Archaic Bell Cuirass

By Andrew Yamato

I’ve always wanted a bronze bell cuirass. And one in particular: the one I consider the Platonic form of the typology, a 6th or 7th century example found at Olympia and beautifully rendered by Peter Connolly in his highly influential book Greece and Rome at War. With its simple form, abstracted musculature, and dramatically flared collar and skirt, it has a modern, almost Art Deco aesthetic: smooth, stylized, streamlined. Yet the Archaic hoplites who wore this armor — despite being immortalized on thousands of vases, venerated even in the Classical era as the ideal of civic masculinity, and lauded today as the progenitors of “The Western Way of War” and even democracy itself — remain shrouded in pre-historical mystery.

It is the Archaic hoplite we conjure when gazing into the black eyes of a Corinthian helmet. It was so even in the Golden Age of Athens, when Pericles was rarely seen without an old-fashioned Corinthian pushed back on his head, risking ridicule to evoke an idealized past. A similar aura surrounds the bell cuirass, like the Corinthian a totem of tradition, figuratively and perhaps literally handed down through generations as the proper attire for hoplite warfare. How else can we explain its remarkably consistent form? With a pedigree dating back to at least the late 8th century Argos Panoply, Greek bell cuirasses had changed very little 250 years later, retaining the highly stylized musculature and the flared form with gave the typology its name. It wasn’t until their smoothly polished sides started morphing into fleshy anatomical precision that a new style emerged to finally render the bell cuirass obsolete. The “muscle cuirass” would in time become even more iconic than its predecessor, and I certainly wanted one of those too, but the bell cuirass remained my priority.

I befriended master medieval armorer Jeff Wasson in late 2021, at The Greek Phalanx’s very first outing. Shortly thereafter I started making weekly visits to his Queens workshop as his assistant, eventually gaining enough experience to attempt making my own armor under his guidance. Although my long term plan was to make both styles of cuirass, I initially assumed that the simpler, smoother bell cuirass would be an easier project to start with than the sinuously organic muscle cuirass. Jeff advised otherwise. Three years later, I understand why he was right. Despite having the experience of having made my muscle cuirass first, the bell cuirass was far more difficult, taking approximately twice as long to complete.

The challenges I faced were self-inflicted. First, I had chosen as my model the most difficult to replicate example of the typology — very dramatically flared, and not only at the skirt, but also (and more unusually) at the collar. Even creating a paper pattern for such a complex shape with so many compound, anti-clastic curves was a headache, and ultimately something of a leap of faith, trusting in the relatively soft metal’s ability to take whatever shape I beat into it (or stretched out of it). The second layer of difficulty I insisted on was making both the breastplate and the backplate historically, from single sheets of bronze (rather then separately formed pieces joined by rivets or brazing), which to my knowledge had never before been attempted in a reproduction of this typology.

Because tin bronze is not available in large sheets, the material I worked with was 1.2mm “commercial bronze” (CuZn10), cut from the same 10’ x 2’ sheet as my muscle cuirass. While technically a brass by virtue of being copper alloyed with zinc rather than tin, commercial bronze retains the ancient proportion of copper (approximately 90%), so its golden color more closely resembles ancient bronze than modern “yellow” brass (which possesses a higher zinc content — up to 33%).

After the basic contours of both the breastplate and backplate were bent in by hand, their flared shape was imparted through countless lateral hammer passes, with the plates being supported by various forms, stakes, and anvils. Frequent annealings restored malleability to brittle, work-hardened bronze. The basic concept was to taper/compress the torso above the waistline, while stretching the skirt below the waist. This two part approach distributed the necessary movement of metal on both sides, preventing the flared skirt from getting too thin and fragile. (For a more detailed explanation of bronzeworking processes, see my muscle cuirass article.)

After months of hammering out the overall shape of the breastplate and backplate, the challenge became one of matching their geometry — especially the flared collar and skirt. Precision was required; unlike the two flanged halves of my muscle cuirass, which are butted together, the halves of bell cuirasses nest in a rather complex manner. First, the two plates are hinged together on the right side, allowing the wearer to slip into it already assembled; next, the breastplate overlaps the backplate at the shoulders, locked in place by two press-studs; on the left side; the breastplate is then guided into opened channels in the hemmed edges of the backplate at the armpit and skirt; finally, the two pieces are tied together at the waist by a single leather thong run through bronze loops, one on each plate. While it takes some getting used to, it is on the whole a much faster and more elegant system than the multiple hinge and pin closures on muscle cuirasses.

After planishing the plates smooth, raising the decorative musculature, and finely rolling the edges of each plate as seen on the original, it was time to determine the final finish. After flirting with a mirror polish, I decided to apply the same satin finish that was on my muscle cuirass, and for the same reason: I simply don’t believe that a high mirror polish was sustainable for hoplites on an ancient battlefield — an opinion which I feel Xenophon confirms quite definitely in Cyropaedia 7:1 when he describes Cyrus’ staff “panoplied in armour the same [as Cyrus]: purple tunics, bronze corselets, bronze helmets with white plumes, and sabres … the arms of Cyrus differed from those of the rest in this only, that while the rest were overlaid with the ordinary gold colour, Cyrus' arms flashed like a mirror.” In other words, mirror-polished armor was a highly conspicuous luxury, restricted even within famously ostentatious Persian courts to kings (and would-be kings).

The thickness of the finished cuirass reflects the stretching and compression processes described above, varying between 0.8-1.4mm — well within the parameters observed on artifacts. Previous testing has proven that such thickness is effectively proof against spears, arrows, and all but the most determined war hammer strikes.

I had started the paper patterning for my bell cuirass in spring of 2023, and finished it just in time for the “Military Through the Ages” timeline at the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia in March 2025. On my very first day wearing it at that event, I tripped and fell during a hoplomachia match, popping the cuirass open and deforming the skirt and collar. Nothing that a little rough and ready repair work on a tree stump couldn’t fix, but it reminded me of another illuminating instance of a similar cuirass suffering “battle damage.” This was the armor worn by reenactor Giannis Kadoglou at the 2015 Marathon reenactment, when he participated in one of Paul Bardunias’ experiments to measure the force generated by a file of hoplites in othismos — and had the flared skirt of his cuirass crushed flat. This fascinating little piece of “experimental archaeology” helps confirm the growing consensus that hoplite battles in the Archaic era in which bell cuirasses were worn — perhaps up to and including the battles of the Persian Wars in the early 5th century (per Paul Bardunias and Roel Konijindijk’s article “The Face of Battle at Plataiai”) — were not in fact fought by densely packed phalanxes seeking to literally push each other off the battlefield (as understood by “orthodox” scholars), but rather by looser and perhaps heterogeneous formations of javelin-armed hoplites, peltasts, and archers fighting side by side (the “heretic” perspective). It was perhaps indeed this missile-filled battlefield which gave rise to the more heavily-armored Archaic hoplite in the first place, as incoming missiles are far harder to dodge or parry than the thrusting dory that dominated the Classical hoplite battlefield. The flared skirt of the bell cuirass offers especially good lower body protection against plunging projectiles (although it is also quite effective against dorata when the wearer leans forward in a natural fighting stance). As missile threats receded, the need for body and limb armor itself probably declined, contributing to the lightened hoplite we see by the Peloponnesian War.

A final observation about the bell cuirass is that it is considerably more comfortable than the later muscle cuirass, which generally features a lower abdominal curve that precludes deep crouching or kneeling (as exhibited by bell cuirass-wearing hoplites depicted on vases in “ambush”). This may again suggest a looser, more mobile Archaic battlefield than the dense push of Classical phalanx battle.