Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas
I don't know if this is the current "official" linothorax thread, but I just rediscovered this excerpt which I'd forgotten about for a long time and I thought it could be interesting.

This is a little-known passage from Agatharchides of Cnidus (fragment 20), which discusses a campaign against the Aethiopians fought by Ptolemy II:

Quote:For the war against the Aithiopians Ptolemy recruited 500 cavalrymen from
Greece. To those who were to fight in the front ranks and to be the
vanguard - they were a hundred in number - he assigned the following form of
equipment. For he distributed to them and their horses stolas piletas (felt stolai), which those of that country call kasas, that conceal the whole body except for the eyes.

Duncan Head discussed this passage very thoroughly in an article in Slingshot, and I've always simply taken it to be a mention of some sort of generic covering for man and horse which served the purpose of defending against arrows (the previous paragraph mentions the poisoned arrows of the Aethiopians) as he did. But now that it has been quite well established in this thread that stole and spolas are synonyms, and that they can both be used quite specifically to describe organic cuirasses, this excerpt takes on a whole new meaning.

Thoughts?
Ruben

He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Reply


Messages In This Thread
Re: Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas - by MeinPanzer - 02-09-2010, 04:45 AM

Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Linothorax vs Spolas katsika 109 32,056 08-08-2012, 11:47 PM
Last Post: MeinPanzer

Forum Jump: