The Armour Archive

What is the statue of the Mar's of Todi wearing for armour?

My oft wrong Art History book says it's a leather cuirass but I think it's either a lamellar cuirass or a linothorax. The lamellar could be made of leather, but the lines could also be quilting lines for a linothorax.

What do you think?

-Ivan

[img]http://www.christusrex.org/www1/vaticano/ET-Todi.jpg[/img]

The style screamed Linothrax at me at first glance... but the surface texture on it could easily be small scale lamelar... Nothing saying it couldn't be depicting lamelar made from leather either.

When and where was the statue built and is it contemporary to the armor worn or is is post-dated by a few hundred years and meant to show an antiquated style?

Sean

Sean Powell wrote:The style screamed Linothrax at me at first glance... but the surface texture on it could easily be small scale lamelar... Nothing saying it couldn't be depicting lamelar made from leather either.

When and where was the statue built and is it contemporary to the armor worn or is is post-dated by a few hundred years and meant to show an antiquated style?

Sean

According to my information it is early 4th cen BC Etruscan found at Todi north of Rome. Supposed to be holding a libation bowl and leaning on a spear.

-Ivan

Philip II of Macedonia, Alexander the Great's father was buried with an iron cuirrass. Ferothorax?

He died in 336BC.



So Etruscans having some lamellar is not impossible.

http://gfx.filmweb.pl/ph/84/44/98444/139621.1.jpg

A reasonable interpretation...

IvanIS wrote:Supposed to be holding a libation bowl and leaning on a spear.

Good to know it's not the half-eaten corn dog that initially came to mind.

I find it interesting that the shoulders seem to have multiple attachment points, perhaps for different sizes? Would a linothorax be rigid enough to be able to support a single-point attachment like that? Lamellar definitely would, provided it's of the rigidly laced variety, as opposed to the collapsible type.

I've seen armour books saying lamellar

My prejudice is for lamellar

But perhaps (especialy given the date) this is the rigid "proto-lamellar" of the Assyrians
FOur holes at the corners, Thordeman shows the lacing - its a rather complex affair ending up with a herring bone looking thread edges that you can sometimes see on the Assyrian statues
The plates overlap by half sideways and not at all upwards and the whole just pulls into basicaly a rigid Curass
(probably explains the Biblical reference that "you shall weave the neck of the priest's coat of a very sturdy doubled weave like the edge of armour" ...just to go on a complete tangent)

Peter Connolly and several other authors interpret such depictions as a typical linothorax reinforced with bronze lamellar plates. The Assyrians have been wearing bronze lamellar plates shaped similarly hundreds of years earlier, so this is not a stretch of the imagination by any means. The image Glaukos posted is from the film Alexander, for those unaware, and the research on the project actually led to some good interpretations, as he's pointed out with this example.

The Macedonians who apparently re-popularized such reinforced armor in Greece, after the peninsular fashion to use scale reinforcement, probably came from more Eastern influence such as the Sythians and Persians, whose use of lamellar had never waned and whose contact was more likely than with the Southern Greeks, who despised and openly closed themselves from much contact with such Eastern cultures during the 5th century after the Persian Wars. The Northern Greek-speaking peoples were less likely to hold such disdain, and the influence of lamellar probably spread through them.

Hope that helps, some.

EDIT: Sat here writing and Norman posted above. Refer to his post for description of the style of lamellar plate I'm making mention of. Also, just to throw some of my vague references out of the window, here's Connolly's quote on the armor from this very Todi statue, coming from Greece and Rome At War on page 70:

The linen cuirass reinforced with lamellar plates on the Mars from Todi in the Vatican (Museo Gregoriano). This type of armour originated with the Assyrians and is often shown in Etruscan art.

His specificity at it being linen comes from his research in the 1970s putting forward the idea that the linothorax was made from glued, layered linen - a popular opinion which is currently once again heavily debated due to lack of evidence. But his citation about the Assyrian origins is correct. I will continue my examination of likelihood for the re-emergence of such armor in Greece based on his context of Etruscan examples. It may be well that the Etruscans had good trade relations with the Persians during the 5th century and that I can pinpoint this as a most likely origin... Will do some digging.

-Gregory