01-17-2010, 03:21 PM
Quote:We have been through the various words used in our sources before in some detail - we need only note that the Tube-and-Yoke corselet appears in Greek art after around 520 B.C.
This isn't quite true. After looking over the entire CVA we (Aldrete and myself) have compiled a database of c. 700 examples of what Jarva refers to as Type IV armor (or your "Tube-and Yoke"). The breakdown for total number of images by medium is as follows: black-figure 87, red-figure 389, white-figure 7, sculpture 116, bronze objects 30, painted frescoes 11 (note that these numbers are not up to date with our current database as even more images representing Type IV have been found since tallying was done). Of these, a number of vases dating from as far back as 575 BC show warriors wearing Type IV armor, and many more from 560 BC to 550 BC show depictions of it as well (for example, see: #302587 and #350869 in Beazley online catalog; ABV 65,33; in CVA Basel 1 Schweiz 4; ABV 201,18). In fact, about 25% of the total number of images of Type IV armor come before 510 BC, and is the second highest concentration of Type IV based on a chronological breakdown (500-475 BC being the highest at around 38%).
Quote:and that no writer from then on uses the Homeric term "linothorex" but rather, when describing foreign or Asiatic linen armour, "thorakes hoi lineoi"/lit: body-armour of linen and similar expressions.
Then again, did the Greeks have a specific word for their 'bell'- or 'muscle'-cuirass? This is not my specific area of interest, but I don't think I have ever seen the ancient Greeks typologically assign a name to these types of armor. So the fact that the whole term "linothorax" wasn't used again could be of little significance if there was also a lack of a proper term for the bronze cuirasses (were they simply called "body-armor of bronze" or "bronze thorakes"?). I could be wrong, I have admittedly little knowledge in this area. Could someone with better knowledge of the subject help me out?
Quote:The clearest example is Xenophon who when speaking of Greek armour talks of just "spolades" and "thorakes", where from the context the latter refers most likely to bronze muscled corselets and the former to leather Tube-and-Yokes, some probably with metal scale re-inforcements.
I disagree with the identification of the spolas as Type IV armor. The definition of a spolas as being this type of armor is based mainly on a single source, the 2nd Century A.D. Onomasticon of Pollux. In a rather confused passage in this work, a spolas is defined as "a thorax of skin which hangs down from the shoulders, as Xenophon said 'and spolas instead of thorax.' Sophocles considers it a Libyan custom: a Libyan spolas, a leopardskin" (7.70). This description does potentially match well with the way that Type IV armor was worn and the prominence of the epomides. It also states that the spolas is one type of thorax. Because the word thorax is almost always used to mean body armor, this is good testimony that, at least at times, a spolas could be considered a type of armor.
Unfortunately, there are almost no further mentions of spolades as armor. In Xenophon’s Anabasis, during an emergency, an impromptu group of cavalry is hastily equipped with "spolades and thorakes" (3.3.20). Later, a soldier is killed by an arrow that pierces both his shield and his spolas (4.1.18). As quoted above, the same passage of the Onomasticon refers to a possible fourth use of the term spolas, a lost fragment of Sophocles that depicts Libyans wearing spolades, although here it clearly and specifically means skins from leopards (fr. 11). Other than these three instances, the only other use of the word spolas by an ancient author occurs in Aristphanes' play, "The Birds", and there it plainly refers to a simple leather garment rather than a piece of armor. In "The Birds" (an exact contemporary of the majority of Type IV vase paintings), there is a witty exchange centering around the attempt to con a priest into taking off his spolas and giving it to a poet. (Birds 930-944) Since it would be extraordinarily odd for a priest to be walking around in everyday circumstances wearing armor, spolas in this case clearly just means something akin to a leather shirt or jerkin. (This, in fact, is how the Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott defines the word spolas--as a "leathern garment, jerkin." They do not suggest that it can be any form of armor. The spolas in Aristophanes' play, however, is clearly an outer garment of some kind since the priest subsequently also gives away his tunic, which he was wearing beneath the spolas.)
The Sophoclean Libyan anecdote is probably not relevant since it seems to indicate animal skins worn over one shoulder and not the distinctive Type IV armor. (See also Herodotus' similar description of the Libyans employing animal skins as armor and fighting with crude, charred-wood spears (7.71).) The Xenophon citations are also problematic. The first states that the men are equipped with both spolas and thoraxes, implying that these are two different things (depending on reading). There are two alternative ways to read this passage: that each man gets both items, in which case the spolas would seem to be a leather shirt worn under metal armor; or, that these are both types of principal armor, and some men got spolades while others were given thorakes. If one accepts the latter reading, it is just possible that the spolas could be Type IV armor, but this is not the usual way that this passage is translated. The second Xenophon citation is similarly ambiguous in that it is unclear whether the spolas was merely a leather jerkin or a more solid form of armor. That an arrow could still penetrate deep enough to kill the man after punching through his shield implies that his spolas could not have offered much protection and thus was unlikely to have been a substantial piece of armor. Thus not only is the term spolas itself extremely rare, but it is not even clear whether was used to refer to armor during the classical era.
Finally, the Onomasticon passage itself is of questionable reliability. A confusingly jumbled string of citations from other authors, these lines contain nothing that unequivocally links the spolas specifically to Type IV armor. The fact that it is described as hanging from the shoulders is unremarkable, since this statement could be made of nearly every type of body armor. The quotations themselves seem to imply that it is something found only among primitive tribesmen. Finally, Pollux’s Onomasticon is a highly dubious source, even by the standards of ancient texts. Pollux was a pedantic antiquarian of the 2nd century A.D., and the original Onomasticon was lost and only survives in the form of summaries compiled and interpolated by Arethas, the archbishop of Caesarea around 900 A.D. All of this renders the application of this passage to Type IV armor (or your "Tube-and Yoke") and to the time when the vase paintings and other visual depictions were actually created questionable at best.
Scott B.
