Reconstructing Ancient Linen Body Armor - New Book

[Paullus Scipio]

The Penguin classics translation is "...a thickly qilted linen corselet which had been among the spoils captured at Issus...." whilst the Loeb has as you correctly posted the more literal translation "...a breastplate of two-ply linen from the spoils taken at Issus."

It is also the only time a Greek or Macedonian is described wearing a 'linen corselet', and it is not Greek, but a captured Persian example!

Does it say the corselet in question is Persian? Thousands of Greeks fought on the Persian side as well as the Greek General Memnon of Rhodes.

It is also not the only example of Greeks wearing linen upper body armor, see Cornelius Nepos, Iphicrates 1.3-4.

(sigh!) All of this has been discussed before here on RAT going back to 2007 .Please search and read the many 'Linothorax' related threads.I don't think it appropriate to rehash every example of evidence (and non-evidence) raised in them. Scott himself raised the very same point about Alexander's armour in one of them. However, it is drawing a very long bow to suggest that Alexander would wear the armour of a Greek mercenary, whom he regarded as traitors. "Spoils" here surely refers to the equipment of the enemy Persians, from whom it was appropriate to take trophies, and in context almost certainly the captured armour of Darius himself, or one of his relatives/"friends", who would have the choicest and richest equipment - as portrayed on the Alexander mosaic.

The point about Nepos has also been raised several times in those threads, but I'll answer just this one point. He was a Roman writer 'floreat' the middle of the first century BC, ( therefore hundreds of years later) and is not a particularly reliable source. With reference to Iphicrates he wrote:
"He likewise changed the character of their cuirasses, and gave them linen ones instead of those of chain-mail and brass; a change by which he rendered the soldiers more active; for,  diminishing the weight, he provided what would equally protect the body, and be light."

Idem genus loricarum et pro sertis atque aenis linteas dedit. Quo facto expeditiores milites reddidit: nam pondere detracto, quod aeque corpus tegeret et leve esset, curavit.

Firstly, the word 'lorica', like the Greek 'Thoraka' originally meant 'body covering' and later 'body armour' - of any material. By the 3 C BC and later, it referred to the mail 'lorica hamata' worn by Roman legionaries, which of course would be heavier than linen armour. Nepos is guilty of a huge anachronism in claiming that 'hoplites' wore mail armour. Secondly, we have an alternate version of Iphicrates reforms in Nepos' contemporary Diodorus Siculus, a rather more reliable source. At [XV.44] we have:
"For instance, the Greeks were using shields which were large and consequently difficult to handle; these he discarded and made small oval ones of moderate size, thus successfully achieving both objects, to furnish the body with adequate cover and to enable the user of the small shield, on account of its lightness, to be completely free in his movements. [3] After a trial of the new shield its easy manipulation secured its adoption, and the infantry who had formerly been called "hoplites" because of their heavy shield, then had their name changed to "peltasts" from the light pelta they carried.1 As regards spear and sword, he made changes in the contrary direction: namely, he increased the length of the spears by half, and made the swords almost twice as long. The actual use of these arms confirmed the initial test and from the success of the experiment won great fame for the inventive genius of the general."

This is almost identical to what Nepos says, so they were clearly drawing on a common source BUT no mention of body armour, so it is probably an embellishment added by Nepos, especially as it is anachronistic.

No evidence at all then.

---

Although Connolly gets the majority of credit, or blame, for starting the idea of "glued linen" upper body armor in the Greek context, the idea was actually around for a much longer period.

From 1871 Arms and Armour in Antiquity and the Middle Ages 

books.google.com/books?id=WrBCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA51&dq=linen+armour+glued+layers&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiX9rrr0uLOAhUPx2MKHbRpCNoQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=linen%20armour%20glued%20layers&f=false

From 1875 The Encyclopaedia Britannica

books.google.com/books?id=XjVnAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA554&dq=linen+armour+greek+glue&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-0M7LzOLOAhUX02MKHZHVAeQQ6AEIJTAC#v=onepage&q=linen%20armour%20greek%20glue&f=false

My friend who brought these to my attention is trying to source the statements regarding the use of glue to "harden and cement" the layers of linen.

Unfortunately, your quotations have come out illegible, at least on my computer, but it is irrelevant anyway whose idea 'glued linen' was originally. Good luck with 'sourcing the statements', because they don't exist in the ancient sources!

As this sorry example shows, Aldrete and Bartell's historical research is flawed, faulty and selectively presented. There  is no excuse for this, the more so as Scott had taken part in the RAT discussions from which he selectively borrowed, without acknowledging the fact.
Don't even get me started on the equally faulty pseudo-scientific 'testing' of their modern Linothorax, which had to use modern glues, because no ancient glue known could be made to work!

---

The facts, put simply, are these:

*In general, there is no contemporary literary evidence for mainland Greek 'hoplites' and Macedonians wearing linen Tube-and-Yoke corselets, let alone glued linen, though there is some for contemporary linen corselets, almost certainly quilted, being used in Asia Minor and the Persian Empire.

* Although we have hundreds of depictions of Tube-and-Yoke corselets in iconography,  they are of little or no help in telling us what they were made of.

* We have no archaeological evidence from Central and Southern Greece for the Classical/Macedonian era, due to burial practices. We do have archaeological evidence from neighbouring countries with different burial practices, such as Macedon, Thrace and Scythia. Hundreds of remains of Tube-and-Yoke corselets survive, often in fragments but there is at least one intact one. In every case they are made of leather, often reinforced with scales, ( with not one of linen) just like those depicted in Greek iconography. Judging by fittings many of these may actually have been made in Greece. 

Your book is therefore about a 'fictional' piece of equipment - the glued linen corselet - for which there is no evidence anywhere.

No-one likes to think that their years of work has been based on a false premise, and a waste of time, and you have my sympathy, but you have only yourself to blame for you were warned a number of times here on RAT that such was the case, by a number of people.