09-15-2007, 01:50 AM
Pausanias's comment on linen breastplates not being so useful to fighters infers they were in use even then - in order to know they were not good in combat implies they had been used in combat. But as he was writing in the 2nd-C A.D. would he not mean a linen breastplate was of no use against 'modern' 2nd-C A.D. iron weapons which were probably of far better quality and effectiveness than half a millenium earlier - post Punic Wars? If so, all he really tells us is that a linen breastplate is no use against a gladius or spatha, or any other 'modern' 2nd-C A.D. blade, surely?
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
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