Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas
#70
Giannis wrote:
Quote:Paul,you have just posted the two sides of the same vase,there. Just in case you didn't notice it. Exekias painted one of the two completely naked,which means that his armour was stripped of him,perhaps by Hector. There is no base to say he was depicting something new to him.

Quite right Giannis ! Red Faces time.....I had garnered the two from the same sources, and the different tones of the respective photos, and the fact that they were listed separately fooled me into thinking two different eye cups were shown..... :oops: :oops:

In fact, although more than one eye-cup by Exekias seems to have survived ( see e.g. Beazley archive) this is the most famous one, with the bowl containing the image of Dionysius on the ship.....

It is still however the earliest depiction of the Greek 'Tube-and-Yoke ' that I know of, but one is always on the lookout for something new which might revise that. I still think Exekias was showing a 'new-fangled' type of armour - the other figures show conventional 'Bell' cuirasses - even if the idea of two separate eye-cups is incorrect.

Also, I was going to point out that Art and Literature are different, in that visual Art tends to show contemporary arms/armour, while literature/oral poetry preserves genuine details such as the famous Boar's tusk helmet, but whilst I write, I see Ruben has already made the point ! Smile
And Ruben's understanding is correct, that my point is that Alcaeus' poetry in a military context is invariably Epic/Heroic about the Trojan War etc, and his 'story' of old times would stand as allegory for contemporary events, and hence the reference to linen would be a reference to the past; a 'topos'/convention, which like Homer's details could well preserve an accurate detail from the past.
The difficulty remains, that it is unlikely Alcaeus refers to 'Tube-and-Yoke' corselets because he wrote some sixty or more years before the earliest known existence of this type of armour.......and yet this item is the closest anyone has found to 'evidence' ( which it is not, really) for linen !!! Confusedhock: Confusedhock:
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)

"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
Reply


Messages In This Thread
Re: Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas - by Paullus Scipio - 02-26-2009, 04:07 AM

Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Linothorax vs Spolas katsika 109 32,066 08-08-2012, 11:47 PM
Last Post: MeinPanzer

Forum Jump: