Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas

[Paullus Scipio]

I have followed this subject with interest, but have refrained from posting because almost everything in the way of evidence has been discussed before, but I see a number of inaccuracies and misleading statements creeping in, which might best be corrected, so as to keep the thread on the straight and narrow…..

Dan:
and I have yet to see a convincing argument that the spolas was designed to be used as body armour.

Sean Manning:
and there are a few references to Greek armour of linen in Classical literature. There is better evidence that the "spolas" was a leather garment of some kind, but we don't know if it was armour. Some people think it was the ancient name for the "linothorax" but I'm not convinced.

There are not, in fact, any references to contemporary Greek armour of linen in Classical literature,( say 500 BC-300BC) unless Sean is including Homer, where as Dan has described, there are a couple…. or Alcaeus, neither of whom is strictly speaking"classical", and both of whom write well before the Tube-and-Yoke appeared and whose poetry concerns the mythical ‘Heroic Age’ .There is also a fragment of Sophocles, where the reference to linen is associated with Homeric chariots. These of course are not at all relevant to the Tube-and-Yoke in the Classical period. In actual Classical literature, Herodotus refers to “thorakes lineoi”- and clearly it seems not something familiar to Greeks. In his description of Xerxes army, (Book 7) he takes the trouble to distinguish outlandish, unfamiliar, foreign equipment. Thus it is worn by Assyrians and Phoenician marines. In contrast, other contingents wear ‘Greek armour’ or ‘their equipment was similar to the Greek’ – clearly implying that the specially described ‘thorakes lineoi’ are NOT Greek. He also refers elsewhere to linen ‘thorakes’ being a present from Pharoah Amasis to certain statues, bigger than life-size, but these do not sound like armour, being finely embroidered garments for goddesses.
Xenophon too refers to linen corselets. In the Anabasis, at 4.7 et seq, the Chalybes are described as wearing “…body armour of linen, reaching down to the groin, and instead of skirts to their armour, they wore thick twisted cords”. In the “Cyropaedia” ( a fictional? ) account of the life of the original Cyrus he speaks ( at 6.4.2 ) of a Persian called Abradatas arming “…and when he came to put on his linen corselet (linen thorakes), such as they used in his country, Panthea (his wife) brought him one of gold……”. The phrase,’ such as they used in his country’ (Persia) implies they were not worn in Greece. When describing Greek armour, Xenophon speaks of two types –‘spolades’ and ‘thorakes’. The ‘spolas’ is almost certainly the tube-and-yoke type, as described in this dictionary, with it’s references to shoulder-pieces:

Julius Pollux: Onamasticon VII.70
"Spolas de thorax ek dermatos, kata tous omous ephaptomenos, hos Xenophon ephe "kai spolas anti thorakos" is about as clear as we could hope for.
The spolas is a thorax of leather, from
the shoulders attached/which hangs from the shoulders, so that Xenophon says "and the spolas
instead of the thorax."

Xenophon when speaking of ‘thorakes’, from the context, is likely referring to the muscled cuirass.
For the sake of completeness, there are a couple of references in later Roman era writings.Cornelius Nepos, in his Life of Iphicrates, describing the changes Iphicrates is said to have made to Hoplite equipment, including “..he likewise changed the character of their curasses, and gave them linen ones instead of chain-mail and brass….”. There is clearly something wrong with this, with its anachronistic reference to mail.He is probably making an anachronistic reference to 'lightening' of equipment. I illustrated this new type of hoplite in “Warfare in the Classical World” with an Asiatic quilted linen cuirass.(of the Issus mosaic type)
Then there is Pausanias’ (1.21.7) famous reference to linen being useless for war, but alright for hunting, and linen cuirasses hanging in temples . But these temples/trophies are in Asia minor, not Greece.
.

.....So we are down to the art, which shows a smooth white surface and springy shoulders.

We can’t be sure that the shoulder-pieces are ‘springy’ since they could simply be thrown back, and be thick enough to stand vertically.

Christopher Webber:
I'm intrigued that Warry says that Plutarch says that Alexander wore the quilted type, as this might provide part of the explanation as to why he survived such terrible wounds.

Plutarch refers to Alexander wearing a quilted linen corselet on one occasion, captured from the Persians ( again implying such things were not made in Greece ), and red quilted tube-and-yoke corselets are worn by Persians in the ‘Issus’ mosaic. Alexander doubtless had more than one set of armour/equipment.

Dan:
There is nothing to suggest that glued linen was ever used by anyone ever……..There isn't a single piece of evidence to support the existence of glued linen armour in any shape or form in any culture in any time period.

Dan:
It was found in a proto-geometric cemetery near Patras. A preliminary count suggests at least 10 layers of linen and part of the border is still intact, confirming that it is an armour fragment and not some folded cloth.
Dan:
The best we'll get until then is a first hand account from someone who examined it personally.

It is only alleged that a fragment about thumb size was found and Mr Saltimberi, an artist and model figure-maker, claims it “won’t be published for at least 50 years”. Even if it exists ( which I very much doubt) it need not be ‘armour’ but could be anything. In any event, being from around 1200 BC or so it is again irrelevant to the classical tube-and-yoke.
I don’t think Mr Saltimberi claimed to have seen the Thebes fragment ( if it exists) personally, rather he relied on a description by another, a Mr D’Amato so the whole thing is only hearsay. Nor is it clear whether the fragment is supposed to be 'glued'.....in which case I'd have no hesitation in saying 'false', or if there are supposed to be traces of quilting....
Regardless of these murky rumours, Mycenaean or earlier cultures are not relevant to a type of corselet which first appears around 550 BC at the earliest.

Dan:
How many papers said that the Vergina cuirass had a leather liner? It turned out that it was lined in linen.

Giannis: Dan,do you have any articles about the lining of the Vergina cuirass and the Dendra cuirass?

I too would be interested in sources for this, and particularly any detailed description of the iron Vergina cuirass.

Dan:
A good starting point might be a photo of one of these alleged Macedonian leather armours.



Giannis: However a find of quilted linen from mycenean armour is not irrelevant at all. Now you'll say where are these finds of mycenean linen armour? Well,I don't know,but they're more specific than the "many" finds of leather body armour from Macedonian graves.

Photos are unlikely, and the leather seems to be fragments. What I think points to tube-and-yoke corselets is the associated metal fittings, often gold, possibly some scales etc - though these don't become common 'add-ons' to the Tube-and-Yoke until after the Persian Wars, implying an attempt to improve protection against Persian archery . Many of these warrior graves (dozens if not hundreds) have been excavated in Macedonia and unlike the rumoured Thebes fragment, or rumoured Mycenaean examples, have actually been published in reports by the excavators. I would be most interested to see these reports, but despite repeated requests in other threads and assurances by some of our Greek friends, they have not so far been forthcoming…….