Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas

[geala]

The precipitation in Greece would perhaps not come from above (although it can also rain in Greece :wink: ) but certainly from inside (sweat). It would be important to prove that ancient glue of any kind could be resistent against dampness to a certain degree. Ask yourself why the Romans used shield covers to protect the glued shields from wet conditions.

I strongly believe in the existence of linen Greek armour in the classical times (although I think leather is better "proven" from the written sources) but I don't believe in glueing. Believing is not knowing, so I am open to new knowledge and arguments. But I don't have till now seen any ancient hint for glueing armour (I am very eager to read about the linen found in the Mycenaean period, perhaps it was glued), and I don't know any reference for the glueing of armour in any culture and any time before and thereafter. If it was such a successful method why was it not used afterwards? If we had just one credible reference for a glued linen armour in other historical periods...

I don't think that rigidity of the armour was of such an importance. Of course it's good against blunt trauma but you can decrease blunt trauma also with thick soft armour. I have read one medieval source that says that the softer the soft armour, the better the protection. It may have been an Italian of the 15th c. referring to English soft body armour, I don't know now. I will take a look if I can find it. Perhaps some other knows about it? If we take some vase paintings seriously, at least some of the depicted tube-and-yoke cuirasses could not have been rigid, some others perhaps were.

[Dan Howard]

Glued armour would have far more hassles from body sweat. Rainfall is largely irrelevant in comparison.

[Matthew Amt]

hi, i'm new, but i've read a number of threads on linothorax (sweet tap-dancing gods, have i been reading) and i have to say that i'm rather firmly in the layered linen camp. now, there are a few questions i haven't seen asked and there are a few ideas for glue that i want to run by some of you guys.

Khaire! Believe me, I was a firm believer in glued linen for many years--hey, I went and built one!

http://www.larp.com/hoplite/linothor.html

The problem is that the entire concept is built on conjecture, sprinkled with a few out-of-context quotes from ancient writers. We went round and round for years on all the arguments, and I stood firm, but it was about page 5 of this very thread that someone neatly pooled all the literary evidence for "linothorax", and changed my mind. You can go on forever about "Well, what about this? And why couldn't they have discovered this?" But that's NOT evidence. The big point is that the EVIDENCE does not support the idea of the oft-depicted "tube and yoke" cuirass as being linen, and certainly not glued linen. The evidence points to it being called a spolas, and being made of some kind of leather. During the Archaic and early Classical eras, that is!

Now, I'm also a firm believer in the use of linen armor in the Mycenaean era, but quilted. Homer refers to it, and there are several nice depictions of warriors in tunics that have vertical rows of dotted lines. To me, that screams quilting. And it also seems that quilted linen came back during the Hellenistic era, and was used during the Archaic and early Classical eras in places like Persia and Egypt. So yeah, it was known to be good stuff and quite functional, it just dropped out of fashion in Greece for a time.

Speculating about water-resistant glues is not a crime, but there simply isn't any suggestion of their use in armor of any sort in Classical Greece. So harping on that sort of thing just keeps pulling you away from what we *know*, into the realm of fantasy. Why do that? I'm not saying we know everything, by any means!! And I've never been a big Leather Armor proponent, so my conversion has not been easy for me. I grumble every time I even think of my nice laboriously-made glued linothorax...

I don't like to say it this way, but it really looks like we're moving into the "post-Connolly" phase of Greek reenacting and research. His books were THE major sources for a generation, and are still hard to beat in some ways, but he led us astray on the whole "linothorax" issue, and his concept of shield cross-section turns out to have been wrong, too. He's a great guy and a fabulous artist, but he's not the first authority to become outdated by newer or sharper research.

Evidence wins over speculation any day. Let go of your feelings, young Jedi.

Matthew

[M. Demetrius]

Vertical quilting makes more sense (not that making sense to moderns has much to do with ancient thinking/deed) than diamond quilting, since the ridges follow around the body better, and tend to hold the belly in place better than other directional lines. Now I know Greek warriors never had a belly to worry about, but some of us here in the 21st Cent do. Miles of stitching, though. Miles.

[Matthew Amt]

(not that making sense to moderns has much to do with ancient thinking/deed)

One of my common mantras, of course!

Actually, there is at least one Mycenaean illustration that shows quilting in a diagonal grid. Of course, we can't *prove* it's quilting, or even linen, just as we can't prove that the depictions of vertical dotted lines are quilting. That's just all we have to go on. I realize that lots of quilting lines very closely spaced makes layered linen more resistant and stiff, but when I make a Mycenaean quilted linen tunic I'll probably space the rows of quilting an inch or two apart. Unless someone comes up with an archeological find of more closely-quilted linen somewhere. The original depictions don't look like they are quilted all that tightly. It's the same old story--Yes, we can think of ways to make something better than the ancients did, but it's probably good enough to aim for how they seemed to make it. If it worked for them, it should work for us. See the quote above!

Khairete,

Matthew

[Kineas]

Matt--I feel for you, because today I came upon this tidbit in Pausanias. I offer it in full because I haven't seen it in this argument, or anywhere else for that matter. Before I go on, let me comment that Pausanias is a difficult writer--he's writing about 165 AD give or take a decade, and he's pednatic and goes on endless digressions, and there are some serious questions about his Greek grammar--he uses some prepositions in manners that could drive you to drink.
That said, he went to Greece in or around 168 AD and visited all the great shrines and trophies and described what he saw in detail, preserving, in many cases, our only knowledge of great statuary, shield dedications--heck, in at least one case, he's the sole source on a battle of the Classical world (Oinoe). And nothing in this quote "proves" anything--except that in Pausanias's view, there was linen armour, and he's seen it hanging as dedications in shrines. And that is worthy evidence, especially as he speaks as if from personal knowledge of its qualities.
He begins with a very nice description of a dedicated Sauromatae thorax made of horn scales. He goes on:

These [horn or hoof scales] pieces they bore and stitch together with the sinews of horses and oxen, and then use them as breastplates [thoraxin] that are as handsome and strong as those of the Greeks. For they can withstand blows of missiles and those struck in combat. Linen breastplates [Oi de thorakes oi linoi] are not so useful to fighters, for they let the iron pass through if the blow be a violent one. They aid hunters, however, for the teeth of lions or leopards break off in them. You may see linen breastplates [thorakes de linous] dedicated in other sanctuaries, notably in that at Gryneum, where there is a most beautiful grove of Apollo...

Now, this is not all it looks to be... First, Gryneum (Gryneion) is opposite Lesvos on the Turkish mainland, in Ancient Pergamum, which may well have been Pausanias's homeland. So it is possible we're just substantiating that linen was used for breastplates in Asia. Second, it's worth noting how he feels that it is suitable for hunting but not for war--which sounds to me like quilting. Third, he's writing so late that there's no knowing whether his thorakes are being dedicated in the Hellenistic period or the Classical or even Archaic.

But it's a nice quote, I hadn't seen it on this thread, and I thought it was worth propagating. I wonder if Pausanias has more?

[Kineas]

And as a follow on, in the description of Olympia:

Next to the treasury of the Sicyonians is the treasury of the Carthaginians, the work of Pothaeus, Antiphilus and Megacles. In it are votive offerings--a huge image of Zeus and three linen breast-plates, dedicated by Gelo and the Syracusans after overcoming the Phoenicians in either a naval or a land battle.

Clearly, linen breastplates are worth commentary--and are alien. And used by foreigners. Or so this says to me.

[Paullus Scipio]

These references to Asiatic/Middle eastern thorakes linous have been discussed on previous threads in detail. Like you, I think it is significant that Pausanias mentions NO such linen thorakes in his descriptions of Greek sites, and that this one is in Asia Minor, where we know from Xenophon that such items existed. That Carthage would use such items is no surprise either. In Gelon's time, Greek/Hellenistic influences hadn't yet taken hold in Carthage, and she looked to the Middle-East/Phoenicia.

There is another reference to Linen corselets in the literature - Strabo describes Lusitanian warriors ( in Portugal) armed with javelins and caetra(small circular shields) having sinew caps/headgear and linen corselets. A statue from Osuna seems to have a layered/quilted garment which may represent such a warrior in linen corselet ( though Osuna is the wrong side of Spain for Lusitani !! ). Linen corselets could well have been introduced to Spain via Carthage, which had contacts with Spain going back to Homeric times.

...and I agree with your views on what these mentions/references imply - namely that such things were worthy of comment because they were foriegn/alien.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Secondly, my tests against various samples indicate that quilted layers actually provide better protection than the same number of glued layers.

This intrigues me as it seems quite counterintuitive- that a soft 'version' of the same material would be superior to a solid one- I would love to see an elaboration in a separate thread on performance of the different options for this kind of armour, for example. Last night I decided to try out the glued version since I have a lot of hide glue and scraps of nice linen left over from a Roman scutum project, and I'll have to try out a quilted version too now.

It isn't soft. If layered textiles is quilted correctly the result can be extremely rigid. The stiffness of the product can be altered by the number of layers and the closeness of the rows of stitches. Take a look at modern kendo armour. The armour can be made even more resistant by rotating each layer so that the weft and warp of each layer run in different directions. Conversely, as soon as you add cross stitching to the vertical rows of quilting, the level of protection actually reduces. No idea why.

Possibly because it reduces the give in the fabric, which is possibly why glued linen is not a good as well?
I am just guessing, but it seems likely.

@ Paullus, just noticed the exchange above. That would seem to point to the Greeks using only metal breastplates then?

[ushumgal]

Further, I'm pretty sure I'm on solid ground in saying that the underpinnings of every scale shirt--every single one--found anywhere in the med in our period (600-300BC?) are all leather. If textile armours were common, wouldn't you have expected at least one scale shirt to be textile based?

That may be the case in the Med region, but I do know of one example from Nimrud, a Neo-Assyrian site, destroyed ca. 614-612 BC. Unfortunately, I cannot locate my photocopy of the picture in question at the moment (moving does *horrid* things to one's library...), but there is one shot in Mallowan, Nimrud and Its Remains (vol. 2, I think) that shows a portion of scale armor with a very clear impression of fairly coarse fabric on one side. The fabric had been mineralized due to the corrosion of the metal scales in contact with it. Of course, it could be that the armor fell onto something made of fabric as the room it was stored in collapsed, but I think it is pretty clear evidence that in Mesopotamia, at least, fabric backings were not unknown, and may have even been the norm. The only Mesopotamian textual sources that treat armor in any detail are from Nuzi in the Late Bronze Age, and while they detail numbers of scales, they are lamentably silent on the subject of backing material, as I recall.

well Ruben maybe, I think one may be eastern Med.Phoenician quited armour the rest i think are depicting something else ,these are finds from Ibeza ,its hard to blow them up without them turning to lego men ,copy them & have a closer look on your pc ,perhaps something along the lines of the #51 Phoenician marine & this guy is it a cape or skin (spolas) ,

The diamond or lozenge pattern could very well represent quilting, but I would be very cautious about the square pattern. I did a paper on the same pattern as it appears in Assyrian art on the hypothesis that it may have been a kind of armor (bronze squares with perforated edges and embossed designs of just the right size have been found in an armoury in Nimrud, ca. 612 BC). What I found is that in the vast majority of cases, this pattern clearly represents a decorated textile, most likely the pattern was woven into the fabric with different colored threads (akin to plaid). In fact, there was only one clear example of it as armor (definitive because of the pteruges at the base of the garment...it's the guy in my avatar, in fact...). The pattern often appeared on high-status garments, such as the robes of officials, and is found in areas surrounding Assyria as well (some of the best representations are from the Neo-Hittites in Syria). In these cases, it is obvious that it is a patterned fabric, not quilting. It could be the same case in the Mediterranean region (which, after all, was not so very far from Assyria). The style of fabric decoration could have been borrowed for high-status or "fancy" garments. ...Which is not to say it's impossible that it was quilting, I just think this might favor the option that it is not.

John Conyard wrote:

Therefore I think it could be safe to assume the artist was trying to illustrate two differing armours, rather than just painting on the pteruges at a later date. The monument is early 4th century.

....I don't think it would be safe to assume this at all, because even a casual inspection of the real thing ( beautifully displayed in the British Museum) shows that, like all other major ancient monuments, a number of different sculptors were at work. It would be far safer to assume that the same type of body armour is being depicted in different ways by different artists.
BTW, it should be noted that later Tube-and-Yoke corselets, both Greek and Macedonian, show a style difference from earlier ones in that the waist tends to get higher, and the pteryges longer......

Or, it could be evidence that one sculptor messed up. Maybe they got distracted by lunch break... But seriously, this is something not infrequently seen on Assyrian reliefs, the artist would scribe something out lightly for the sculptor to carve in, but the sculptor (presumably in a huge hurry, with hundreds of meters of reliefs to finish) missed it and so it was left unfinished. This is an important point: you can never completely trust artistic representations, for this and many other reasons. Alas, for so many things, they are all we have to go on...

[MeinPanzer]

I don't know if this is the current "official" linothorax thread, but I just rediscovered this excerpt which I'd forgotten about for a long time and I thought it could be interesting.

This is a little-known passage from Agatharchides of Cnidus (fragment 20), which discusses a campaign against the Aethiopians fought by Ptolemy II:

For the war against the Aithiopians Ptolemy recruited 500 cavalrymen from
Greece. To those who were to fight in the front ranks and to be the
vanguard - they were a hundred in number - he assigned the following form of
equipment. For he distributed to them and their horses stolas piletas (felt stolai), which those of that country call kasas, that conceal the whole body except for the eyes.

Duncan Head discussed this passage very thoroughly in an article in Slingshot, and I've always simply taken it to be a mention of some sort of generic covering for man and horse which served the purpose of defending against arrows (the previous paragraph mentions the poisoned arrows of the Aethiopians) as he did. But now that it has been quite well established in this thread that stole and spolas are synonyms, and that they can both be used quite specifically to describe organic cuirasses, this excerpt takes on a whole new meaning.

Thoughts?

[Paullus Scipio]

This is a little-known passage from Agatharchides of Cnidus (fragment 20), which discusses a campaign against the Aethiopians fought by Ptolemy II:

For the war against the Aithiopians Ptolemy recruited 500 cavalrymen from
Greece. To those who were to fight in the front ranks and to be the
vanguard - they were a hundred in number - he assigned the following form of
equipment. For he distributed to them and their horses stolas piletas (felt stolai), which those of that country call kasas, that conceal the whole body except for the eyes.

Duncan Head discussed this passage very thoroughly in an article in Slingshot, and I've always simply taken it to be a mention of some sort of generic covering for man and horse which served the purpose of defending against arrows (the previous paragraph mentions the poisoned arrows of the Aethiopians) as he did. But now that it has been quite well established in this thread that stole and spolas are synonyms, and that they can both be used quite specifically to describe organic cuirasses, this excerpt takes on a whole new meaning.

Thoughts?

...I haven't seen Duncan's article, but if we take stola/spolas to mean simply 'organic' body armour, generally of 'skin/rawhide/leather', then the passage seems to make sense. The 'felt stola' could be simply a felt trapper, similar to mediaeval knightly ones, which also covered the horse completely except for eyeholes.
( the "whole body except for the eyes" would be a reference to the horse's body - note that 'body' is singular, not plural so presumably does not refer to the rider).
The cavalryman with his normal equipment would already be protected against arrows. The phrase "...distributed to them and their horses.." I would interpret as in the sense of issued to the troopers for their horses.......

[MeinPanzer]

...I haven't seen Duncan's article, but if we take stola/spolas to mean simply 'organic' body armour, generally of 'skin/rawhide/leather', then the passage seems to make sense. The 'felt stola' could be simply a felt trapper, similar to mediaeval knightly ones, which also covered the horse completely except for eyeholes.
( the "whole body except for the eyes" would be a reference to the horse's body - note that 'body' is singular, not plural so presumably does not refer to the rider).
The cavalryman with his normal equipment would already be protected against arrows. The phrase "...distributed to them and their horses.." I would interpret as in the sense of issued to the troopers for their horses.......

I haven't consulted the Greek for the rest of the passage, so I wouldn't go drawing fine distinctions from the grammar of that translation... I'll see if I can get a hold of Burstein's edition, which features the original Greek.

[Paullus Scipio]

I haven't consulted the Greek for the rest of the passage, so I wouldn't go drawing fine distinctions from the grammar of that translation... I'll see if I can get a hold of Burstein's edition, which features the original Greek.

....I wasn't too concerned with the finer points of 'interpreting' the original Greek, merely that put together with the other points I referred to, that seems to be the sense of it........

[Kineas]

Wow, I read Slingshot. How'd I miss that?

Nice quote, anyway.