Linothorax design/construction

[Sean Manning]

Sean wrote:-

All in all, I think a Greek could have called one of these armours either a thorax or a spolas and have been perfectly correct.

...maybe so, Sean, and even modern words can sometimes have a 'fuzzy' meaning, which can only be discerned from context....take 'tank' for instance, as in 'water tank' or 'well armoured tank'.

However, we are not concerned here with how a greek might have used 'thorakes', but how Xenophon used it, and distinguished it from 'spolades'. He is consistent in all his writings - 'thorakes' for him is clearly the bronze cuirass, and 'spolades' is the only other term he uses for hoplite body armour ergo....... D wink:

I'd have to see an analysis of every use of both words in Xenophon to be convinced that he always uses them in the precise technical sense you suggest. And I'm not sure if even that could prove it.

We seem to be agreed that either term could be correct for "tube-and-yoke cuirass" whatever Xenophon's personal usage was, and that spolas literally means "leather garment" but could more specifically mean "leather armour, very possibly with this cut".

Re: the apparent shortage of cuirrasses in the Ten Thousand, remember that many of them were from the poorest parts of Greece and that not all with a bronze cuirrass may have donated theirs.