Source-groundedThe Iliad
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Item · Individual

breastplate given by Cinyras

Published entity metadata

Read-only identity and editorial metadata.

Canonical name
breastplate given by Cinyras
Disambiguator
None
Kind
Item
Scope
Individual
Editorial note
Distinctive guest-gift breastplate; routine surrounding gear is not split.

Aliases

0

No aliases recorded.

Location presence

Phase 6 currently covers 24 processed books.

0

No presence observations in the processed scope.

Claims

1
·Direct

Cinyras gave Agamemnon a breastplate of cyanus, gold, and tin, ornamented with six rearing cyanus serpents like rainbows.

See evidence text
“the breastplate which Cinyras had once given him as a guest-gift. It had been noised abroad as far as Cyprus that the Achaeans were about to sail for Troy, and therefore he gave it to the king. It had ten courses of dark cyanus, twelve of gold, and ten of tin. There were serpents of cyanus that reared themselves up towards the neck, three upon either side, like the rainbows which the son of Saturn has set in heaven as a sign to mortal men”

Additional evidence

Evidence records not already represented by a claim.

1
·Remembered
“the breastplate which Cinyras had once given him as a guest-gift”

Passage preview

Book 11 · Passage 2

The son of Atreus shouted aloud and bade the Argives gird themselves for battle while he put on his armour. First he girded his goodly greaves about his legs, making them fast with ankleclasps of silver; and about his chest he set the breastplate which Cinyras had once given him as a guest-gift. It had been noised abroad as far as Cyprus that the Achaeans were about to sail for Troy, and therefore he gave it to the king. It had ten courses of dark cyanus, twelve of gold, and ten of tin. There were serpents of cyanus that reared themselves up towards the neck, three upon either side, like the rainbows which the son of Saturn has set in heaven as a sign to mortal men. About his shoulders he threw his sword, studded with bosses of gold; and the scabbard was of silver with a chain of gold wherewith to hang it. He took moreover the richly-dight shield that covered his body when he was in battle—fair to see, with ten circles of bronze running all round it. On the body of the shield there were twenty bosses of white tin, with another of dark cyanus in the middle: this last was made to show a Gorgon’s head, fierce and grim, with Rout and Panic on either side. The band for the arm to go through was of silver, on which there was a writhing snake of cyanus with three heads that sprang from a single neck, and went in and out among one another. On his head Agamemnon set a helmet, with a peak before and behind, and four plumes of horse-hair that nodded menacingly above it; then he grasped two redoubtable bronze-shod spears, and the gleam of his armour shot from him as a flame into the firmament, while Juno and Minerva thundered in honour of the king of rich Mycene.