![]() “Scholars study what survived, and this cloth didn’t survive,” says Aldrete. ![]() It is easy to understand why linothorax (literally, “linen corselet” in Greek) is understudied. More questions and mutual enthusiasm for the topic then “mushroomed into this enormous project,” says Aldrete. Alexander appeared to be wearing linen armor, yet there was no scholarly research to account for this. It all started, the historian explains, when Bartell, one of his students, asked about the depiction of Alexander the Great’s body armor in a Pompeii mosaic. The book stems from Aldrete’s Linothorax Project, a six-year research effort at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, which involved hundreds of students, several faculty members, and his wife, Alicia. The book examines a widely documented but rarely studied phenomenon: Many ancient Mediterranean warriors very likely opted for linen armor, not bronze. Aldrete, a professor of history and humanistic studies, is an author, along with Scott Bartell and Alicia Aldrete, of Reconstructing Ancient Linen Body Armor: Unraveling the Linothorax Mystery, just out from Johns Hopkins University Press. Aldrete is out to change this perception. The Greek hoplite-the quintessential, heavily armored “man of bronze"-has long dominated the popular imagination. When most people think of warfare in the ancient Mediterranean world, they picture armored men fighting with heavy spears. ![]()
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