02-07-2010, 07:04 AM
Quote:I've gone though some of the recent theads that skirt around this subject but can't find much direct info. Is there a general consensus on the body armour worn by the heavy infantry of Philip and Alexander before the Persian expedition? Linen has been assumed but that is disputed by the latest linothorax discussions. Leather scale has been found in some Macedonian tombs but I'm not sure of the dating of these. Are the helmets and greaves of common soldiers more likely to have been made of bronze or iron?
Before the expedition, there isn't a whole lot of evidence. I'm actually inclined to agree with Dio Cassius' assertion that Alexander's infantrymen wore linen armour, but likely later on, and I don't think that was all they wore, as it seems much likelier that soldiers before the expedition (and plenty during and after) wore leather cuirasses. I've not heard of leather scale being found in Macedonian tombs - do you have a reference for those finds? A bronze scale gorget was found at Derveni, but that's about it for finds of Macedonian scale as far as I am aware.
For helmets, like cuirasses, the use of iron didn't become more common until a few centuries later. Many of the infantrymen on the Alexander sarcophagus wear blue helmets, and though this colour has been interpreted as blue paint, it's clear from other contemporary Macedonian tomb paintings that blue was used to represent iron or silver. Iron helmets and cuirasses were almost certainly restricted in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC to the commanders and elite units of the army - only a handful of iron helmets have been found from this time period, and only 4 Hellenistic iron cuirasses are known: the one from Vergina, the very well-preserved find from Prodromi, and two finds from wealthy contemporary Sarmatian burials in the southern Urals (Prokhorovka and Berdyanskii). Greaves, I would guess, were still exclusively bronze in this period (the grave at Vergina which yielded an iron helmet and cuirass still had bronze greaves), and seem to have remained so at least down through the Hellenistic period.
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
