Glued Linen Armour- a simple test

[MeinPanzer]

There are no contemporary mentions of linen armor, save the one line in Alcaeus, and he's Lesbian-Aeolian.

I don't believe that sexual orientation should count against him as a source- so intolerant! :roll:

I too looked up Liddell and Scott and found something quite interesting. They examined the quote in question:

??????-??? [?^?], ??, Dim. of ??????,
A. leather jerkin, Aen.Tact.29.4.

Thus the original quote posted:

"there were brought in linen corslets [thorakes lineoi], cloaks [stolidia], helmets [perikephalaia], shields [hopla], greaves [knemides], short swords [machairai], bows [toxa], and arrows [toxeumata] stowed away in chests like those of merchants, with the statement that clothing and other merchandise were in them."

According to LSJ does read as I proposed:

" there were brought in linen corslets [thorakes lineoi], Leather jerkins [stolidia], helmets [perikephalaia], shields [hopla], greaves [knemides], short swords [machairai], bows [toxa], and arrows [toxeumata] stowed away in chests like those of merchants, with the statement that clothing and other merchandise were in them."

So if we believe them, then much of this arguement evaporates since there were both linen and leather in use concurrently. Now we can start argueing about how either the leather or the linen was not a T-Y corselet, but some sort of vest.

Nice find! I didn't look at the entry in LSJ when I saw it for some odd reason. Anyway, this is what I've come to suspect thinking of this passage more and more since I found it. This is pretty clear evidence of a Classical Greek use of linen cuirasses (despite the fact that these could be Ionian Greeks), and so it seems clear that leather and linen cuirasses were in use at the same time, though it seems that at least in Xenophon's day, leather was the primary material in use.