Gaulish felt armor

[MeinPanzer]

Why not?
The use of organic greaves is attested in various context...

Such as?

The greaves from Dura Europos, for example...

Which are, as far as I know, an isolated example. What other contexts are they attested in? But this is beside the point, because Polybius clearly states that they were wearing anaxurides and not knemides.

Sorry, but I still don't think that normal bracae and camisiae can "well serve" or give you some "benefit" against a volley of javelin.

They almost certainly could confer some benefit, especially leather clothing, as I've been saying. What, after all, would be the difference between a leather cuirass and a leather coat other than a few added layers and some stiffening? The latter would of course give such a cuirass a much better defensive capability, but I think you are underestimating the toughness of certain kinds of materials.

And, once again, you have to look at the context of the passage as a whole. This entire episode focuses on the exotic nudity in combat of the Gaesatae. Therefore, Polybius is emphasizing that the clothing provided some defense for the other Celts, but he doesn't imply that they were well-defended, simply that they found their clothing to be of benefit.

What is the difference between "heavier leather clothing" and a light armor? I think we are almost saying the same thing...

I think we are in some way, and yet above you state that you don't think that trousers and a jacket can provide you with some protection from thrown weapons. My primary distinction would be in the form, for which Polybius would have a different name.

And however, if the protection of the Boii and Insubres were made of leather, I think that Polybius wuould have written it in some way, because something similar existed among the Greeks.

This is a flawed line of thinking, because we don't even know for certain if the tube-and-yoke was always or even often made of leather. Again, if you go over the debates that have been raging here on the tube-and-yoke, you will find that while many good points have been brought up, it is by no means certain, and especially not for Polybius' day (which was some two centuries later than Xenophon's).

I repeat, if a dress isn't specifically concieved to protect against blows or projectiles, It will not give you any notable defense against a volley of javelins. Even a really dirty and unclean dress :wink:

I'm sorry, but I think you are just plain wrong in this. Heavy clothing could provide some benefit, and that is all that we can take from Polybius' passage (not that they were well-protected).

However, if you want, we can try... obviously I want to be the one that throw the javelin :wink:

The whole point is that across hundreds of men wearing heavy clothing and hundreds of men in the nude, I think you would find that the clothing, though perhaps only a small benefit, would provide some added defense.

...Only both terms he uses to describe the we have similar examples in greek licterature... in some statements the celtic swords are described by Greeks as "Kopis machaira", but we know that the Celts didn'use curved swords.

The Greeks used "Kopis Machaira" to define La Tène swords just because they were mainly chopping weapons, and because in Greek language wasn't any term to define the weapon in specific.

In this case, sagos and anaxurides are both words used only to describe the dress of foreigners (the former of the Celts specifically, the latter of all sorts of people who wear trousers) and do not have any sort of connotation of providing their wearer with some protection. Polybius would almost certainly have referred to their armour in some sort of Greek term for armour were they actually wearing any sort of it.

I this case I think that the word "sagos" is used because Polybius wants to describe something that defend against javelins but definitely isn't a linothorax or a leather armor.

From Liddel & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon:

SAGOS. a coarse cloak, used by Gauls. (Perhaps a Gallic word.)

This was a foreign word to refer to Celtic clothing. It was not used to describe Greek clothing.

Keep in mind what Polybius is saying, that the naked warriors suffered more than those with clothes via Velite javelins. Armour aside, why so ... did they not have shields?

Right from the passage: "For the Gallic shields not being big enough to cover the man, the larger the naked body the more certainty was there of the pilum hitting. "

Yes (and I said so before), but you have various evidence of organic armor in various gaulish context:

http://koso.ucsd.edu/~martin/CelticSitter.gif

http://usuarios.advance.com.ar/cernunno ... errier.jpg

http://jfbradu.free.fr/celtes/les-celte ... rtuse1.jpg

http://www.celticworld.it/immagini/ad_i ... 7_1118.jpg

Here, in the Frontone of Civitalba, while a lot of Celts are "Gaesatae-Like", in the first image on the left the second figure is dressed with something look like a padded armor: http://www.ilmontesantangelo.it/assets/ ... errato.gif

These are all roughly contemporaneous with the Glauberg figure, and predate Telamon by some time.