Padded Armour

[tlclark]

Travis,
Usually yes but... how did all those fellows raise their arms? hock: :? shock:

Paul,
Is there any better pic of that carving? 8)

Aitor

Well there are three possibilities:

1.) This is accurate, which means that the musculata is definitely leather and far more flexible than we think.
2.) This is accurate but is not meant to be a musculata, but a tight fitting form of armor, maybe mail or padded armor, or squamata, and the details were painted on, but now lost (there are a lot of items like this on the Column of Trajan that might be mail shirts, or subarmalia, or what have you, but we just can't tell since all traces of paint are gone.)
3.) It's a goof.

I think 2 is the most likely, with later examples of this blunder creeping in during the later periods because we see a lot of variance in Musculata, with muscutala/squamata hybrids and the what not. With a lot of different variant types and the noted increasing stylization in art, variations like this are a lot more probable. The same feature is on the Honorius diptych, which I've only really got a close look at recently.

Travis