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+--- Thread: Leather Cuirass (/showthread.php?tid=7315)
Re: Leather cuirass - Magnus - 05-13-2007
Quote:To Matt Lanteigne: I am not biased, but as you can see, there are many 'linophiles', so I merely put forward a case for leather. But if I am biased, what does your signature say about you ?LOL We must each put forward a best case for our causes, surely?
I like to think my signature says that I need more than some kind of fantasy to go on before I say X is Z because of Y. Unless I make a disclaimer and say "I have no evidence for this, but I'm doing it because...". Otherwise I'm just lying. All the evidence for leather as a use as main body armour for this period is so blatantly weak, especially what's been brought forward in this thread. I honestly wonder about where people get the idea from, if not from Hollywood. I love thinking outside the box (I was a graphic designer for 7 years), but when people start thinking outside the rules and evidence, I can't help but shake my head at my monitor.
Leather cuirass - Paullus Scipio - 05-13-2007
To Sean: Interesting -- I was referring to Athens, and your comment certainly opens another possibility.
I shall refrain from the obvious "special pleading" that so many use, and not say, can we be sure it refers to contemporary rather than heroic from one tiny fragment?Or that even so, it refers to Ionia, which may be regarded as Asiatic rather than mainland Greece.
Instead, I shall say well done, an interesting piece of evidence!
What is your source here? A modern commentary on early greek literature?
I would be most interested.
To Matt; I have set out the sources for evidence, so that everyone can decide for themselves. Up until now, there has been absolutely no contemporary evidence for linen. If the case for a leather Spolas is not strong, the case for linen made out here is so far non-existent, with the honourable exception of the Alcaeus reference set out above by Sean which looks promising, though as a single piece of evidence it is hardly conclusive.
regards, Paullus Scipio/Paul McDonnell-Staff [/b]
Leather cuirass - Paullus Scipio - 05-13-2007
Sorry, Giannis
My Penguin Classic Plutarch (Alas, I don't have the Loeb) says;"pierced his breastplate and lodged in his chest btween the ribs"
Dan has zoomed in on a very specific example, which, as he says, is all too rare.
regards, Paullus Scipio/Paul McDonnell-Staff
Re: Leather cuirass - Magnus - 05-13-2007
Quote:To Matt; I have set out the sources for evidence, so that everyone can decide for themselves. Up until now, there has been absolutely no contemporary evidence for linen. If the case for a leather Spolas is not strong, the case for linen made out here is so far non-existent, with the honourable exception of the Alcaeus reference set out above by Sean which looks promising, though as a single piece of evidence it is hardly conclusive.
What about all of the paintings showing light coloured armour? Last I checked leather is brown. Given the complete lack of mention of leather, seems to me linen is the logical choice.
Leather cuirass - Paullus Scipio - 05-13-2007
These points have been discussed ante. Painted examples can be any material you like.
As far as I know, natural leather is not brown but a pale, pinkish colour ( similar in art to flesh colour ) , or a buff colour. There are several depictions of buff-coloured tube-and- yoke corselets - see previous posts.
regards, Paullus Scipio/Paul McDonnell-Staff
Re: Leather cuirass - Tarbicus - 05-13-2007
Quote:There are several depictions of buff-coloured tube-and- yoke corselets - see previous posts.Where - I've looked and can't find the references?
Leather cuirass - Paullus Scipio - 05-13-2007
Without going into exhaustive research, several spring to mind from Macedonian tomb paintings-
1. The painted grave stele of a "companion" type cavalryman , shown with a uniform buff cuirass (type difficult to determine due to flaking) with buff pteruges -it is in the Greco-Roman museum Alexandria, and is illustrated in colour in "phillip of Macedon" numerous authors, published by Heinemann, London,1981
2. The famous "Lyson and Kallikles" tomb showing buff corselets/pteruges and painted helmets - widely illustrated e.g same source as above
3. The two left- hand two Macedonian soldiers from a relatively recently discovered frieze showing eight soldiers - 'Vergina tombs' by Dr Elizabeth Carney -this also illustrated on_line, but I don't have the refernce handy - no doubt google or other search engines will find it for you......
regards, Paullus Scipio/Paul McDonnell-Staff
Re: Leather cuirass - MeinPanzer - 05-13-2007
I made up a whole list but something went wrong when I tried to post it and it was all lost :x .
Quote:Without going into exhaustive research, several spring to mind from Macedonian tomb paintings-
1. The painted grave stele of a "companion" type cavalryman , shown with a uniform buff cuirass (type difficult to determine due to flaking) with buff pteruges -it is in the Greco-Roman museum Alexandria, and is illustrated in colour in "phillip of Macedon" numerous authors, published by Heinemann, London,1981
2. The famous "Lyson and Kallikles" tomb showing buff corselets/pteruges and painted helmets - widely illustrated e.g same source as above
3. The two left- hand two Macedonian soldiers from a relatively recently discovered frieze showing eight soldiers - 'Vergina tombs' by Dr Elizabeth Carney -this also illustrated on_line, but I don't have the refernce handy - no doubt google or other search engines will find it for you......
regards, Paullus Scipio/Paul McDonnell-Staff
On the last one, if you mean the Aghios Athanasios tomb, those two men are wearing entirely purple cuirasses, not white/buff/brownish. But to add to your list:
Many Southern and Central Italian tomb paintings show soldiers wearing white and off-white cuirasses.
Several Ptolemaic stelai show off-white, buff, and brownish cuirasses.
There is a soldier from the 4th C. BC Lefkadia tomb shown with a white and red cuirass.
Leather cuirass - Paullus Scipio - 05-13-2007
Good post Ruben !
There are many that survive from ptolemaic Egypt and South Italy in particular - probably too many to list, but perhaps we should try?
Is it too much to ask you to re-construct your list ?
Yes, I had that tomb painting in mind.My recollection was brownish, but your post prompted another look - it certainly seems, in one reproduction at least, to have a purplish tinge. I note they are also shieldless ( but then so are two other un-armoured figures) . Might they be intended to be cavalrymen ?
regards, Paullus Scipio/ Paul McDonnell-Staff
Re: Leather Cuirass - Tarbicus - 05-14-2007
Quote:The famous "Lyson and Kallikles" tomb showing buff corselets/pteruges and painted helmetsI'm sure painted shading and over 2000 years of discolouration might make them seem buff, but I think they're far more likely to have been white.
http://www.ypai.gr/atlas/images/photos_big/3_2.jpg
Even if they could be seen as off-white, that ties in with linen perfectly.
To put the photo I just posted into some colour reference, here's another photo of another part of the tomb shot under different conditions.
http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/Helle ... l/d14g.jpg
Quote:Many Southern and Central Italian tomb paintings show soldiers wearing white and off-white cuirasses.Exactly like linen.
If leather, what paint would be used to create the patterns we often see on the representations of cuirasses under discussion, bearing in mind they were quite flexible? Or, how would the patterns and decoration be made?
Re: Leather cuirass - MeinPanzer - 05-14-2007
Quote:Good post Ruben !
There are many that survive from ptolemaic Egypt and South Italy in particular - probably too many to list, but perhaps we should try?
Is it too much to ask you to re-construct your list ?
I could for Ptolemaic Egypt (I just wrote an article on the Ptolemaic painted stelai for the first issue of Ancient Warfare), but not for the Italian examples. I only have a handful of images of Italian tomb paintings showing arms and armour, but there are dozens out there.
Quote:Yes, I had that tomb painting in mind.My recollection was brownish, but your post prompted another look - it certainly seems, in one reproduction at least, to have a purplish tinge. I note they are also shieldless ( but then so are two other un-armoured figures) . Might they be intended to be cavalrymen ?
It seems likely that the three cuirassed men were cavalrymen. It doesn't seem like any kind of continuity can be traced between the three scenes- procession, symposium, preparation for war- but three men ride horses in the procession and three men are almost identically armed with cuirasses and kausiai. The riders in the procession wear the most purple, as well (two have purple cloaks and the third a purple tunic with yellow stripes and a blue cloak with a purple edge). Wearing the kausia could also indicate wealth (it's still not clear if the kausia was just a Macedonian thing or a wealthy Macedonian thing), but another man, carrying only a spear, also wears one.
A lot of it is hard to judge- 8 men are in the procession and 8 again in the standing prepared for war, but only 6 appear in the symposium. Would they all have to be of the same class to party together? My vote, based on the Alexander mosaic and sarcophagus, is that those three are cavalrymen, while the others are infantry officers.
Quote:I'm sure painted shading and over 2000 years of discolouration might make them seem buff, but I think they're far more likely to have been white.
http://www.ypai.gr/atlas/images/photos_big/3_2.jpg
Even if they could be seen as off-white, that ties in with linen perfectly.
To put the photo I just posted into some colour reference, here's another photo of another part of the tomb shot under different conditions.
http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/Helle ... l/d14g.jpg
I highly doubt it, because there are other, much lighter elements of the painting beside it, such as the cheek pieces of the helmet on the right of the shield. If you see a clear photograph, you can tell that these were intended to be biege-brown.
Quote:Exactly like linen.
If leather, what paint would be used to create the patterns we often see on the representations of cuirasses under discussion, bearing in mind they were quite flexible? Or, how would the patterns and decoration be made?
I totally agree- anything that is white or off-white is almost surely linen rather than leather, and dying or painting designs on leather probably wouldn't be very easy to do (in the case of the former) or would not last long at all (in the case of the latter).
Re: Leather cuirass - Tarbicus - 05-14-2007
Quote:I highly doubt it, because there are other, much lighter elements of the painting beside it, such as the cheek pieces of the helmet on the right of the shield.They could be iron, having no yellow tone? The same with the pair of cheek pieces in the other photo I posted, where the bowl of the right hand helmet is off white with a red stripe, and a stripe of some other colour, but the cheek pieces bright and neutral.
http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/Helle ... l/d14g.jpg
Leather cuirass - Paullus Scipio - 05-14-2007
Certainly ultra violet light has a curious effect on paintings once excavated - sometimes the paint rapidly fades, sometimes just some colours,sometimes the colours change ( blue to green and vice versa is common), --I have personal experience having observed Pompeii over 30 years, and experimented with reproduction frescoes,as well as a corpusof work on the subject, but that is not the case with any of the examples quoted ( so far as I know).
Since we apparently accept painted helmets, why not painted corselets?
Re-enactors seem to have no trouble colouring theirs, and there seems to be a lot more re-enactors with leather spolades, or composite corselets, than multi-layered linen ones. As I said earlier, colours in art can't be conclusive.You might as well argue the brown/pink/beige ones are linen painted to look like leather !
As to the practicalities of colouring leather, we have an example of a black leather cuirass being dyed white ( not painted) right here on RAT!
If white or off-white is "surely" linen, then does that mean that buff or pinkish is "surely" leather ?
I don't think you can read too much into the colours in art, but they do add another factor to the overall picture ?
regards, Paullus Scipio/Paul McDonnell-Staff
Re: Leather Cuirass - Anonymous - 05-14-2007
Perhaps we're making a mistake, trying to decide whether armour was leather or linen, on the basis of so little evidence. Do we have to make a decision, or can we just agree that we don't know?
- Ah, I begin to see the problem with my own suggestion; it would allow people to re-construct the armours in all the different ways that upset all the different parties.
Magnus thinks leather musculata are just ridiculous; I'm inclined to see leather segmentata much more in that light (not terribly relevant to us Greeks) while thinking that leather would lend itself quite well to being moulded into an image of the perfect male physique. While leather ( and here I'm including, possibly, hide/rawhide) may not be as effective as padded, layered or quilted linen for stopping arrows, it does, nonetheless have very good defensive qualities, especially in "turning" pointed and edged blades, and even more so if it has been boiled during the moulding process.
While Ruben argues that dyeing or painting leather would have been hard to do and rather temporary, I know that it was all the rage in later eras, when no item of leather kit would be left unpainted, by any self-respecting battlefield poser, and I believe there is evidence from Ancient Greece for painted leather kit, other than armour. Correct me if I'm wrong. Ancient Greek kit has always struck me as battlefield posing kit par excellence - the main reason for my interest in the period and for my belief that painting of armour, whether metal or of other materials, is highly likely to have taken place.
Is there anybody out there who rejects leather for musculata armour, but would accept it for linothorakes or as part of a composit linothorax?
Or someone who would accept leather segmentata for Romans, while rejecting the musculata? It seems to me there are those who believe at least some musculata may have been of leather. Maybe we should have a poll...
I don't think I know enough to make a decision on this issue, and the longer the thread goes on, the more people seem to say the same, whilst defending their own preferred theory. My real objection to leather is that the reproductions produced in it (or to imitate it!) which I have seen so far, just look so fake.
Leather cuirass - Paullus Scipio - 05-14-2007
I started off by saying, and have repeated since, that we really don't know, but was hoping that a review of the evidence might turn up something new or overlooked....sadly, that doesn't appear to have happened --- but for me, the review of the literary evidence showed up the striking lack of reference to greek linen armour.
Can anyone who has read Jarva summarise his views ?
And it would appear use of the term'linothorax' is inappropriate for the tube-and- yoke corselet !!! ( But no doubt the term will live on ! )
It would be nice to try to establish an exhaustive list of the colour illustrations--Macedonian tombs, Italian paintings, and Egyptian ones.
regards, Paullus Scipio/Paul McDonnell-Staff