Linothorax vs Spolas

[Dan Howard]

There is plenty of evidence of linen armour from all over the world from the bronze age through to the late middle ages. There just is very little evidence for Greek linen armour during the classical or Hellenistic periods.

The term that Homer uses isn't a noun. It is an adjective that means "armoured in linen". Classical writers use something like thorakes linoi or thorakes hoi linoi. Personally I don't think that linothorax is an anachronism. Whether classical Greeks made use of such armour is still open to speculation but I'm inclined to think that they had both leather and linen variants but leather seems to have been more common.

The amount of land and resources required to produce linen armour wouldn't be much different to that required to produce leather armour IMO.