Some queries regarding EB's units...

[Rolling Thunder]

Whoops. You said always.

Always unless you're a idiot peasant, in which case I'd like to know who gave you expensive, valuable armour before taking it away from said peasant and giving it to someone vaguely qualified and in possession of some padded cloth armour. So, yeah, it's invariably used with padding. Else it doesn't stop shite.

[paullus]

"Padding" may be a strong word. Most likely it's worn with a simple leather hauberk, if that's what we agree the subarmalis was. I'd be willing to consider either a light linen garment (thicker than a tunic though) or a pliable leather. There are several depictions of garments that could fit either material.

[Randal]

I admit I don't know much about practical testing, but from an economics PoV it doesn't really seem logical if mail armour is equal to linthorax.

Surely creating a mail hauberk would cost many, many times the price of a linthorax? Not only does it use far more expensive material, the skilled labour cost for making all those rings and putting them together must have been several times that of the linen armour.

Would anyone, and specifically any empire like Rome have equipped all its soldiers with mail armour if linthorax had been (almost?) equally effective?

I imagine cultural factors and the issue of prestige would sometimes explain the use of poor value-for-money armour (A Gallic chieftain would impress his men more with mail armour than with linen, a Roman aquilifer might wear scale instead of the superior mail because scale can be polished to a wonderful gleam on the parade ground) but when we're talking about outfitting literally hundreds of thousands of legionaries...

Then there's the fact that, as I learned from EB, the Hellenistic kingdoms started to switch to mail armour in their latter days, perhaps in part because they came into contact with the Romans. Thorakitai, reformed Macedonian phalangites... why make this effort unless mail was considered to provide a very significant advantage?

[MisterFred]

Although its easy to make the assumption that mail armor was more expensive than linen armor, I'd caution against relying on this without sources. A linothorax, if made the way modern re-creationists have modeled, is not necessarily very cheap. Cloth requires a lot of work in the ancient world, and a good linothorax requires quite a bit of it, glue, and possibly some specialist knowledge.

Even if mail remained more expensive than leather or linen armor, if it was slightly (or significantly) more effective than other armor types, the cost differential was probably narrowing in our time period as iron-mining, casting, and smithing became more common.

From another perspective, I expect (but this is yet another assumption) that mail armor lent itself more easily to a centralized production model than linen armor, as casting and smithing industries tended to be concentrated near iron deposits. So that even IF mail armor was more expensive than linen or leather armor it would still be (from an organizational stand-point) easier to procure for professional armies whose equipment is procured by the state in bulk (Marian armies, possibly some later Hellenistic elements, possibly some of the Carthaginian armories). There were probably some situations where cost and effectiveness were lesser concerns than the sheer ability to procure sufficient equipment.

[Apázlinemjó]

Although its easy to make the assumption that mail armor was more expensive than linen armor, I'd caution against relying on this without sources. A linothorax, if made the way modern re-creationists have modeled, is not necessarily very cheap. Cloth requires a lot of work in the ancient world, and a good linothorax requires quite a bit of it, glue, and possibly some specialist knowledge.

Even if mail remained more expensive than leather or linen armor, if it was slightly (or significantly) more effective than other armor types, the cost differential was probably narrowing in our time period as iron-mining, casting, and smithing became more common.

From another perspective, I expect (but this is yet another assumption) that mail armor lent itself more easily to a centralized production model than linen armor, as casting and smithing industries tended to be concentrated near iron deposits. So that even IF mail armor was more expensive than linen or leather armor it would still be (from an organizational stand-point) easier to procure for professional armies whose equipment is procured by the state in bulk (Marian armies, possibly some later Hellenistic elements, possibly some of the Carthaginian armories). There were probably some situations where cost and effectiveness were lesser concerns than the sheer ability to procure sufficient equipment.

I agree, also I would like to add to your post, that while the chainmail armour was quite "weatherproof", the Linothorax wasn't. And it's a quite big difference, when you want to equip a whole army.

[antisocialmunky]

I'm sure people as wiley as the Greeks would have thought up ways to do some sort of water proofing on linothorax(atleast to keep the glue from failing). A linen torso would be hard to transport around because of the space it would take up let alone to keep dry on campaign. Didn't the Macedonians fight in India through the mud and rain?

[Randal]

Still, whole armies were equipped with linthorax too, so it was possible.

Is there any information on how Phillip I of Macedon managed?

[Apázlinemjó]

@ASM: Sadly we don't know anything about those Makedonians' armours and what happened to them in the Indian mud and rain. Also I think the dry weather didn't do any good to Linothorax either.

Edit: Though these are just assumptions.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Chain mail is not weatherproof, actually. And maybe a lineothorax would in fact be much more weatherproof (than chain mail): as it is made from dried organic material all you really need is a good coating (dye) and it should last quite a while. Coating can be trivially updated (simply scrub & repaint), on the other hand rust in chain mail tends to means that if one ring is bad so are few others.

Now the real test of resilience is of course the Indian monsoon, and we know the lineothorax didn't survive such weather. But also consider the example of much more advanced metal working of Medieval ages and look at what happened to the crusaders trapped on a river island when the Nile started flooding.

[Apázlinemjó]

Chain mail is not weatherproof, actually. And maybe a lineothorax would in fact be much more weatherproof (than chain mail): as it is made from dried organic material all you really need is a good coating (dye) and it should last quite a while. Coating can be trivially updated (simply scrub & repaint), on the other hand rust in chain mail tends to means that if one ring is bad so are few others.

Now the real test of resilience is of course the Indian monsoon, and we know the lineothorax didn't survive such weather. But also consider the example of much more advanced metal working of Medieval ages and look at what happened to the crusaders trapped on a river island when the Nile started flooding.

Interesting points, I think I'm convinced with the crusaders' example.

[antisocialmunky]

You probably didn't want to get stuck in much armor in India at any rate during the Rainy Season. Too hot.