Leather Armour?

[Matthew Amt]

There does not seem to be any indication that these animal skins took the FORM of the cuirass, only that they were worn INSTEAD of a cuirass.

Currently, most of us believe the Archaic and Classical "tube and yoke" cuirass was the leather spolas. The same shape was certainly continued in the Hellenistic era and later in a number of materials, including mail and scales, and presumably quilted linen. But even the use of word "linothorax" is now questioned!

There is currently no good evidence that the muscled cuirass was constructed from leather. And if that were cheaper, why would it be worn by officers, who generally went to some lengths to get *more expensive* armor?

The Lloydian Hoplite page is now outdated, being written way back when most of us believed in the glued linen cuirass due to the evidence readily available at the time. We now have much better evidence than he presents, right here on RAT.

NEVER use a website selling "reproduction" armor as even a suggestion that something might have possibly existed in ancient times! Some of it might be quite accurate, but much of it is simply fantasy.

Vale,

Matthew