Real Deal Spolas

[Clavdivs]

It is always a pleasure to see this project advance -- the attachment of the pteruges will give us an idea of the entire spolas, more than the front section alone. The fineness of the work, especially on hide and stiffened at that, is invariably remarkable.

I doubt very much that it has escaped your notice, but I would like to point out that on the Achilles vase (Vatican 26571, Feinman's source) the pteruges are arranged in a very interesting way -- there are two layers, so cut that the gaps between the pteruges of the upper layer are filled by the full part of the pteruges of the lower, and vice versa. The purpose is evidently to give complete cover of the lower torso (the hide plate must barely reach the navel, if that, note that the pteruges end barely half-way around the genitals, which would only be covered by the cloth shift.

There is a beautiful marble statue of Herakles as an archer, c. 485-480 B.C.E. (so approximately 35 years older than Feinman's source), originally from the figured east pediment [depicting the war of Herakles and Laomedon, king of Troy] of the great Doric temple of Aphaia on the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf but now kept at the Glyptothek in Munich, which shows why the spolas was made so. One might think that it offers less protection to the lower viscera than a cuirass that reached further down, and that is certainly true [but see Feinman's earlier notes or my postscript], but by ending the hide plate above the navel and keeping the pteruges short, one allows complete freedom of movement of the legs, as much as if the warrior was nude.



Another statue of a spolas-clad warrior, more fragmentary, identified as Teucer, the great Achaean archer and half-brother of Ajax, also taken from the temple of Aphaia but this time from the west figural pediment [depicting the more famous Trojan War, the Trojan War of the Iliad] shows the extreme freedom of movement allowed by such an armour that leaves the genital organs half-covered only:



The Saronic Herakles also may shed considerable light on the plates or scales on the side-panels of the spolas, which are only suggested by the Achilles Painter.

Feinman concludes in his earlier analysis that the pteruges were made of rigid hide, not pliable leather, and that this accounted for their stopping above the genitals to avoid chafing and injury before mobility was even considered. I believe these marbles support this hypothesis very strongly -- they stick out rigidly, even at an angle (observe the rear of the Saronic Herakles) from the spolas, showing no sign of flexion or of following the lines of the soldier's body as a thin leather flap would do. I have seen some claims that the pteruges could only have been a very poor protection, but these all assume that they are made of leather, not the hide, wax and casein-treated material used here. Feinman is a strong man and can barely bend the chest-plate, so I suspect the double layer of pteruges were no slight protection for the lower torso.

Although it seems to me necessary to assume the pteruges were attached separately from each other to allow them to move freely (I will be interested to see how Feinman makes his replica), the statues, unlike the Achilles Painter's vase, in which it is implied but not clearly shown (the pteruges are separated for the whole of their visible length, there is no sign of them being cut from one piece) it is seems fairly explicit in the statues that each pteron was attached separately.

I fear very much that the modern desire for programmes to be ''gritty'' has deprived us of an understanding of just how advanced the Classical civilisations were -- the Greek bronzes are actually finer than the Victorian copies to my mind, the Roman are as elaborate as anything designed by Piranesi or the Victorian neo-Classical sculptors. The spolas is an extremely elaborate piece of armour, with the stiffened hide panels front and back and stiffened plates overlapping on flexible leather at the sides. The filthy centurions of the Bible programme with old towels on their backs shown on this forum and the crude ''Hollywood Achaean'' of ''300'' and other such rot are thoroughly pernicious.

I am most sorry for publishing my notes at such length and cannot possibly stress enough that Feinman is the star and genius of this work. I am merely prattling and don't want to take away from his tremendous effort. I hope he sees these notes as what they are meant to be -- the highest tribute I can give to his work.