Armor of the Divine Triad : lamellar armor

[Dan Howard]

Why stamped leather and not chased metal?

[koechlyruestow]

Timothy Dawson wrote:

I would say it is a leather cuirass with stamped or incised decoration of a completely non-Roman style.

No offence, but the explanation "leather" is always used for armour we still know little about, I am a bit suspicious about it. Do you mean stiff, hardened hide, or several layers of flexible leather, or padded leather, or simply a flexible leather vest?

Dan Howard wrote:

Why stamped leather and not chased metal?

The problem with a stiff cuirass of any material, metal or hardened hide, is that, though less perceptible on this relief than with the three gods from Palmyra, this is also a suit with a "waist" with a knotted belt around it, not a torso cuirass with a sash knotted just below the diaphragm.

[Dan Howard]

It was a comment on the magical ability that some people have to be able to look at a sculpture and tell the difference between leather and metal. FWIW I agree with you and think that it is some kind of softer construction.

[koechlyruestow]

[attachment=7020]pdfulfjaeger.png[/attachment]

[koechlyruestow]

This is the statue from Hatra I was talking about, of Assurbel, with Tyché at his feet. Also called the bearded Apollo, as it is very similar in subject matter to a statue of Nebo/Apollo from Hierapolis (whose inhabitants according to Macrobius were Assyrians). Sorry I could not find a better one.
Note the eclecticism of Levantine Hellenised culture: he is wearing what seems to be a lorica segmentata, with Hellenising pteruges and shoulder flaps, an Iranian torque, an Assyrian beard, and with Tyché with her mural crown at his feet.

[attachment=7021]akg_536801.jpg[/attachment]

[Jori]

[attachment=7023]assur-bel.jpg[/attachment]

A bit bigger. I don't see the segmentata.

[TDawson]

Pointless sarcasm, Dan. It is not a "magical ability", it is an opinion based upon practical considerations of technological and ceremonial practices.

Edouard: The leather I referred to is the hardened form generally accepted as having been used to mould the ornate Roman heroic cuirasses. On one hand, that can easily be moulded with as much of a suggestion of a waist as these carving have, and on the other hand, leather treated in such ways does not end up rigid anyhow, so if a belt were put firmly around it, such a cuirass would give.

T.

[Robert Vermaat]

A friend alerted me for this in the crypt of the "Abbazia di San Domenico Abate a Sora", Italy :

Back to this one, I later realised that lamellar armour seems to show horizontal bands, instead of vertical ones like this. I think that it makes it less likely that the artist had lamellar armour in mind.

[koechlyruestow]

Timoth Dawson wrote:

The leather I referred to is the hardened form generally accepted as having been used to mould the ornate Roman heroic cuirasses.

I did not know this is generally accepted. Is there some source that gives a strong indication, or has someone persuasively argued this? Where those cuirasses then worn while commanding troops and accepting praise and felicitations, or were they used as the basis for a mould in a fabrication process?

Jori wrote:

I don't see the segmentata.

To me the armour seems to be composed of superimposed hoops, the lowest with a rolled edge. What do you see?

[Jori]

eduard > a musculata maybe. And the decoration on the chest is representative of a musculata...

We should see the segments, for it to be a segmentata, no?

[koechlyruestow]

Well, that is so odd. I do see what looks like segments, hoops or whatever, a lower one with a rolled edge, one on top with a sash/belt, and above that a decorated chest plate. I do not see any muscles that would suggest a musculata, and decoration can be seen on other plate armour too (Manching, Kastell Pfünz).

[Jori]

Oh I see the segmentata now. But without a central division... so how do you put on this armor, if it's a segmentata with these large horizontal metal bands?

I want to see the back of this!
At least, it's sure is not lamellar.

Robert Vermaat > maybe not lamellar. Or the plates are really huge, maybe an artistic simplification. Does it need horizontal bands for it to be lamellar?

Maybe it's just another kind of armour we don't know... or a bad artist.

[koechlyruestow]

I believed it to be closed under the armpit, but you are right, it could also be closed on the back by a page or a friend.

It seems to me the artists of these representations had a couple of peculiarities (which you might call bad workmanship). All these figures are shortened, giving them the proportions of vertically challenged persons, they are all shown frontally, symetrically, and the detailing suggests a reluctance to show any motion or liveliness. That makes it difficult to see where the waist or knees of these figures actually were. The hoops of Assurbel are far too large to have actually worked, I agree with Robert Vermaat that it is probably artistic license, as with the shortened body, there was nor room for more than two segments and one decorated breast-plate.

That being said, we know segmented armour existed at the time in the Roman Empire, so why not among other Hellenisticly influenced cultures like the Arabs from Hatra? Seems a more compelling explanation than thinking of yet another type of unknown armour construction.

[john m roberts]

These Eastern figures are almost Hollywoody in their mixture of cultures and time periods. As to their oddly shortened proportions, they seem to be following a sort of late Assyrian style rather than the Hellenic. I've come to think that their "stumpiness" conveyed great strength to people of that culture, and that the static posing conveyed immovability, another characteristic of strength, rather than the dynamism seen in Western figurative art. See also the Eastern depictions of gladiators, with their tree-trunk legs, barrel bodies and neckless heads staring at us full-frontally. To us they look like cartoon thugs but to people of that culture they probably looked heroic.

[Dan Howard]

Edouard: The leather I referred to is the hardened form generally accepted as having been used to mould the ornate Roman heroic cuirasses.

Generally accepted by Victorians and Hollywood maybe. Nobody has produced anything to support this. Romans and Greeks were perfectly capable of making this armour from metal.

The only evidence that can even vaguely be considered Roman leather armour is scale/lamellar, not segmented and not solid cuirasses - and even this is only valid if you consider armour found in Egypt and Syria to be Roman.