Linen Armour?

[Xehh II]

How is linen armour better than metal?
I must say linen armour looks cool but I don't see how it could be better than metal.

[keravnos]

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=7338

http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic.php?t=2630

Your question is perfectly legitimate, but let me not answer since it has been asked and answered many times already.

(Read the above links, and formulate your own opinion)

Thanks.

[mcantu]

Well it was layers of linen that were glued together and possibly hardened. Its the same idea as modern body armor which is made up of many layers of aramid (ie Kevlar). The force of the impact is distributed along the fibers and the forward motion of the weapon is stopped/reduced

Here are the results of tests with maille and cloth armor that were just posted today...

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=11131

[geala]

This is a very good link, mcantu. That linen armour performed well against missiles in the test confirms my informations from other tests I know. I am a bit surprised about the bad performance against slashes and thrusts, but also pleased by it because tests done by me show the same (I used a kopis like sword).

To say something also to the op, linen armour is not better than metal armour. It is different. You can better move in it than in plate armour for example. You will also sweat a lot more, however. And so on. Plate armour normally is superior in the ability to deflect weapons. And it's nearly impossible to penetrate plate with slashes or cuts. I know of a test with a original 16th c. halberd (with new shaft) against an original 16th c. munition plate cuirass and helmet (Sturmhaube). The only way that the heavy halberd could be effective was by a stroke with the rear spike. Strokes with the axe blade or thrusts with the point were nearly without effort. A great advantage of plate, which the mail/scale and padding enthusiasts should not overlook, is the ability to dispense the energy of the hit over a wide area to reduce blunt trauma much better than every other form of armour.

In the end, much depends on the material. Is the plate hardened bronze or only soft iron/mild steel. Or hardened steel? Is the linen a densely woven, fine cloth? Is is put together in changing patterns, with a 90 or 45 degree angle, to strenghten it? And so on.

[Watchman]

That the layered-linen armour is not better than the metal stuff is really obvious - if it were, everyone would have used it instead. It was lighter and more comfortable, and probably at least marginally cheaper, already.

Sounds a bit like what I've read of hardened-leather armour, which seems to have been regarded as sort of "metal lite" - cheaper and much lighter, but not quite as protective if you were willing to make the tradeoff.

[keravnos]

That the layered-linen armour is not better than the metal stuff is really obvious - if it were, everyone would have used it instead. It was lighter and more comfortable, and probably at least marginally cheaper, already.

Sounds a bit like what I've read of hardened-leather armour, which seems to have been regarded as sort of "metal lite" - cheaper and much lighter, but not quite as protective if you were willing to make the tradeoff.

The problem with the above test is that the Ancients didn't use friggin rags for armor...

8-15 layers or more of especially knit linen were used, held together with glue, end result being a pretty rigid construction. Scale was woven over that, and a leather undercloth was worn under that.

If you put massed doormats and call that "linothorax" then it is more than obvious that those results are in error.

[Watchman]

The Romans seemed to prefer the hamata and squamata over the possibility of adopting the "lino" from conquered Hellenic regions though. I may be jumping to conclusions, but I'd take that as proof positive that the design's advantage lay in the weght-protection ratio, not absolute amount of protection-for-coverage provided. The Romans apparently preferred to opt for the heavier metal-based armours with their greater stopping power.

You'd think their lighter troops might have found it useful tho.

[keravnos]

Simple. After Romani conquest, not much money went into "linothorax" or other kind of weapons (sarissa for example) that could potentially be used against them. In fact IIRC, for those weapons that would be constructed in Greece, only Romani techniques/knowhow was used. As a result, in two or three generations, the techniques used were forgotten and thus we can only speculate on its worth, both for Linothorax and Sarissa. Linothorax is VASTLY underrated/underestimated though.

Lighter missile units as standard Romani operating practice largely went completely unarmored, or using only armor they would provide, IIRC.

Later on, at the whims of a Romani emperor, 15.000 Makedonians were given Sarissas and linothorax. So, to my mind at least it was more a matter of practicality rather than linothorax being useless.

[paullus]

Romans did use the linothorax in a few cases. We have the reliefs...

[Watchman]

...whoever anywhere claimed linothorax was useless, anyway ?

[O'ETAIPOS]

Interesting question is - what is better in hot climate - linothorax or mail?

Mail is iron so heats more, but seems to be better ventilated, while lino, although heating less, may be in fact better keeping body heat of warrior.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The mail will often have a leather li9ning as well though. The Linothorax probably wasn't as good as mail but with scale re-inforcement it probably came very close, and for a greatly reduced weight and cost.

[geala]

Plate is the best in hot climates, no yoke.

If you used stuffed or multiple layered cloth you don't have to visit the sauna afterwards. At least this is the case with gambesons.

Mail alone would be the best of course, the air goes through and you can move very well, but mail alone has debatable protection qualities (far better than nothing however). With a padding underneath it is similar to cloth armour.

The "boiling performance" of metal armour should not be exaggerated. The sun is deflected by the metal for a certain part. If I could stem the weight I would go with mail rather than linen armour.

A common view among the reenactment society seems to be that the glueing of linen decreases the protection qualities. 15 layers of glued linen were very easily cut by a sword stroke in a test I know. (Wether linen armour of the Greeks was glued is an open question. There is not the smallest proof for this, before Conolly nobody thought about it. It is a modern interpretation, because no better method which explains pictural evidence is found, if you think that linen armour existed.)

But imagine that the most direct blows were taken with the shield. And the body is very difficult to hit if a man has a bigger shield. So linen armour would have done the job to protect against missiles and the weaker blows and thrusts that passed behind the shield.

We have for example no proof that the pezhetairoi of Philip and Alexander wore body protection. Some things speak against it even. Nevertheless they performed very well with helmet, small shield and greaves.

[Oleander Ardens]

Linen armor seems to work best against light arrows, especially if they are triangular or bodkinlike with no sharp blades, slingstones and weapons like maces and axes. Speed is also more important than for a metal armor, as it absorps more than reflects and has to rely on the friction to stop a sharp blade. At least this is what test of medieval weaponary against rather similar medieval armor showed.

It was however rather sensitive against hefty thrusts of sharp spearheads, swordpoints and heavy, bladed arrowheads. Given that it worked fine against slingshots and a great deal of the most popular arrowheads (influenced by scythian designs) back then it becomes clear why it got a reputation of an good armor against missiles.

It's abilty to withstand all types of attack should greatly increase with even a very thin outer metal cover, especially against thrusting blades (spears, daggers, some arrow and javelinheads).

OA

[Decimus Attius Arbiter]

From what I see in the game, the Eastern armies trade the linen for scale armor. What would be the reasoning for that? Are steppe archers more deadly thus needing more protection?

[Watchman]

The Rise of Persia unit descriptions mention linothorax having originally been developed by the Egyptians off the old New Kingdom stiffened-textile cuirasses, to give the hoplites there a form of decent body armour to replace the bronze cuirass ill suited for the climate. Sounds like a logical enough lineage to me.

Anyway, the use of scale armour by Eastern troops who can afford it would have practical enough reasons - namely the excessive proliferation of effective battlefield archery there. Scale stops arrows and such pretty well by all accounts, and isn't half bad against most other weapons (although mail is on the average better it has some inherent issues with pointy things). Plus it's relatively cheap and simple to manufacture and maintain, which is always useful.

I've long kinda wondered - the Persians presumably knew and used "lino" as well, being no slouches in adopting workable stuff they encountered, and some Greek vase-paintings seem to suggest employed it in the same "tube and yoke" form as the Greeks (although that was probably its universal design anyway; beats me how faithful to reality those paintings are, of course). Given that the Greeks often added a whole lot of small metal scales to the things for both decoration and protection, to the point where they sometimes essentially became scale cuirasses, one has to wonder if the Persians didn't similarly mate the good old scale armour with this newfangled linothorax thingy they picked up from the Egyptians. Should they have employed similar scales for both "normal" and "linothorax-based" cuirasses these would obviously have been all but impossible to tell apart.

[geala]

Btw, I would be very pleased if somebody could give me a written or archeological source for linen armour for the Greeks in classical and hellenistic times. I firmly believe it existed but a proof is missing.

Linen is mentioned by Homer (8th c. BC) and then Alkaios (early 6th c. BC), but later sources (Herodot about Amasis gift, Xenophon about Asian armour,...) don't speak of linen in connection with Greek armour. Pausanias said that linen armour is not convenient for war purposes, only for hunting. We have pictures of white armour but that could also be painted leather instead of bleached linen (normal linen is not white). We have a source which said that the spolas was a form of thorax and made of leather.

I know from another thread that seemingly a piece of quilted linen was found in a tomb of a Greek soldier in Rhodos from about 350 BC, but it is not published (?) and what is not published and testable does not exist. Can anybody say something new about that finding or others?

[Watchman]

Wasn't there a mention of the soldiers burning their old cuirasses upon receiving a new batch in the records of Alexander's campaigns ? Leather doesn't burn terribly well far as I know (and smell horrid when it does) and fire would thus seem to have been a somewhat unlikely method of waste disposal, which would logically suggest some form of fabric armour.

[antisocialmunky]

Wasn't there a mention of the soldiers burning their old cuirasses upon receiving a new batch in the records of Alexander's campaigns ? Leather doesn't burn terribly well far as I know (and smell horrid when it does) and fire would thus seem to have been a somewhat unlikely method of waste disposal, which would logically suggest some form of fabric armour.

That makes it sound wonderful against flaming projectiles - leader is atleast somewhat fire retardant. I would think they would also not be ideal in inclimate weather either. Cold and moldy aren't exactly good descriptors for armour.

[Oleander Ardens]

" Scale stops arrows and such pretty well by all accounts, and isn't half bad against most other weapons (although mail is on the average better it has some inherent issues with pointy things). Plus it's relatively cheap and simple to manufacture and maintain, which is always useful."

(NoScript has some issue, quotes etc are not working right now) Good mail with thick padding is almost arrowproof, at least Dan Howard writes that a heavy warbow (over 130lbs iirc) was not able to penetrate it with historic bodkins from a close distance (~ 10m).

But rightly the point is: Multilayered padding is excellent at absorbing the momentum of an projectile and a blow, but stops also the rare blunted arrowheads which were able to pierce the mail. The linothorax employs exactly the same mechanism to resist blunt, sharp and pointed force. So what is the essential difference between a scale-covered linothorax and a thickly padded scalearmor?

Both employ practically the same mechanism to stop an attack. The scales deflect it or deform both themselves and the blade/arrowhead, spreading out the force while pressing against the absorbing multilayered fabric. The fabric in turn spreads out the force even further and reflects the blunted arrowhead/spearhead while transfering the force into the fat and muscles which too absorb the impact.

So even if there are big differences in the construction the work rather in the same way, only that once has a thicker outer metalskin and a thinner inner clothlayers and viceversa. In fact every metalarmor makes good use of an inner mulitlayered fabric called padding which is of immense importance.

So we have a standalone linen armor but also metal armor making use of its characteristics in the thinner form of padding.

OA

[Watchman]

As a random side note, I understand arrowheads designed to pierce mail tended to be long and needle-like - the better to exploit the natural "openings" of the armour and punch through the inevitable padding underneath. Those designed against more solid-surface armour conversely tend to be comparatively short and robust "spikes" which can take the impact without snapping or deforming (as the aforementioned needle type tends to) and punch a hole.

Anyway, I also understand practical tests suggest scale, with its smooth surface and (at least) double-layered armour elements, resists arrows and similar pointy things somewhat better than mail all other things being equal - mail always had some issues with points due to the way they get into the individual rings. (If the target is decked out in something like good lamellar or better, you may about as well try to start sniping at his face then.)

[Oleander Ardens]

As a random side note, I understand arrowheads designed to pierce mail tended to be long and needle-like - the better to exploit the natural "openings" of the armour and punch through the inevitable padding underneath. Those designed against more solid-surface armour conversely tend to be comparatively short and robust "spikes" which can take the impact without snapping or deforming (as the aforementioned needle type tends to) and punch a hole.

I agree. But strange as it sounds no medieval bodkins of steel or hardened iron were found to date, thus having the tendency to deform quite a bit when hitting steel armor. And when modern studies show that even steel bodkins will fail against a flatter and softer plate than historically employed it can be concluded that the historic description of platearmored knights in Flanders walking calmly through a storm of arrows is rather accurate.

Anyway, I also understand practical tests suggest scale, with its smooth surface and (at least) double-layered armour elements, resists arrows and similar pointy things somewhat better than mail all other things being equal - mail always had some issues with points due to the way they get into the individual rings.

I guess that one must include the ever present padding as well. Mail is a network of rings lying against an absorbing backing. A needle bodkin might find a way through one ring, but to go further he will to break both the ring and penetrate the padding. Padding offers as all clotharmor excellent protection against bodkin shaped threats. To inflict a significant wound the bodkinpoint must then break also the outer ring of mail formed by the other interlinking rings. So mail has a very refined way of stopping even so specialized designs from doing much harm...

(If the target is decked out in something like good lamellar or better, you may about as well try to start sniping at his face then.)

True. I want to add that a light quilted overcloth made of some layers of linen and over the armor is an great way to enhance the protection against armorpiercing weapons. And it is often hard to see if a rider wears a piece of armor underneath. So one wonders not that the drawing weights of the composite bows of the steppe archers required so long training and were able to propel arrows over so a long distances - and that armor was so sought after...

OA

[Xehh II]

What's the closest armour, in looks, to linothorax?
So if you don't have linothorax but you want to look like you do what could you wear?

[Tellos Athenaios]

White painted SWAT-like armour?

EDIT: Remove the extra reinforcements though.

[Xehh II]

Seriously, what armour looks like linothorax?

[abou]

Seriously, what armour looks like linothorax?

Uhm... linothorax.