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Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas
Quote: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?

...I haven't seen Duncan's article, but if we take stola/spolas to mean simply 'organic' body armour, generally of 'skin/rawhide/leather', then the passage seems to make sense. The 'felt stola' could be simply a felt trapper, similar to mediaeval knightly ones, which also covered the horse completely except for eyeholes.
( the "whole body except for the eyes" would be a reference to the horse's body - note that 'body' is singular, not plural so presumably does not refer to the rider).
The cavalryman with his normal equipment would already be protected against arrows. The phrase "...distributed to them and their horses.." I would interpret as in the sense of issued to the troopers for their horses.......
"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
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Re: Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas - by Paullus Scipio - 02-09-2010, 05:12 AM

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