Chainmail + Breastplate combination?

[AqD]

Hi all!

Anyone know the source of this beautiful chainmail+breastplate armour in Hellenistic cataphracts and companions? I checked miniatures and paintings/photos from several books , including "The Seleucid Army 168-145BC" by Montvert, but failed to find any example....

Can someoneone point me the right direction??

[AqD]

hmmm 83 reads but nobody knows where it comes from?!

[Watchman]

...say, weren't sleeves a pretty darn LATE developement in mail ? IIRC what I've read of it, the Romans *still* hadn't quite figured out how to make the shoulder/armpit join in 1st century AD or thereabouts...

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

It shouldn't be THAT hard to make maille slevees eh? It was more a question of cost to protection, since more maille was expensive.

EDIT - Also, OP, don't use the term "chainmail". It's bad and ugly.

[Watchman]

The sleeve itself is just a tube, that wasn't the problem. The tricky bit was the join to the main body armour, especially on the armpit side, I understand. Not that early mail, be it Celtic or Roman or whatever, *entirely* lacks any kind of sleeve; IIRC even by first century AD they were still stuck with a "panel" that only covered the outer shoulder.

[MeinPanzer]

EDIT - Also, OP, don't use the term "chainmail". It's bad and ugly.

Nor should you use the term "maille," which is just as archaic and unnecessary as "chainmail." It's the norm for scholarly discussion of such armour to simply refer to it as mail.

The depiction, though controversial and intensely debated within the team, is based on a Hellenistic figurine of an armoured soldier dressed as cavalry, carrying a muscled breastplate, to it attached long sleeves with a dotted texture extending to the wrists. I am currently unable to access my database as I am abroad (As we speak).

I am personally quite sceptical to this being chain-maille, and if it indeed does portray maille, it is a most unusual finding and would pose an anomaly as to why for instance Parthian cavalry was late in adopting it (Indeed, the likes of the late Prof. Shahbazi proposes that the edge of combat was favourable towards early Sassanian cavalry due to their adoption of maille, as opposed to earlier designs of lamellar). However, this refers to the time-span between 2nd-3rd centuries CE. It would be difficult to explain why this form of armour was "abandoned" and again "resumed".

At this time, the only form of complete protection available for horsemen would traditionally have been cheires/laminated hoops, as given by the relief of Pergamon, and/or chausses of scales or early lamellar of Scythian and Sacae types (Usually complemented by a long surcoat of large lamellae or banded/segmented armour with extended skirts); we may also include armoured saddles of late Achaemenid types such as the parameridia/parapleuridia.

We've discussed this figurine before a while back. Here's the object in question:

http://www.antiquemilitaryhistory.co...nafigurine.JPG

This is a rather unusual, and very interesting, figurine. This is a dedication dated to the late 4th or early 3rd c. BC from Dodona. It is believed that this is a (likely Epirote) general making a sacrifice, and that the object held in the right hand may be an organ of the sacrificial victim.

There are a few major problems with identifying this as mail.

Firstly, barring any historical discussion of mail, there is the basic problem if we take this to be mail of the fact that this figurine appears to be wearing nothing underneath his long-sleeved mail cuirass. This is simply not seen in ancient times. Warriors are always depicted either with a tunic longer than their mail cuirass or with trousers or something else covering their legs to prevent chafing.

Secondly, it doesn't make much sense for this guy to be wearing an organic cuirass over a long-sleeved mail one, and especially not one with pteruges.

Thirdly, if this were taken to be mail, this would be pretty much the earliest example of mail being worn anywhere outside of central Europe. The earliest eastern Celtic mail find, found in a burial from Horny Jatov in Slovakia, dates to the first quarter of the 3rd c. BC at the absolute earliest. This would mean that we would have to assume that mail somehow reached Epirus pretty much simultaneously with its earliest transmission to the eastern Celts.

But what else would it be, if not mail??

Well, we know that at the end of the 4th or the early 3rd c. BC it was fashionable among Macedonian noblemen to wear long-sleeved Persian-style tunics. We see this in numerous depictions of Macedonian cavalrymen from the time of Alexander and the Diadochoi. It is well-known that Epirus had close ties with Macedonia, so I don't think it's a stretch at all to think that the nobility of Epirus could have adopted Macedonian fashion. It seems very likely, therefore, that this is simply a tunic, and that the sculptor either wanted to convey its texture or its decoration with the spots.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

Nor should you use the term "maille," which is just as archaic and unnecessary as "chainmail." It's the norm for scholarly discussion of such armour to simply refer to it as mail.

I prefer "maille" because it has an unambiguous meaning, contrary to "chain-mail" or merely "mail". In semantical terms, it means nothing but a fancy archaism, but one that works nevertheless and is not that hard to grasp.

[The Persian Cataphract]

The depiction, though controversial and intensely debated within the team, is based on a Hellenistic figurine of an armoured soldier dressed as cavalry, carrying a muscled breastplate, to it attached long sleeves with a dotted texture extending to the wrists. I am currently unable to access my database as I am abroad (As we speak).

I am personally quite sceptical to this being chain-maille, and if it indeed does portray maille, it is a most unusual finding and would pose an anomaly as to why for instance Parthian cavalry was late in adopting it (Indeed, the likes of the late Prof. Shahbazi proposes that the edge of combat was favourable towards early Sassanian cavalry due to their adoption of maille, as opposed to earlier designs of lamellar). However, this refers to the time-span between 2nd-3rd centuries CE. It would be difficult to explain why this form of armour was "abandoned" and again "resumed".

At this time, the only form of complete protection available for horsemen would traditionally have been cheires/laminated hoops, as given by the relief of Pergamon, and/or chausses of scales or early lamellar of Scythian and Sacae types (Usually complemented by a long surcoat of large lamellae or banded/segmented armour with extended skirts); we may also include armoured saddles of late Achaemenid types such as the parameridia/parapleuridia.

[AqD]

The depiction, though controversial and intensely debated within the team, is based on a Hellenistic figurine of an armoured soldier dressed as cavalry, carrying a muscled breastplate, to it attached long sleeves with a dotted texture extending to the wrists. I am currently unable to access my database as I am abroad (As we speak).

But what else would it be, if not mail??