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Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas
Quote:hi, i'm new, but i've read a number of threads on linothorax (sweet tap-dancing gods, have i been reading) and i have to say that i'm rather firmly in the layered linen camp. now, there are a few questions i haven't seen asked and there are a few ideas for glue that i want to run by some of you guys.

Khaire! Believe me, I was a firm believer in glued linen for many years--hey, I went and built one!

http://www.larp.com/hoplite/linothor.html

The problem is that the entire concept is built on conjecture, sprinkled with a few out-of-context quotes from ancient writers. We went round and round for years on all the arguments, and I stood firm, but it was about page 5 of this very thread that someone neatly pooled all the literary evidence for "linothorax", and changed my mind. You can go on forever about "Well, what about this? And why couldn't they have discovered this?" But that's NOT evidence. The big point is that the EVIDENCE does not support the idea of the oft-depicted "tube and yoke" cuirass as being linen, and certainly not glued linen. The evidence points to it being called a spolas, and being made of some kind of leather. During the Archaic and early Classical eras, that is!

Now, I'm also a firm believer in the use of linen armor in the Mycenaean era, but quilted. Homer refers to it, and there are several nice depictions of warriors in tunics that have vertical rows of dotted lines. To me, that screams quilting. And it also seems that quilted linen came back during the Hellenistic era, and was used during the Archaic and early Classical eras in places like Persia and Egypt. So yeah, it was known to be good stuff and quite functional, it just dropped out of fashion in Greece for a time.

Speculating about water-resistant glues is not a crime, but there simply isn't any suggestion of their use in armor of any sort in Classical Greece. So harping on that sort of thing just keeps pulling you away from what we *know*, into the realm of fantasy. Why do that? I'm not saying we know everything, by any means!! And I've never been a big Leather Armor proponent, so my conversion has not been easy for me. I grumble every time I even think of my nice laboriously-made glued linothorax...

I don't like to say it this way, but it really looks like we're moving into the "post-Connolly" phase of Greek reenacting and research. His books were THE major sources for a generation, and are still hard to beat in some ways, but he led us astray on the whole "linothorax" issue, and his concept of shield cross-section turns out to have been wrong, too. He's a great guy and a fabulous artist, but he's not the first authority to become outdated by newer or sharper research.

Evidence wins over speculation any day. Let go of your feelings, young Jedi.

Matthew
Matthew Amt (Quintus)
Legio XX, USA
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.larp.com/legioxx/">http://www.larp.com/legioxx/
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Re: Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas - by Matthew Amt - 06-25-2009, 01:00 PM

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