Linothorax vs Spolas

[PMBardunias]

No literary reference makes it clear or reasonable to assume the commonly depicted Spolas was ever built of linen.

Please do not further confuse this issue by equating the Tube and yoke corslet with the Spolas. The Spolas may well have been a tube and yoke corselet, I think it was, but it may not have been. "Spola" is simply a form of the more common "stola" and not a specific term- like saying "vest" for modern body armor, which many authors would today and confuse future historians. I think its clear form Xenophon's usage that it is a protective garment in its own right and not some sort of underarmor, but he tells us nothing of its shape. It could be a cape that hangs from the shoulders like Libyans wore for all we know for sure. Add to the confusion that there are a couple of mentions "lineou...Spoladion".

Thorakes is the term used most commonly to refer to bronze cuirasses, meaning simply "chest" but implying something like "bronze-chest" from context. "Thorakes lineoi" would seem to modify the already established armor type to mean "linen chest" or perhaps the more convoluted "bronze-chest made of linen". To again confuse things we have the 5thc reference to "Thorakia Skutinous", or Hide-chest. To call either of these "thorakes" anything but armor is to me a big stretch.

So the problem is that we made up the T-Y designation based on what we moderns see on vases- and armor consisting of a tube section and yoke over the shoulders. Nowhere are we told that either the spolas or the thorax is this thing we see. Thus we cannot equate them without going beyond the evidence. A spolas could look more like a vest,cape or apron, such things are depicted, or a linothorax could be cut not like a T-Y but exactly like a bronze thorax, again a vest of some type. Or, and I lean towards this, spolas and thorakes were all the same basic t-y cut, just two different terms that do not define leather or linen construction all by themselves.

Because of the problem with Spola=stola in a different dialect, I like the idea of thorakes. Bronze Thorakes, Thorakes lineoi or linothorakes and Thorakia Skutinous or Skutinothorakes, etc.