Linothorax vs Spolas

[hoplite14gr]

Well they did bother to cover their linothorax and IT IS completely unneccesary.
So why not the spollas?

But in absense of solid evidence I agree that that your opinion on spollas if does not contain the whole truth it contains a serious part of it.

The only certain thing is that spollas had something to do with armor.

The question is: was it "the armor" or an "accesory of armor"?
You favor the first option and I favor the second and weboth hope fro motre archaelogical evidence seding light on the matter.

Kind regards

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

I haven't been saying that padding is not desirable under metal armour. Merely that this paddind did not consist on a separate garment worn underneath.
We have archeological evidence that metal cuirasses, helmets and greaves were internally lined in leather. Some times this was stitched or riveted. Interestingly, some helmets needed extra padding, or didn't bave a glued or stitched one, and the wearer needed an arming cap. But despite body armour, we have MANY representations of head padding of different forms (caps, phrygian hats with folded ear flaps, binding around the forehead) but not once that i am aware of for the body.

@Howard, you are right that i should read the book to judge correctly, but i am in general very sceptical on using artistic representations for this kind of arguements. Using them to interpret what is literally being shown is another thing than using them to argue on systems and reforms etc.

I didn't comment on the animal skin in response to your post, but because i had just described this way of body armour in my previous post and you just posted it. I used it to suggest that the spolas does not have many chances to have been an animal skin, because these were not "hunged/attached to she shoulders".

Khairete
Giannis

[katsika]

The question is: was it "the armor" or an "accesory of armor"?
You favor the first option and I favor the second and weboth hope fro motre archaelogical evidence seding light on the matter.


The evidence I refer to is found where Xenophon specifically descibes the spolas as a tube and yoke armor made of leather. He is most blunt and absolute in this. We see on pottery images, Amazons and Persians depicted as wearing linen "armor" but the hoplites are normally shown wearing either metal cuirasses or spoloi (as described above ref: Xenophon) without an outer covering of some sort. We are only aware of approximately 1% of all artifacts from the entirety of Greek history, and it is possible some used as much armor as you contend, however, it seems odd that we should only find images that support the contrary up to this point.

[Dan D'Silva]

Help me out, I'm not so familiar with the literature as most of you. Where can I look up Xenophon's description of the spolas?

[katsika]

The description for the Spolades/Stolades appears in the Anabasis. And another tidbit of Xenophon where he mentions a Spartan by name who was killed while wearing his Spolas. Case closed. As you'll read, the term Lino thorax only appears a few times and it's not in the context that makes it ever clear it's more than a belly corselet. Xenophon's own description coupled with his further observation of his Pelopennesian infantry never seems to have ever encountered a linen anything! His references to the metal cuirass and the leather Spolas are sharply confined to the cavalry and infantry respectively.

"Soteridas of Sicyon said: "it's not fair, Xenophon. There you sit on your horse, and I struggle along under the weight of my shield." When Xenophon heard this he jumped down from his horse and pushed him out of his rank and took his shield from him and made his way with it as quickly as he was able. But he had his cavalry cuirass on too, so that he was overloaded. So he ordered those in front to lead on and those behind to pass him, and followed with difficulty. But the other soldiers struck Soteridas and threw stones at him and cursed him, until they forced him to take his shield and come on.

Clearly Xenophon was wearing the plate cuirass, and the foot soldierss were relying mainly on their shields, so Xenophon did not carry one on horseback, though (as it seems to have been customary for general officers) he had a shield-bearer to assist him when he led his men on foot. Some, at least, of the infantry certainly wore spolades, for Xenophon records the death of the Laconian Leonymus, shot in the side, through his shield and spolas, by a Kurdish cloth-yard arrow.

The Ten Thousand were not, as far as we can judge from our evidence, equipped differently from other Peloponnesians or Boeotians of the same period. And in Sicily too, at about the same period, Dionysius I of Syracuse provided body armour for his general, cavalry, and guards, but not for the rank-and-file infantry, when equipping an army to fight against Carthage..."

[Dan Howard]

It seems to me that you are using the term linothorax to deliberately confuse the issue. There is no doubt that Greeks wore both leather and linen armour. What they were called is irrelevant. How they were shaped - whether tube and yoke or not - is also irrelevant.

[PMBardunias]

The evidence I refer to is found where Xenophon specifically descibes the spolas as a tube and yoke armor made of leather. He is most blunt and absolute in this.

Bill you are mistaken, Xenophon never states that a spolas is made of leather or that is is even "armor", rather than heavy clothing. Read back up the thread, it is a 2nd century AD Scholar from Naucratis who tells us that a "spolas" is made of leather and hangs from the shoulders. He then tells us that Xenophon uses the term spolas instead of thorax.

As for the case being closed on it being a tube and yoke, there is no evidence to support this other than the notion that it hangs from the shoulders. The T-Y does not in fact hang from the shoulders, as seen by the fact that the shoulder pieces are put on last when arming. A chiton-like garment hangs from the shoulders and is belted at the waist. The spolas could easily be a leather version of the perizoma shown below or the garment worn by Dionysias in the second image. By the way, "Perizoma" is the best ancient greek term to run a Google image search for.

[Alexand96]

Not to try to muddle the topic of the discussion any more, as it seems to mostly revolve around semantics at this point, but I do have one question - if the linen thorax would not have been constructed of glued linen layers, what would it have looked like? If it was quilted, would that not change the appearance from what we see in artistic representations? Are there any representations that we believe could be a quilted linen thorax?

I've seen multiple depictions of what many consider to be quilted linen armor in Roman art, but I'm new to the whole Greek side of things and have yet to see any such representations.

[Dan D'Silva]

The description for the Spolades/Stolades appears in the Anabasis.

Which book(s) and line(s)?

As you'll read, the term Lino thorax only appears a few times and it's not in the context that makes it ever clear it's more than a belly corselet.

From the two instances (in Homer) I've seen, the word isn't given any description or definition at all. But as I've pointed out, thorakes elsewhere in the Iliad are put on the chest, so isn't it reasonable to think that linothorax is also chest armour?

[PMBardunias]

I've seen multiple depictions of what many consider to be quilted linen armor in Roman art, but I'm new to the whole Greek side of things and have yet to see any such representations.

Here are some images that have been thought in the past might reflect linen construction.

[attachment=2621]GreekPersian3.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=2622]dying_persian.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=2623]amazonlinen.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=2624]Louvreiv7-1.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=2625]quiltedlinothorax.jpg[/attachment]

[Ghostmojo]

... @Howard, you are right that i should read the book to judge correctly, but i am in general very sceptical on using artistic representations for this kind of arguements. Using them to interpret what is literally being shown is another thing than using them to argue on systems and reforms etc.

I didn't comment on the animal skin in response to your post, but because i had just described this way of body armour in my previous post and you just posted it. I used it to suggest that the spolas does not have many chances to have been an animal skin, because these were not "hunged/attached to she shoulders" ...

I welcome your points Giannis. I was just trying to broaden this discussion. The linothorax and spolas debate is interesting and I thought the possible addition of the 'skiros' as another kind of body armour might give weight to the notion that different materials were tried and tested etc. If Chrimes is correct - that the Skiritai (sciritae) were so named because of their body armour being a leather (and not draped over the shoulders like a hamippoi) or animal 'skin'; rather than denoting their geographic origins - then perhaps some sort of jerkin was used?

Possibly the illustration on page 92 (15-d) of Duncan Head's (DH) Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars which shows such an item is something along the lines of what a 'skiros' type jerkin might have looked like [It is derived from an engraving on an early 4thC temple of Apollo at Bassai in Arkadia]. This is very different from the standard linothorax/spolas (15-main image/-b/-c). It is more like a moulded or shaped garment - perhaps mimicking metal:



DH goes on to speculate that linothorakes and spolades are perhaps just linen and leather variations of the same kind of corselet. He also shows an image of a Spartan warrior of around early 4thC on page 94 (16-main image) which he says is wearing a 'spolas' (based upon both Thukydidies' and Xenophon's comments) and is the typical tube/yoke apparel we have been discussing:

[Alexand96]

Thank you, Paul, for the wealth of images there. The more of this discussion I read, along with what I believe about the existance of linen armor in use by the Romans, the more I believe that there were linen, leather, and of course metal (plate and scale) versions of the 'tube-and-yoke' thorax.

[Sean Manning]

The description for the Spolades/Stolades appears in the Anabasis. And another tidbit of Xenophon where he mentions a Spartan by name who was killed while wearing his Spolas. Case closed. As you'll read, the term Lino thorax only appears a few times and it's not in the context that makes it ever clear it's more than a belly corselet. Xenophon's own description coupled with his further observation of his Pelopennesian infantry never seems to have ever encountered a linen anything! His references to the metal cuirass and the leather Spolas are sharply confined to the cavalry and infantry respectively.

The difficult passage for that is Anabasis 3.3.20: καὶ ταύτης
τῆς νυκτὸς σφενδονῆται μὲν εἰς διακοσίους ἐγένοντο, ἵπποι δὲ
καὶ ἱππεῖς ἐδοκιμάσθησαν τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ εἰς πεντήκοντα, καὶ
σπολάδες καὶ θώρακες αὐτοῖς ἐπορίσθησαν, καὶ ἵππαρχος
ἐπεστάθη Λύκιος ὁ Πολυστράτου Ἀθηναῖος.

Or roughly "And that night slingers to the number of two hundred appeared, and on the next day horses and horsemen were accepted to the number of fifty, and spolades and body armour were provided for them, and Lykios and Polystratos the Athenian were appointed cavalry captains." It works if we assume that there weren't enough cavalry cuirasses for everyone; Cyrus' Yauna had many spare horses, and not everyone who had a plate cuirass would be a skilled rider.

[Dan Howard]

The above passage could also be interpreted to mean that everyone was issued both spolas AND thorax and that, as Stefanos believes, that the spolas was worn in addition to the thorax and was not a distinct type of body armour at all.

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Then i would challenge three answers:
Where does an undergarment appear in greek art, in the many ocasions that we see worn and unworn muscle cuirasses?
Why was a Spartan wearing only an undergarment in battle, and why its penetration was something worth mentioning to suggest the strenght of the missile?
Why doesn't Xenophon ever mention it when he extensively speaks of the good fitting of metal armour, and even suggests the use of cuirasses with long pteryges to cover the thighs? He doesn't speak of a "spolas" with long pteryges, nor that a spolas makes the cuirass fit better.

None of these are conclusive or near to it of course, but i would say that they certainly point to a spolas meaning a kind of cuirass rather than armour padding.

Khaire
Giannis