On leather musculated cuirasse and other things.

[Satapatiš]

I don't know where the Homeric figure of speech idea is from.(...)I thought you would have considered Homer as being outside of the time you wanted. But since you bring up Homer, there might be another reference that you may or may not have heard. Most commonly Ajax is known as wearing linen armor, but there are also two other people stated to have been wearing linen armor (Adrastus and Amphius, twin sons of Merops of Percote.) There is another famous Greek example in which a passage describes the Argives wearing linothorakes.

Hexameter in which both Illyad and Odyssey are redacted. It was mostly tool for memorizing phrases for oral tradition long before they were written down, which means that certain phrases were repeated unchanged for the sake of remembering them for melorecitation. Then they were making it into more "modern" artistic vocabulary. Alcaeus being a poet, he might or might not be writing literally.




However, you are mentioning Iphicrates giving the Athenian soldiers linen cuirasses... Well, if you're going to dismiss Pollux and Hesychius, then you have to dismiss this too. Because it's after Cornelius Nepos and quite anachronistic:


"He likewise changed the character of their cuirasses, and gave them linen ones instead of those of chain-mail and brass; a change by which he rendered the soldiers more active;"


Chainmail in times of Iphicrates. Of course he might be only partially mistranslating older sources. But same might be true for Pollux and Hesychius.

Persian examples: Unfortunately most are greek depictions often on pottery. I don't know of many native depictions (https://imgur.com/Z2EZlRB).

The T & Y form for the Persian body armor might be accurate since the finds of the Skythian cultural area body armor also are T & Y. Doesn't look like the cut is explicitly Greek invention. It was used by nearly everyone.

I think your list is missing a bit.

Leather: Starting with leather since to establish material. No evidence except for the Pollux's definition of Xenophon's spolas. One question I have is on the survivability of leather. Would leather be more likely to survive and leave evidence than linen?

It's less survivable unless it's mummified somehow. Even after tanning it still retains some of its fat and proteins. Hence the preserved pieces of cloth from Greece, but not leather.

Laminated: First I should point out that you said material evidence, which you don't say for any other category. There's not really material evidence for any such organic armor of the time. Anyways, it is known to be possible and likely used in some form at some points in time. What really makes laminated stand out is the artistic evidence. I know you considered artistic evidence a bit unreliable as evidence for lamination. You mentioned things like color, which indeed weren't depicted accurately on things like vases. But the armor was also depicted in many other forms, like statues and reliefs. These often have bright colors like white, red, blue, yellow, purple, etc, and might be more accurate than the vases. Even in other art forms, type 4 armors appear to be smooth and not quilted. The exception to this might be Gallic examples, which could be embroidered (an embroidered armor is mentioned in Plutarch's life of Marcellus) or quilted. Etruscan examples also have a lot of weird embroidering and scales going on.

All those examples can be depicting anything. Leather can be dyed and painted too. Greek art often isn't very realistic. It's not possible to tell if a light color is cloth or tanned leather.


Even then, sculptors weren't photographers and often were following same artistic conventions:






Art is not an evidence for the material.




Leather sandals, rendered in white:





And you were saying Greek pottery always depicts T & Y as smooth?












Well, THAT depends on the artist.

[Hirtius]

I know nothing about Greek poetry or language, but I wouldn't think that linen armor would be a figure of speech or anything. It would be an especially weird figure of speech if it wasn't based on something people encountered.

I thought about including a disclaimer about Cornelius Nepos. It is pretty wacky.

Yes, I know the style was used by everyone. That's why I included all the pictures, because you didn't seem give foreign accounts as much stock.

Art is not necessarily evidence for material. But it is weird to throw it out altogether. We know from the art that the material is organic due to flexibility and springiness portrayed. You point out that the Skythian sculpture wasn't necessarily realistic, and that is true, but we have multiple art forms to choose from. Some of them are fairly realistic. Also, I know the Scythian is in spandex, but we can still tell what it is. Same for the sandals. We can still tell that they are leather sandals, especially if we look at other evidence. We can't tell the tube and yoke cuirass is linen from the art, but we know it is organic, and there are a fair number of references to linen armor. It's not too far of a leap.

You also make assumptions and take information from art by assuming those armors aren't smooth. Also, I had never said that about pottery because you were indicating the lack of realism in pottery, which is why most of the examples I try to give are sculptures or frescos. The examples you give are the exception rather than the rule, and could say more about the individual armor or the artist (as you mentioned).

[Satapatiš]

Problem with the Homeric epic that whilst parts of it date back to the Doric night period, some are obvious even earlier anachronisms. So rhetoric figures might be anachronisms for something not used by the later eras.

That's not to say that fabric armors not were used, but to point that any literary evidence can be questioned. We don't know for sure what were sources for Nepos and Hesychius, though it's know for Pollux.



Literally no art from Greece and Rome can be assumed being realistic and taken as a photograph. It's art. It's subject to the artists style, how good they were, what tools they had, what was the regional tradition. Even the good quality art.

Celtic, Iberian or Middle-Eastern artists were even less concerned with realism.


On the other hand even cuirasses rendered in shades of brown would not be a proof for the opposite - i.e. leather. Fabrics could be dyed with onion (usually were, it's one of the common dyes in the period) which gives gamuts of yellows and browns. The total reverse of the white leather painting.



Don't say that those pottery images I've posted are exceptions. I have more of those. It's not provable that those are exceptions, maybe except for this amazon who might be wearing a fantasy armor because it's an amazon subject.


But again, they also prove nothing because diagonal pattern can be embroidery (the Koropi cloth has a diagonal pattern, for an example) or can be painted instead of quilted.


The point is, the art is not an evidence for the material. It can show the shape, but not of what it's made of.


Heck, the Trajan Column is a high quality piece not coming from a provincial workshop and it still came up with the things like skintight scale armor for men and their horses...

By the art Alexander on the Ipsos mosaic might be even wearing the Vergina cuirass, because the shades of the torso don't differ much that the helmet of a cavalryman on the left and it's not possible to tell for sure what colors had the perishable parts of the armor.

And so on, and so on...

[Hirtius]

Your talking as if I said color could be used to determine material, which I don’t remember saying. I pointed out that modes other than vases might depict more accurate coloration. That’s it.

I also don’t remember saying anything about art indicating material past that the material is organic. I used literary examples to suggest linen. In case you really aren’t happy with the armor being organic from the art, there are passages that indicate it.

What I did suggest is that the visual depictions don’t appear to be quilted, but obviously that doesn’t prove anything.

And I understand it’s good to be critical of sources. Cornelius Nepos was shifty. Homer is a bit outdated to represent the time period in question. But past those references it’s harder to be critical (for the Greek references, the foreign references have some shifty ones). You mention Alcaeus being a poet and that he might not be literal, which is skepticism to a questionable amount. Alcaeus was referencing corselets of linen alongside greaves and shields. It doesn’t make sense on discussing a non literal item in that context.

i think this is a good place to end for me. I don’t see this going anywhere further. Thank you for presenting evidence and perspective. I truly do appreciate it, you made me research deeper into the topic.

[Satapatiš]

Your talking as if I said color could be used to determine material, which I don’t remember saying. I pointed out that modes other than vases might depict more accurate coloration. That’s it.

I also don’t remember saying anything about art indicating material past that the material is organic. I used literary examples to suggest linen. In case you really aren’t happy with the armor being organic from the art, there are passages that indicate it.

What I did suggest is that the visual depictions don’t appear to be quilted, but obviously that doesn’t prove anything.

And I understand it’s good to be critical of sources. Cornelius Nepos was shifty. Homer is a bit outdated to represent the time period in question. But past those references it’s harder to be critical (for the Greek references, the foreign references have some shifty ones). You mention Alcaeus being a poet and that he might not be literal, which is skepticism to a questionable amount. Alcaeus was referencing corselets of linen alongside greaves and shields. It doesn’t make sense on discussing a non literal item in that context.

i think this is a good place to end for me. I don’t see this going anywhere further. Thank you for presenting evidence and perspective. I truly do appreciate it, you made me research deeper into the topic.

I mean, I'm not saying that it can't be laminated.

It's just that with the current state of knowledge it can't be proved.

Even my favorite quilting can't be proved. I could point at the Indian quilted armors and say that quilting it with certain techniques produces smooth armor... But that's an anachronism proof just like the Mycenean and Roman pieces are for the glued theory.

I couldn't prove that the exact technique (or a similar one) was known to the Archaic and Classical Greeks. There's more than one way to produce a quilted corset.


T & Y is a frustrating subject. So far we don't even know of what those scale reinforcements on the breast and midriff sections are supposed to be made. Half of the time the armor is rendered with them. But there's no find.

It's probably the most common armor of the era but only finds are a few metal fittings.

[Genava]

@Satapatiš

Is there any clear historical reference to torso armor made out of leather in ancient literature (700 BC - AD 500) ?

Because I know there are historical references for linen armors suggesting that for the ancients, a torso armor made out of linen is a real thing. For the opposite hypothesis, I don't even know if a torso armor made out of leather is a real thing for the ancients.

[Satapatiš]

@Satapatiš

Is there any clear historical reference to torso armor made out of leather in ancient literature (700 BC - AD 500) ?

Because I know there are historical references for linen armors suggesting that for the ancients, a torso armor made out of linen is a real thing. For the opposite hypothesis, I don't even know if a torso armor made out of leather is a real thing for the ancients.

See the entire discourse about what are or aren't spolades.


Otherwise?


Not for Greeks.


Leather lamellar armor for Egypt (older era), leather for armors from Golyamata Mogila and Vergina (metal armors, anything can be used as backing or lining for metal).

T&Y is various camps arguing without a single preserved example.


It looks like majority of the RAT posters leans towards the rawhide or leather.
I lean towards the quilted linen.
Hirtius leans towards the glued linen.

We could have a nice eternity arguing forth and back.

I'd be laughing if a preserved example was found only to show that it was of mixed construction.

[Genava]

See the entire discourse about what are or aren't spolades.

Spolas aren't clear evidences. This is the issue and the motive of my question to you.
Xenophon clearly separates the spolas with the thorax. If the former was an armor, he would have said simply thorax as a generic term.
Furthermore, the so-called linothorax or typeIV armor has the shape and the design of an armor. So why differentiating it from the generic term "thorax" ?

The whole argument from people supporting the idea that the spolas is the real typeIV armor is based on later sources where the authors make the link between the spolas and the thorax. But at this time, we know that the use of the term "thorax" became more ambiguous. It evolved. For example Suetonius used it to talk about a kind of heavy cloth against the cold and the rain.

Otherwise?


Not for Greeks.


Leather lamellar armor for Egypt (older era), leather for armors from Golyamata Mogila and Vergina (metal armors, anything can be used as backing or lining for metal).

T&Y is various camps arguing without a single preserved example.

Golyamata Mogila and Vergina have leather to maintain and link the pieces together. Not really to protect.

For the other examples, this suggests that leather armors are generally made of pieces of leather. Which is also confirmed by Varro about the origin of the word "lorica", from lorum because the armor in the past was made in bands of leather (I found this one this morning). This is why I think a whole body armor made out of big pieces of leather is maybe inaccurate.

It looks like majority of the RAT posters leans towards the rawhide or leather.

Because they are mostly reenactors and most reenactors defend this view for practical motives.

I lean towards the quilted linen.
Hirtius leans towards the glued linen.

We could have a nice eternity arguing forth and back.

I'd be laughing if a preserved example was found only to show that it was of mixed construction.

Very probably there were different versions since we see a very large diversity in linothorax and organic armor representations.

[Satapatiš]

Spolas aren't clear evidences. This is the issue and the motive of my question to you.
Xenophon clearly separates the spolas with the thorax. If the former was an armor, he would have said simply thorax as a generic term.
Furthermore, the so-called linothorax or typeIV armor has the shape and the design of an armor. So why differentiating it from the generic term "thorax" ?

I've different question regarding Anabasis 3.3.20.

Why "spolas" and not "torsos of leather"? It'd be more in line with Greek ways of describing armor - it's "thorax" and then you might add descriptive if you feel the need to be more descriptive.

Also, this fragment is in the context of Greeks being cut from home and preparing, perhaps with anything they had at hand.

Might be that spolas in this context is armor, but Asiatic armor. Something out of the usual thus worth mentioning.

Which could be why the term used as a word for armor was repeated in later lexicons of obscure and unusual words.

Because they are mostly reenactors and most reenactors defend this view for practical motives.

Well, I'd say practical motives are important to see if something can or can not work. Without the practical concerns nobody would think to question survivability of glued seamless armor.

Whether it really is more practical to use layered animal skins instead of layered linen is debatable, I think. I only know of common soft and seamless armors made of cloth.

For the other examples, this suggests that leather armors are generally made of pieces of leather. Which is also confirmed by Varro about the origin of the word "lorica", from lorum because the armor in the past was made in bands of leather (I found this one this morning). This is why I think a whole body armor made out of big pieces of leather is maybe inaccurate.

This is what Varro always reminds me of:







The upper one is Egyptian, but positioning of the pieces gives a pattern very similar to what's on the sculpture. Might be what Varro was writing about.

This kind of prominent surface details would be rendered by Greek artists. Fragments of similar armor come from Mesopotamia too. Looks like this was the most common method of making armors out of animal skins.

[Hirtius]

Hold up.

I said I was done, but you I feel you are ignoring very important issues. I believe you are giving extreme leeway to leather armor that you didn't to linen for whatever the reason.

First is textual evidence. I addressed this in earlier posts. You put so much stock in the definitions of later Roman lexicographers (Pollux is 2nd century, Hesychius is 5th or 6th century and possibly even used Pollux for his) over people who would have been around during contemporary use of linen armor, saying they could have just been using figures of speech. More recently, you make possible suggestions by saying it could be Asiatic armor. Based on what? That suggestion also doesn't address the problems listed.

Now to discuss reconstruction. The practical motives that Genava mentioned have nothing to do with practical motivations of the ancients. It is far easier to obtain and work with leather than it is with linen in the modern day, especially for accurate linen armor. The linen processed of today makes for worse armor material since the waxy layers are stripped away. Aldrete's research is so unique because they had to either buy very expensive hand made linen or make it themselves. This is an incredibly expensive or arduous task for a reenactor. Reenactors who use cloth typically use easier to find materials, as accurate is too much of a hassle to do in the modern day. For everyone before the industrial revolution, hand processed was the only type available. You're also ignoring several other aspects of reconstruction, testing and construction. Leather armor has rarely been tested. Linen has a similar problem, but it has at least one instance of extensive testing that is controlled. I know that leather has been tested, but is rare and is not as dedicated (it's in context of other armors) or controlled. Type 4 reenactor leather armor has no testing that I know of, probably because linen is not debated that much by historians given the literary references. I also mentioned construction, or in this case lack of a known construction. How is the leather treated? If there are layers, how many? What is the weight, how effective would repairs be? Etc. Maybe these questions could be answered with testing, but we don't really have that. As you mentioned, the actual practicality can be called into question, as leather is supposedly vulnerable to piercing (as is most armor, but leather armor in particular), although based on how it is treated it can handle slashes better (but linen armor can also handle most slashes fine). These are based on assumptions, since we don't have a lot to go on.

Also, you mention survivability of laminated armor. Already addressed. It can survive. They were even exposed to extensive moisture tests, including complete submersion. They subjected very water soluble PVA glue patches and rabbit glue patches to hours of simulated rainfall and soaking for 3 hours, and both types of patches retained their integrity when dried (Though the very water soluble PVA glue lost the outer layer, but that's not what would have been historically used and only was used to test extremes). At some point during the presentation or book, Aldrete describes de-lamination of one of the actual constructed linothorakes (I think on the shoulder), and literally just pressed it back together and it stuck. Simply put, the water issue seems to be overstated.

What really got me is the Egyptian armor, I think from Tutankhamun's tomb. Seriously? All that talk about the Mycenae find being of a different time period and thus not counting for anything, yet you suggest something just as old and try to connect it to the Mars of Todi. To put it bluntly, that was very hypocritical.

What makes it even worse is that it wasn't the best informed. You should have looked into the Egyptian armor a bit more. It doesn't look like the Mars of Todi's armor. Here is a picture of what the armor would have roughly looked like(https://imgur.com/t4ACDCk), and here is the testing of a reconstruction sample(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFxkYmqIX1w). Besides using scales (which are shaped differently), they don't seem to have much of anything in common.

Laminated armor? That's okay if you don't think it was used. The evidence is very limited, restricted to experiments and a Mycenaean find (which according to Aldrete was laminated). In this case, I think you could be more than justified in not being convinced. But in the case of linen vs. leather, the evidence seems to point very heavily towards linen. To the best of our knowledge, the main material would have been linen since that is what was recorded. I listed out a bunch of references (which took a long time). Some are shifty and could perhaps be dismissed, but many are pretty solid. I am not saying that leather could not have been used, but it just wasn't mentioned by the historical accounts besides some extremely questionable and confusing sources long after. To be clear I know you favor quilted linen, but you spend an inordinate amount of time arguing on behalf of leather. I'm also not saying that leather armor didn't exist, but that it's not well supported in the context of type 4 armor. I don't know if you are playing devil's advocate, but it's on very shaky (and almost nonexistent) ground. It is hypocritical to be so vehement opposing the idea of lamination over lack of evidence and potential problems while ignoring lack of evidence and problems for leather.

I've had my own experiences like this. If you look at the thread on Celtic Linothorax, I was hesitant to believe that Prince of Glauberg could have been using the same type of armor as Greeks so far away at such an early time. I was skeptical to an amount which annoyed others, including Genava. Part of the reason was a lot of the people commenting were mainly speculating. A healthy dose of skepticism is good. But eventually I couldn't really argue with it anymore. There was visual evidence (especially the Prince of Glauberg, though there were others as well), textual evidence (an organic armor implied in the Spolia Opima of Marcellus, not mentioned in that thread but I think Silius Italicus also mentions something similar), and evidence of Etruscan and Celtic artifacts with striking similarities that indicated interaction and copying. Although it's not much, it leads to an obvious conclusion and the best one that we can draw.

The reason this comes off as a bit frustrated is because it has on several occasions appeared that you just ignore points I make (like laminated armor tests in water, all the textual references) as well as hold yourself to a different standard in your arguments. Maybe I'm guilty of that as well, but I tried not to be. With that, I'm done. I've done the best I can. I can't make you believe anything, you have to come to conclusions yourself. I seriously am sorry to end on such a sour note. I don't think anything you did was personal, and I don't intend to come off as mean.

[Satapatiš]

What really got me is the Egyptian armor, I think from Tutankhamun's tomb. Seriously? All that talk about the Mycenae find being of a different time period and thus not counting for anything, yet you suggest something just as old and try to connect it to the Mars of Todi. To put it bluntly, that was very hypocritical.

What makes it even worse is that it wasn't the best informed. You should have looked into the Egyptian armor a bit more. It doesn't look like the Mars of Todi's armor. Here is a picture of what the armor would have roughly looked like(https://imgur.com/t4ACDCk), and here is the testing of a reconstruction sample(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFxkYmqIX1w). Besides using scales (which are shaped differently), they don't seem to have much of anything in common.

You suggest something I didn't write.

I know how Egyptian leather armors look when restored.

But the method of constructing them is working horizontal rows or "bands" of scales together into a vest. Eastern lamellar leather armors are constructed in the same fashion. Except it's done in the vest cut, not in a T & Y cut. That's why it reminds me of Varro. Mars of Todi looks like a representation of something made from small rigid pieces assembled in bands around the body. I've heard that it could be small quilted pieces... But I don't think so. My guess is that the scultpure is wearing lamellar tube and yoke. The armor of this Etruscan warrior being what Varro was writing about.

To be clear I know you favor quilted linen, but you spend an inordinate amount of time arguing on behalf of leather. I'm also not saying that leather armor didn't exist, but that it's not well supported in the context of type 4 armor.

I think that there had to be something to make native Greek speakers of the late Antiquity to think that spolas can be a word for armor too, but I don't think that they were thinking about a smooth tube and yoke one. At best it's a term for a foreigner armor and it's used to separate it from Greek armors that are simply "thorax".



My issue with thinking that the type IV could be made of leather is similar to the issue I have with the glued linen theory.


In general, it's easier to glue layers together than to go through the very time consuming quilting. But quilting is still the most popular way of making cloth armor.


It'd be also easier and faster to put together a few smooth layers of rawhide than to go through the trouble of cutting the small plates, then sewing the scales or plates together.


But everyone else before and after Greeks was making scale or lamellar leather armors. They keep appearing well into the Migration Period. They simply work.


So if the type IV is to be made of leather then it'd require to believe that there was much simpler, thus less expensive, technology used by the Classical Greeks and only by them. That doesn't work for me.

[Mamlaz]

The use of leather in Tube and Yoke cuirasses is up for heavy debate, but every enthusiast I know of rejects the existence of leather muscle cuirasses.

For linothoraxes perhaps, but for muscle cuirasses(I do not even understand why the OP merged the two together), I'd argue that the statue depictions show reliefs that would be impossible to carve or stitch on linen.

I was either bronze(all the way til the end of antiquity) or hardened leather.

This simply does not look like anything else to me;

https://i.imgur.com/x4oVMzi.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/sfHsoBd.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/l2NIM2w.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Yz946w3.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/fKGGZ5Q.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Et5Onaz.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ANtWcR9.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/2EyLTZ3.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/stjykPr.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/P6icJ7O.jpg


Some I believe were most definitely bronze.

How else would you achieve literal reliefs on armor?

To the point that there is one piece that I know of, a decorative bronze cuirass dated to the 2nd century AD that was found in Georgia;

https://i.imgur.com/3sfi1D5.jpg

[Satapatiš]

To further muddle the options, it could be also iron covered in bronze.


It's also not impossible to use molded leather to cover an iron cuirass. It would need to be proved with any existing example, but the usual method of attaching anything to the metal surfaces (i.e. using pitch) would at least rustproof the expensive iron.


Or it could be painted metal, if to believe the Ancient polychromy.


Or silvered bronze.


\_(:/)_/


Damn you Ancients and your habit of making armors out of anything you people had at hand.