Source-groundedThe Iliad
All entities

Item · Individual

Menelaus’s belt of mail

Published entity metadata

Read-only identity and editorial metadata.

Canonical name
Menelaus’s belt of mail
Disambiguator
None
Kind
Item
Scope
Individual
Editorial note
The inner mail belt that helps check the arrow and is removed for treatment.

Aliases

1

belt of mail

Descriptive reference · Direct

Location presence

Phase 6 currently covers 24 processed books.

0

No presence observations in the processed scope.

Claims

3
·Direct

Menelaus wears an inner belt next to his skin to stop darts or arrows; it serves him best even though the arrow passes through it.

See evidence text
“the belt beneath it, which he wore next his skin to keep out darts or arrows; it was this that served him in the best stead, nevertheless the arrow went through it”
·Reported

Menelaus says bronze-smiths made his inner belt of mail.

See evidence text
“the belt of mail which the bronze-smiths made me”
·Direct

Menelaus’s bronze-smith-made belt of mail lies beneath the outer belt and is undone.

See evidence text
“He undid the burnished belt, and beneath this the cuirass and the belt of mail which the bronze-smiths had made”

Additional evidence

Evidence records not already represented by a claim.

2
·Direct
“the belt of mail which the bronze-smiths made me”
·Direct
“the belt of mail which the bronze-smiths had made”

Passage preview

Book 4 · Passage 9

But the blessed gods did not forget thee, O Menelaus, and Jove’s daughter, driver of the spoil, was the first to stand before thee and ward off the piercing arrow. She turned it from his skin as a mother whisks a fly from off her child when it is sleeping sweetly; she guided it to the part where the golden buckles of the belt that passed over his double cuirass were fastened, so the arrow struck the belt that went tightly round him. It went right through this and through the cuirass of cunning workmanship; it also pierced the belt beneath it, which he wore next his skin to keep out darts or arrows; it was this that served him in the best stead, nevertheless the arrow went through it and grazed the top of the skin, so that blood began flowing from the wound.