Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas

[Kineas]

There's no cotton in the Archaic or Classical. China only introduced an officer to watch the quality of woven cotton about 450 BC. textile historians argue about whether cotton originated in China, India, or even Bahrain, but we know that when Alexander saw Cotton at Babylon in 324, he was the first "Greek" to see it (or among the first) and he thought that it was exceptional.

Cotton use spread quickly, but it was a luxury fabric at first, although by 400 AD it was a major Egyptian export.

I learned all this yesterday from an exhibit at the ROM...

linen was, apparently, grown in Greece, but not in the quantity or quality that Egypt produced. It must have grown well in the Peloponnese, as Thucydides in the account of Sphacteria mentions that the Spartans sent flax-seed in honey over to their hoplites to keep their strength up. Still, Egypt was the major exporter of the ancient world when it came to woven linen. Textiles from Karanis, Egypt in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology: Artifacts of Everyday Life by Thelma K. Thomas is the study I just received. I recommend it. It represents all the dangers of research--it's later than my period and from Greek Egypt, which may, in fact, be a different world from the one that I study (late Archaic Greece) but the textiles LOOK like the ones in Greek art, and the 3500 samples represent about 50% of all the textile samples from the ancient world, Scythian grave finds included.