Finished Linothorax

[PMBardunias]

These are two rather different questions. I have held from the first that leather, probably rawhide, is what we see in white thorax.

Now to say that long rectangular scales, secured only at the top and bottom edge by a row of stitching which can be a narrow band or covered by a wide decorative border, developed independantly in Italy to me would require some proof because it is not a common type of scale and because of the long tradition of exactly the same thing in the near east.

And there are other examples of similar armour made of leather used by people much closer to the Etruscans than the Asyrians,both geographically and chronologically.

I'm not sure what people you have in mind. Carthaginians have ties to the same tradition as the Assyrians and surely were exposed to this type of scale. The Etruscans themselves are ultimately Anatolian. To me the armor looks like the Assyrian style of scale, perhaps made commonly in a cheaper leather, mated with a T-Y pattern. It need not have come via Carthage, Greeks surely knew of this type of scale, but that route might explain the popularity. I have not seen the archer at Aegina up close, but the pattern looks similar.

[attachment=379]aegina_archer_cl.jpg[/attachment]

So,friends,i really can't see the likeliness of it being metal,nor insipred by the Asyrian armour.