Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas

[MeinPanzer]

Ruben, great find! This dovetails nicely with Aeneas Tacticus 29.1-4 which you posted a while back if we assume "stolidia" reads "leather armor":

The concurrent use of both leather and linen is a nice place for this debate to end up.

I agree. Though I know Paul disagrees, this evidence plus the Aeneas excerpt makes it quite clear to me that linen and leather cuirasses were used at the same time, at least during the Classical and very likely also during the Hellenistic period.

I do wonder if Stolidia/Spolidia and Thorakes describe modes of construction rather than material. Perhaps Spolidia is synonymous with a Tube and Yoke, for it hangs like an apron or the skin of an animal (a la Heracles as Christian noted) and is "short" for a garment, while Thorakes is more general and broad sensed or may imply a vest cut?

I don't know if we can infer much about the appearance of these different cuirasses from their names - there is actually much to be done in studying the military terminology of such inventory lists, since they seem to use words which we tend to translate more generally very specifically. For instance, kune, perikephalaia, and kranos are all used to refer to helmets within the same or similar lists; since it is evident with other categories of items that they tend to use one term to refer to one kind of item, it seems likely that these were used technically to refer to different classes of helmets.

Note that the Pilos were textile:

????????? , to/,
A. the coarse fibre of flax or hemp, tow, oakum, Hdt. 8.52, X.Cyr.7.5.23, D.47.20, Aen.Tact.33,35, Plb.1.45.12, 5.89.2, D.S.14.51, Plu.Cic.18, Gal.16.622, App.Hann.33, Ill.11, Luc.Asin. 31. (In Papyri and codd. written also ????????, ????????? (qq. v.), ????????, ???????, ???????? (cf. ????????: ?? ?????, Hsch.); ???????? is confirmed by IG22.1631.336, ????????? by PCair.Zen. 177.6, 514.7 (iii B.C.), and by ??????????????, ????????????? (qq.v.); cf. [????]???? IG22.1629.1150.)
0-0. [????]????-?????? , o(,= sq., IG22.1673.15,41.

Good to know, thanks. I figured they were probably caps, but they very well could have been qualified as some sort of helmet.