same time, according to Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the poet of Book X. introduces the small round Ionian buckler, thus showing his utter ignorance of the great Mycenaean shield. The ignorance was most unusual and quite inexcusable, for any one who reads the rest of the _Iliad_ (which the poet of Book X. knew well) is aware that the Homeric shields were huge, often covering body and legs. This fact the poet of Book X. did not know, in Reichel's opinion. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575]
How are we to understand this poet? He is such an erudite archaeologist that, in the seventh century, he knows and carefully describes a helmet of the Mycenaean prime. Did he excavate it? and had the leather interior lasted with the felt cap through seven centuries? Or did he see a sample in an old temple of the Mycenaean prime, or in a museum of his own period? Or had he heard of it in a lost Mycenaean poem? Yet, careful as he was, so pedantic that he must have puzzled his seventh-century audience, who never saw such caps, the poet knew nothing of the shields and costumes of the heroes, though he might have found out all that is known about them in the then existing Iliadic lays with which he was perfectly familiar--see his portrait of Agamemnon. He was well aware that corslets were, in Homeric poetry, anachronisms, for he gave Nestor none; yet he fully believed, in his ignorance, that small Ionian bucklers loveth; (which need the aid of corslets badly) were the only wear among the heroes!