Tag: linothorax

Strange love of linen, or how I learned to stop an arrow (and enjoy the process)

Guest post by Scott Bartell I blame Alexander the Great. Because of him, I've had to pore over close to a hundred ancient Greek and Roman texts, repeatedly scan and document armor variations on over a thousand Greek vase paintings and sculptures, learn more about the flax plant than I ever thought was possible, and…

Unraveling the linothorax mystery, or how linen armor came to dominate our lives

Guest post by Alicia Aldrete As the wife, research assistant, and sometimes coauthor of an ancient historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, I had expected to spend many hours in libraries, wandering through foreign museums, and climbing around ancient sites. However, I had not foreseen large groups of weapon-wielding students in our…