Leather Cuirass

[MeinPanzer]

Apparently some members of RAT can't read properly, or else don't understand what they read! :roll:
I have referred to the evidence both here, and to the references in the other threads (e.g. by Duncan Head). To suggest otherwise is simply to refuse to be open-minded. I repeat, can any one come up with some direct evidence for linen hoplite tube-and-yoke cuirasses ( linothorax is clearly inappropriate, since the term was long obsolete when this type of cuirass appears? )

Paul, you've referred several times now to Duncan Head's comments in the "Linothorax Again" thread, but what he was debating hardly supports your claims in this thread.

Duncan was arguing that there is a paucity of literary mentions of linothorakes in the heyday of the "yoked cuirass" in Greek art during the 5th and 4th centuries BC. First of all, we don't know enough to be able to say, as has been debated in this thread, whether the spolas is related to this. Additionally, there is not much of any reference to the material that armour was made of in this period, which doesn't exactly point one way or the other on this issue.

We have several painted depictions of "yoked cuirasses" which are made of some sorts of textile material. They are off-white, beige, brown, and dyed various colours. We know that there were cuirasses called linothorakes. Considering the extremely limited evidence, if we apply good old Occam's Razor to this situation we arrive at the conclusion that these textile armours, with shoulder yokes and pteruges, are most likely linothorakes. No need to abandon any "archaic" terminology, and definitely no need to throw well-founded ideas out the window.