Trojan Armor Question

[Mightybec]

In the movie Troy, what is the name of the type of armor worn by the Trojan soldiers? It's a long shirt with small rectangular metal plates and forearm and shin guards.

[Edsel]

Re: Trojan Armor Question

 

It looks a lot like traditional hoplite armor called panoply. Wealthy troops or officers would wear a bronze breastplate. The rank and file wore the panoply. It is believed that most was made of multiple layers of linen and that some was made of leather. Both usually had metal scales (bronze?) sewed onto it. The shoulder covering are called pteriges. The shin guards are just greaves and their primary purpose was to keep the large shield (hoplon) from bashing your shins when you were running. I don't really know what the arm guards are called.

 

This data is all based upon what the Greek literary record says. But most all of this was written a few hundred years after the war and apparently not much Trojan armor has survived to this day.

 

Amazing what you can get with a google search. I hope this helps.

 

Edit: I noticed that if you do a google search for panoply you can find some interesting underwear. Apparently panoply is analogous to certain forms of modern sexy attire.

[Markdoc]

Re: Trojan Armor Question

 

Panoply actually simply means fancy display stuff: so armour with gold widgets,, extra defences, etc. Certainly the strange and impractical stuff the Trojan leaders wore in the film would qualify...

 

Armour on the forearm = Vambrace

Armour on the shin = Greave. Not just to protect your shin when running with a hoplon (big-ass bronze-reinforced shield) but also (and more importantly) to protect your shin when it was sticking out under that big-ass shield. Shin injuries are a very, very common - and often fatal - injury among lightly armoured troops from the ancient through medieval era, judging by skeletons. Hoplites sometimes (apparently) wore a greave only on the forward (left) leg.

 

The armour work by the trojans in the movie has no name, per se, because it was made up. For that matter, the Greek armour (while not made up) didn't exist at that time - almost all of it is drawn from the much later "classical" greek era.

 

I'm not dodging the question though - in the earlier period helenistic soldiers wore a thing called a linothorax (literally a "linen body") which was almost certainly quilted/padded armour. There's been a debate droning on for decades about whether this was augmented with metal plates, based on findings of a king's armour from an early iron-age tomb. I'll spare you the specifics, but if this really was used (and judging from paintings, it was), then you get something like the armour from the movie. I'd call it "scale" armour in roleplayer's terminology.

 

cheers, Mark

[Mightybec]

Re: Trojan Armor Question

 

Thanks for the info.