I am not into reenactment, but I am an Archaeologist and I was asked to build an ancient greek armor for the museum where I'm working. I once built one before, with a couple of fellow students for a game of archaeologist-football (or do you say soccer?), so I had a little experience on that matter. Whatever, since this is quite a nerdy task, I wanted to share it with you. The armor I built is a leather armor the heavy troops (the "hoplites") of the ancient greeks wore. The other kind of armor at that age in greece was a bronze cuirass but I decided against that because I have no experience in blacksmithing whatsoever. To start with the thing, I took a look at greek vase paintings to get an idea of how the armor could look like: On the right are two warriors wearing leather armor, one from behind and one kneeling. I cut two big pieces of leather into the body part and the shoulder part of the armor and then riveted them together. After that, I painted it and applied decorative rivets in a way that I think resembles the ancient greek's adornments and motifs. This armor was to be made for a display dummy, so it is wearing it on the pictures below: So, what do you think? Do you like it? Do you think its cool being a nerd at work? And should I try to put my lizardmen into hoplite armor?
Re: Building an ancient greek armor I like it, although I can't get my head around that being heavy armour. You should definitely put your Temple guard (if you have any that is) in hoplite armour! They have light armour after all. Cheers!
You're right, of course it is light armor, since there is also bronze armor, which would rather count as heavy. It's just that you (I'm not sure if "you" in this context means "modern scientists" or also "the ancient greeks") differenciate between hoplites ("heavy" troops: wearing big shields and using heavy weapons like spears and longswords) and peltasts ("Light" troops: they wore smaller crescent-shaped lizardmen-like shields and used slings and javelins. They were skirmishers and scouts). Maybe I'll try that on some spare saurus warrior first. What would you suggest? Green stuff?
Thats an exhibition poster from before I started working at the museum. As far as I know the exhibition was about the artist Joachim Dunkel, who made drawings with mythological contents, in that case the Minotaurus. I just found out that he has a homepage, if you're interested: http://www.joachimdunkel.de (its in german, but you can find the Minotaur and other similar drawings on the main page)
I see, well then I guess they're heavy infantry those Hoplites. Just that without a shield it looks rather weak for heavy armour. Absolutely, green stuff is perfect for this. Cheers!