02-21-2006, 10:55 PM
Quote:None of the various leather hardening techniques provide anything that will resist a weapon point unless it is too thick to be flexible. You can't have flexible leather that will resist any sort of threat on the battlefield. So any depiction of a flexible musculata cannot have been intended for the battlefield. Unless you have evidence that a cuirass was sometimes worn over mail like in the Middle Ages.
Provided the officer who wore it expected to actually get into a tussle with the barbarians, who often carried lesser protection than him anyway. Was his intention to be a practical walking armoured car, or to look spiffy and cool?
I believe metal was the norm, but there are clearly bendy examples of musculata in sculpture, albeit scarce. Why would they be portrayed as such? It surely can't be a fiction of the sculptor, and to sculpt a leading figure with his subarmalis and not the full-on armour just makes no sense. It would be like portraying him in his underpants IMHO. Also, I would be very surprised to see someone able to construct a linen musculata, with all of the anatomical features.
I suspect now that leather musculata existed, but were not the norm.
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
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