Leather Cuirass

[Dan Howard]

The term linothorax would be appropriate for any body armour that is made of linen so long as the context is Greek.

[Dan Howard]

As to armour penetration, yes, it is not easy to come up with examples ( though there are more of these than you might suppose)

What are they? I need citations.

Epaminondas, Agesilaus (and others )succumbed to wounds in battle, to give but two notable examples. There is the incident in Xenophon referred to several times in this thread, the more general examples of Thermopylae, Sphacteria and Platea as well.

Irrelevant unless they specifically say that the arrows actually penetrated armour. As I said, there are plenty of ways for someone to die from arrow wounds without their armour being compromised.

[Dan Howard]

Fair point, Dan, but in mediaeval times e.g. the crusades, armour was mail by and large , and part of the system was padding under the mail. Arguably it was essential, therefore necessary despite any heat discomfort.Not the case with more rigid armours - why would you wear hot padding if you didn't have to ?

How do you know that they didn't have to? We know very very little about the sort of items that were worn under armour during any time period.

[Paullus Scipio]

True enough Dan, but there is more info available for mediaeval times, and it seems that mail required a fair amount of padding ( because it "gives" under a blow, thereby causing bruising or worse if unpadded) and as armour got more rigid/plate type, the padding got thinner and eventually became an undergarment with 'points', to attach plate to , without entirely disappearing ---doubtless for comfort reasons if no other.
The illustrations on pots etc do not show any unequivocal'padding'/sub-armalis type garment, and for what it's worth, it is mu surmise that it came in with mail.

[MeinPanzer]

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

And that's my point exactly. If the cuirasses were white or off-white and underwent some sort of browning process, we would expect the rest of the painting to do so, but we find lighter colours that have not been browned all around them. The other helmet is yellow (bronze) with a red and a black stripe, btw.

Since we apparently accept painted helmets, why not painted corselets?

Because cuirasses would inevitably undergo much more rough contact than a helmet just from its wearer, let alone any attacks from the enemy. Not to mention that these textile cuirasses would warp and bend unlike a metal helmet and so quickly damage any paint applied.

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 !

We should be concerned about ancient methods of colouring, not modern reconstructors'. And there is a major issue at hand: linen can easily be dyed to any colour on the spectrum and easily patterned, while leather cannot with ancient methods.

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.

The only other elements in leather that were dyed that I know of were dyed red. If anyone can present more evidence to the contrary, I'd be happy to see it.

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o118 ... oldier.jpg

[MeinPanzer]

I don't think these two images, really contribute anything to this discussion, since black figure vases made use of such a limited palette that the colour the artist assigned to a cuirass is almost meaningless.

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Yes...you're probably right,but I wanted to point out that during ALL these centuries there is this "willingness" of "painting" them white.And more so in the first years.The colours that could be used at the time were some shades of yellow-brown,dark red-brown and black.White is relatively rare and used in small quantities.In these two vases the artist spent much of his (I suppose) expensive white to emphasize the colour of the new thorax.
Have you ever thought why would they want to paint the leather white and only white in such majority?Colour IS a point for linen more than leather even if some say that it's art and does not consist valid evidence
Khairete
Giannis

[MeinPanzer]

Yes...you're probably right,but I wanted to point out that during ALL these centuries there is this "willingness" of "painting" them white.And more so in the first years.The colours that could be used at the time were some shades of yellow-brown,dark red-brown and black.White is relatively rare and used in small quantities.In these two vases the artist spent much of his (I suppose) expensive white to emphasize the colour of the new thorax.
Have you ever thought why would they want to paint the leather white and only white in such majority?Colour IS a point for linen more than leather even if some say that it's art and does not consist valid evidence
Khairete
Giannis

I agree with you, but I think that the evidence from black figure vases is more ambiguous than helpful, even for a hazy discussion such as this one. Even in that first image, the closest man on the right also appears to be wearing a "tube and yoke" cuirass, but his is black. Does this imply that it was dyed, or is this just the artist mixing things up, like it appears he did with the alternating helmet colours?

By the way, when are those first two dated to?

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Ehmm,I see your point,only note that that man is wearing a bell cuirass.The "pteruges" like lines beleath are his tunic's pattern.If you look closer you'll notice the re turning rim of the bell thorax.
Khaire
Giannis.

PS.But in that Macedonioan company,I assume that the man with cuirass to the left has his "tube and yoke" cuirass painted purple.As you see they had many different shades of all colours but his cuirass' purple is exactly the same shade as the edge of his chlamys and the same as some other men from the same tomb tunics.It seems painted to me and not the original colour of the leather.
I do not know exact dates but if you trust me,a bit befor 500bc.
khaire
Giannis

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Oh,I think the first vase is of the Exekias painter.This supports more my dating.

[MeinPanzer]

Ehmm,I see your point,only note that that man is wearing a bell cuirass.The "pteruges" like lines beleath are his tunic's pattern.If you look closer you'll notice the re turning rim of the bell thorax.
Khaire
Giannis.

Right, my mistake; I thought they were pteruges.

PS.But in that Macedonioan company,I assume that the man with cuirass to the left has his "tube and yoke" cuirass painted purple.As you see they had many different shades of all colours but his cuirass' purple is exactly the same shade as the edge of his chlamys and the same as some other men from the same tomb tunics.It seems painted to me and not the original colour of the leather.

The shades of a colour used to paint something shouldn't even really be considered with ancient painting, IMO, since A) we can't judge how thousands of years of fading and wear have affected paint and B) it seems most artists used one general shade of a colour when working on a whole painting (one colour blue, shaded exactly the same be it on a spearhead, a shield, or a tunic, for instance). But beside that, I think that the colour matching that of another textile- a most-likely linen cloak- is more in favour of that cuirass being made of dyed linen than leather. And, once again, I think that flexible cuirasses being painted would be incredibly impractical (much moreso than painting metal or wood or leather stretched flat or dyeing textiles, for instance).

[Anonymous]

My view is that, if a muscle-cuirass were made out of leather, it wouldn't be very flexible, since it would have been treated (probably by the cuir-bouille method) to stiffen it and improve its defensive qualities. Therefore, you could paint it. These chaps painted metal helmets which were going to be attracting the attention of loads of spear- and javelin-points, sword edges, slingshot and arrows - and they painted them in elaborate patterns.
I have no idea how they made paints that would work on metal, but, if the statuary and pottery evidence is to be believed, they did it. Why would they have any problems with painting metal, leather or linen cuirasses?
I'm not convinced that a thorax necessarily endures more rough treatment than a helmet.

What I'm really getting at here is that colour on armour is an unreliable indicator of the material of the armour.