We know not what the actual heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey wore; but
we do know that what Homer describes, he must have seen. Was Homer,
therefore, the contemporary of the siege of Troy?--or does he not
rather speak of the customs and costumes of his own time, and apply
them to the traditions of the heroic ages of Greece? Whatever be the
date of Homer himself, we can, with the help of contemporary
survivals, reconstruct the house and the hall, and even furnish them,
and clothe the women and the princes, the beggars and the herdsmen.

From the remains of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian art we can
perceive their differences and their affinities. It is from textile
fragments, found mostly in tombs, that we obtain dates, and can
suggest them for other specimens.

The funeral tent of Shishak's mother-in-law, at Boulac, is most
valuable as showing what was the textile art of that early period.[22]

[Illustration: Fig. 1.
Egyptian corselet. (Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians.")]

The corselet which, according to Herodotus, was given by Amasis, King
of Egypt, to the Temple of Minerva at Lindos, in Rhodes, was possibly
worked in this style; for Babylonian embroidery was greatly prized in
Egypt, and imitated.

The second corselet given by Amasis to the Lacaedemonians was worked in
gold and colours, with animals and other decorations. This was of the
seventh century B.C.[23]

Amongst the arms painted on the wall of the tomb of Rameses, at Thebes
(in Egypt), is a corselet, apparently of rich stuff,[24] embroidered
with lions and other devices. (Fig. 1.)

The Phoenicians imbibed and reproduced the styles they met with in
their voyages. The bowls found in Cyprus described and engraved in the
September number of the "Magazine of Art" (1883), are most interesting
illustrations of the meeting of two national styles, the Assyrian and
the Egyptian.[25]

Homer's "Shield of Achilles"[26] must, in general design, have
resembled these bowls (see Pl. 5). They also recall the description by
Josephus of the Temple veils at Jerusalem, which were Babylonian.[27]

Phoenicia, which was the carrier of all art, dropped specimens here
and there, for many hundred years, along the borders of the
Mediterranean and the coasts of Spain. We fancy we can trace her
ocean-path by the western shores of Africa, and even to America;
otherwise, how could it happen that a mummy-wrapping in Peru should so
nearly resemble some of those wrappings fou