Armor of the Divine Triad : lamellar armor

[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.