Macedonian Phalanx Illustration

[drsrob]

Well, they say that Alexander re-equipped his pike-men with so-called half-armour at the Indus. The old sets were burned.

The only primary source to comment on the burning of the old armour and the introduction of new armour is Quintus Curtius, who says nothing about "half armour," but does say that the 25000 new cuirasses were inlaid with gold and silver.

This suggest not variety, but rather uniformity.
The sources say that the half-armour covered the front and not the back.

What primary source is that?

I have this information from Nick Sekunda, but he has it from Polyaenus, Book IV.3.13

Alexander gave half-breastplates [hèmithorakia] to the soldiers instead of breastplates, so that if they stood firm they would be safe because their front parts were covered, but if they fled they would be unable to protect their backs. Accordingly, no one fled lest he be without armor, but they always stood firm and conquered.

Nor Nick, nor me agree with the reason given for the adoption. I personally don't think that the half-armour covered only the front. See my earlier post.

I find that unlikely. I suspect that it actually was an armour of the Type Alexander wears on the Alexander mosaic. Looking at the reconstructed armour of the Alexander Sarcophagus (Nick Secunda, The Armies of Alexander the Great, Osprey), I noticed that you could interpret the 'light purple' of the armour as iron ant the light yellow as linen.

Blue is used on the Alexander sarcophagus, just like other paintings of that time period (Aghios Athanasios, for instance) to represent iron, not purple. Those cuirasses are simply dyed linothorakites.

According to Sekunda the purple colours were faded almost to gray. Some might have been gray. On the sarcophagus the helmets are painted blue. They, however were of bronze rather than iron. And some were painted red. Therefore the blue was probably meant to indicate paint as well.