Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas

[Sean Manning]

I don't have any problem believing in both quilted and leather tube-and-yokes. They made them out of every other possible material! (Plate, scale, and mail) But its possible that one material was older or more common, so the debate will continue.

Sorry to double post, Dan, but I just read the rest of yours--I'd skipped to Cole's.

Athens had the largest tanning industry in the Med, or so theorize the current run of economic historians. Athens exported tawed leather, and it was so cheap in Athens that they made sandals from it--white sandals!

Further, I'm pretty sure I'm on solid ground in saying that the underpinnings of every scale shirt--every single one--found anywhere in the med in our period (600-300BC?) are all leather. If textile armours were common, wouldn't you have expected at least one scale shirt to be textile based?

And hey--I'm not convinced either way. I rather like the idea of quilted armor--I've actually started building one with wool filler. But I think an open mind is required, and I think there's a lot of articles out there that would interest you. Do you have access to JSTOR?

How many such examples do we know of outside the steppes? The scales found by Petrie at Memphis in a Persian-period context had no surviving backing for example.

I'm skeptical of any argument about cost (“linen would be cheaper” or “leather would be cheaper”) which isn't backed by numbers. I suspect you're right that leather would be cheaper than linen, but Greece had convenient access to both cowhides (from the steppes north of the Black Sea) and linen (from Egypt) and wool can also be used to make padded armour.