Linothorax vs Quilted linen vs spolas

[Paullus Scipio]

Paul B. wrote:

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

Ruben wrote:

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.

Dan wrote:

Yep. With this new info I think there is enough now to conclude that both were in use at the same time.

What the.....? Where did this come from? I have never said that, or disagreed. The information isn't something 'new'. We already knew that leather 'spolades' and linen 'thorakes lineoi' were in use concurrently in Asia minor ( the Aeneas quote refers to a city in Asia minor).....Xenophon told us so !! That fact was never part of the so-called 'debate' at any time !

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?

...Definitely not modes of construction, for while 'spolas/stole' may describe what we call Tube-and-Yoke, 'thorakes' means generally "chest/ body protection", and hence we may describe 'spolades' as a sub-set of 'thorakes'. Also against this idea is the fact that we hear of 'thorakes lineoi' but not 'spolades lineoi' in Xenophon etc ( and he, if anyone, should know his Greek military terminology! ) - unless you want to postulate that linen armour was not Tube-and-Yoke at all, but what you call 'vest-cut', like a bronze muscled cuirass. :wink: :lol:

Ruben wrote:

Yes, these are all temple or treasury inventories. Such inventories are found only in Athens and on Delos (owing to its Athenian connections). The whole study of these lists is very complicated and fraught with difficulty, but I am trying my hand at working through them because they are a treasure trove ( ) of information, owing to the fact that they are often securely dated and usually include fairly detailed entries. I know that this is still a temple dedication, and so the objects themselves cannot be solidly dated, but they are grouped together in like groups, and the other items mentioned alongside it include a thyreos, and so they are very likely Hellenistic. Besides this, in these entries arms and armour are usually qualified with ethnic terms (Illyrian and Achaean helmets and Celtic swords are mentioned, just to name a few examples), and so a lack of an ethnic term very likely means that these were simply considered "Greek" arms. Because of this, I would lean towards these items being Greek, and not foreign, though it's definitely not certain.

Thought they would be Temple/Treasury lists ( temple and treasury were synonymous). I don't agree that because an item appears alongside another, they are necessarily contemporaneous - consider the actual find of what these lists refer to - at Olympia - where helmets for example spanned a period of several hundred years. Nor does lack of an 'ethnic' term imply very much, considering that the lists must have been compiled by a number of individuals over several hundred years, and whereas in the 4C BC, a 'celtic sword' would be a sufficient novelty to be described as such, it might not be the case in the 2 C BC, when celtic mercenaries were common in the Greek/Hellenistic world, and a similar item might be described as 'long sword' or even just 'sword' by a later compiler. Or, to put it another way, what might be considered 'Greek' arms in one century would not be in another - consider as another example the 'Thyreos' with no ethnic tag, while in the 4 C BC it might well have been described as 'celtic thyreos'.

Also, I don't think the idea of 'linous.......spoladion' links in the way Ruben suggests - the lacuna could be anything, and if that hypothesis were to be correct, why does Xenophon never call linen armour 'spolades lineoi', but only ever 'thorakes lineoi' ? It would have to be a first ( the list), because, as far as I can recall, there is no other reference anywhere to a 'linen spolas'. Recall also that Pollux's 'Onomastikon' entry doesn't refer to spolades of 'leather or linen' ( though obviously, 'spolas/stole' could refer to a felt horse trapper (probably) and so wasn't exclusively leather ( though could be just 'animal skin products' - felt would fit this definition.