Ancient VS Medieval Armour: why does ancient Greek armour have so little padding?

Armour is a very layered and complex topic. Of course you have the flashy stuff on the outside, but you also have the stuff on the inside. Of course padding in armour is very important, and maybe equally as important as the armour on the outside in certain circumstances. However, people tend to dramatically overestimate the amount of padding worn under armour, and actually required under armour, so much so that it full up becomes impractical. And I get actually quite a few comments saying that my impressions in ancient Greek warfare are wrong because I don't have very much padding. So why is it that ancient Greek armours don't have that much padding? When many people are talking about padding under armour, they're coming from a medieval lens, typically a 15th century lens or late 14th century lens, and projecting that onto a Hellenic style of warfare. The problem is medieval warfare and Hellenic warfare are two incredibly different styles of warfare. Though yes, we certainly see padded jacks and other forms of padded garments worn under medieval armour that can't be directly transferred over to the ancient Greeks. People also tend to dramatically overestimate the amount of padding required under medieval armour as well. Toby Capwell has actually talked about this, and essentially if you have too much padding it actually starts to make armour impractical. For one, you get a hell of a lot hotter. The padding is hotter than the actual armour itself, of course, because it actually is more like a coat. And also it moves the armour further away from your body and further away from your joints, which means that the closer fitting the armour is, the more like your own version of a second skin it behaves, the further away it's separated by padding, the harder it is to move actually with your body. So there is also, even in a medieval context, people tend to overestimate the amount of padding, the thickness of padding actually required for it to be practical. But in Hellenic style of warfare and Hellenic style of armour, we see basically no padding. And why? Why is that the case? There are a few reasons for this. Primarily, the style of warfare, the weapons that we are facing, are incredibly different in 500B, then 1480. Ancient Greek armour is quite famously light and close fitting, which can give us a lot of sort of insight into the style of warfare that it's being used in, of course. Contrast that to the medieval period, you see up to 150 pound weight longbows, you see two-handed pole hammers, you have weapons which deliver a lot more shock impact force than you do in the ancient world. The vast majority of attacks that I'm going to be facing when I'm in this style of armour is a little spear poke, right, or maybe a lighter, thinner Persian arrowhead that's going to hit me. And this armour would have been very effective against 90% or so, as a rough guess, attacks that it has to deal with if that attack bypasses my shield, which of course is a massive factor. Contrast that to the later medieval period, of course shields are starting to be dropped by fully armoured individuals, which means that they're fully relying on armour essentially to protect them bar blocking and dodging the actual impact. And you're facing far higher poundage weapons and far more sort of blunt impact weapons than you do in the ancient world. That of course means that your armour has to have more shock absorption capability than is required for a Hellenic context. Another massive, massive factor is that in ancient Greece, I'm in a very hot climate. Padding is what's going to make you overheat more than armour itself. It is layers of fabric, very, very similar to a coat, that is going to trap heat in, make you sweat, dehydrate you a lot quicker than wearing plate. And heat stroke could potentially be a full death sentence in the ancient battlefield. If you get busy, you start to black out. The likelihood is that you won't really be seeing again after that. So armour is typically very light and very close fitting in an ancient Greek context with not very much padding. However, that is not to say that there were no padded elements worn with ancient Greek armour. We have plenty of evidence suggesting that helmets and greaves and other items were lined with leather. We have stitch holes going around the outside for a simple leather lining. And this is really all that you need. People also dramatically underestimate the poofiness of the chiton. The chiton is a very full garment. It fills out and pads out your cuirass massively. That in its own offers a great amount of shock absorption because it is essentially layers of fabric without the need for a high density gambeson type structure. And of course we see padding in helmets. In fact, we see the most amount of padding in helmets. But even still, these helmets are supposed to be very, very close fitting. We have Aristotle talks about sea sponge that can be used on two-pound helmets. We have archaeological Etruscan finds of grass woven caps likely used in an ancient Greek world as well. And likely the most common was a simple felted pelos hat. Just a felted hat to be worn inside. But even still, we're not looking at mass amounts of padding here. When the impact that my armour is dealing with, the threat that armour is dealing with, isn't delivering as much force as a 2,000 year later weapon, then of course the armour is going to be designed to be used in the style of warfare that the armour is being used in. I'm not coming up against mounted knights with lances delivering horse level of impact into my body, potentially. I'm dealing with smaller swords, lighter swords, spear poking. And through testing this armour, which we have done practically, it holds up incredibly well. It would save your life very easily. Most attacks wouldn't even penetrate it from what our tests showed, with sort of the most powerful stabs going through less than a millimetre. So not even really enough to poke through your underclothing, if at all. This style of armour would have protected me from what I needed it to 90% of the time. My main source of defence also isn't the armour, it's my shield. So they have to bypass my shield and then bypass my armour to actually directly affect me. And that's not to say that exceptions didn't happen. We do have archaeological finds of helmets and cuirasses with holes in them, likely caused by spears, possibly someone lying on the ground and getting stabbed by a butt spike. We have a breastplate with sort of a square hole, very much fitting of a sorator, so maybe a fallen enemy who's sort of spiked in the ground. Of course that would have a lot more impact because the body can't give. But the need for padding is dramatically overestimated when we're talking about, I would say, armour in general, but especially a Hellenic context. It's used in a different context to medieval armour. Thanks very much for watching this video, I hope that you enjoyed it and found it a little bit interesting. If you'd like to support the channel then I just actually started a Patreon page and also of course YouTube memberships. A special thanks to our channel members who continually support the channel. If you're not interested in either of those or can't afford to do so, absolutely no problem at all. Liking and subscribing is an awesome help and also just sharing these videos around to our niche little audience here on the internet does great deeds as well. So thanks very much for watching and I hope to catch you in the next one.