Armour against weapons or weather?

[MeinPanzer]

I also recommend against the whole concept of a poor warrior "just wanting to have SOME kind of armor", unless there is EVIDENCE that such men thought and acted that way. Sure, you find psiloi with a hide cloak over their arms to help ward off javelins and rocks, and modern writers will make all kinds of noise about some garment or other which might have offered rudimentary protection from something. But it seems clear to me that if a man could only afford a shield, that was considered perfectly adequate protection in combat! One of those vase paintings shows greaves as well, so he's even better off. Plenty of men went to war with no body armor, and didn't think anything of it. The shield protected. In most times and places, the men with real armor were very much the minority.

Thanks for posting this Matt, as I think it is something that people often forget to consider. When we look at evidence today, we often apply our own thinking to it and end up with conclusions based on our assumptions. We have this often with light troops, with thinking like "light troops wouldn't have gone into combat without shields/armour/a helmet," or "why would X kind of soldier wear Y kind of armour? Clearly Z kind of armour would be better suited," even when the evidence is oftentimes contradictory. I think we have to consider that we simply didn't think like these men did, or can't consider all the possible reasons why they would or wouldn't do something.