Makedonian Armour

[MeinPanzer]

Regarding colour on the sarcophagus, I follow the opinion of those who have looked at all the colour sources for it, such as Sekunda and McBride. But it is a pity that we have no weapons on the sarcophagus to compare colours with!

I've seen the same sources as well as the newer Bunte Götter colour reconstructions, and I disagree with Sekunda's reconstruction of the blue on the helmets as being blue paint. Careful consideration of contemporary painting shows that blue, even deep blue, was commonly used to represent iron. In the late-4th/early-3rd century Kazanluk paintings, the sicae/rhomphaiai were painted blue, and in the late-4th century Aghios Athanasios paintings, the spearheads carried by Macedonian soldiers were painted a deep blue.

IIRC the famous painting of a Alexander-era cavalryman (a prodromoi?) wears some purple too. However, the Alexander sarcophagus largely depicts nobles, and we know Alexander captured and issued great quantities of Tyrian purple cloth. So even if there was some other decent purple dye, I suspect the purple on the sarcophagus was Tyrian.

But even outside of Alexandrian times purple is not uncommon. Painted Ptolemaic stelae show seemingly common soldiers wearing purple clothing or cloaks edged in purple, as do some funerary stelae reliefs with remnants of paint on them from elsewhere in the world.

Thinking about one-piece iron cuirasses, the main reason I doubt they existed was that I don't think large enough iron plates could be reliably produced anywhere in the world before 1400 or so in Europe. One-piece iron helms are hard enough to make with earlier technology!

They weren't one piece. Muscled cuirasses were always made of a front and back, and we have some examples to prove that it was possible.

I haven't heard of that painting you refer to- perhaps I will Google it.

Aghios Athanasios? I think some decent-quality images of it have been posted here a few times, so search for the name and it should return some results.