MAKING A GREEK MUSCLE CUIRASS: PART ONE

By Andrew Yamato

An edited version of this article was originally published in issue XVII.1 (February 2024) of Ancient Warfare magazine.

The bronze muscle cuirass. A marvel of metalworking, a milestone of artistic sophistication, and an icon of the Ancient Greek hoplite, it embodied its wearer’s status – and quite possibly saved his life. One of the finest surviving examples is on permanent display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where I live. Working with the guidance of master medieval armorer Jeff Wasson in his Queens workshop, I set out to make an accurate replica of it.   

Military reenactors don’t tend to get taken very seriously. Perhaps it’s our adjacency to cosplayers and LARPers on the spectrum of historical hobbyists, or perhaps it’s the inherent silliness of playing at war for fun. Regardless of how conscientiously reenactors may seek authenticity in our impressions, professional historians tend to regard us (at best) as enthusiastic consumers of history, with little to contribute except informal public education. In fairness, this is understandable for modern impressions, for which documentation is comprehensive and expertise largely a matter of research. The situation is a bit different for ancient reenactors, however; as we grow more numerous and organized, we’re increasingly gaining a place at the grownups’ table with what’s become known as “experimental archaeology.” By donning accurate panoplies and testing weapons and tactics which would otherwise exist only in academic theory, we are increasingly recognized by open-minded scholars as having unique perspectives on many fundamental yet uncertain aspects of ancient warfare. Reenactor Dr. Paul Bardunias, an entymologist by profession, has indeed emerged as a foremost expert on hoplite warfare based on his scientific approach to physically reconstructing hoplite combat. In the tradition of the great Peter Connolly, many of us have made contributions to the material culture of antiquity by developing new theories, patterns, materials, and constructions for armor, weapons, and clothing; our collective project is to set an ever-higher bar for the historical accuracy and relevance of the hobby.    

Medieval armorer Jeff Wasson started out as just such an ambitious reenactor himself. In seeking to recreate a mounted knight to the highest possible standard, he became a world-renowned armorer and a prizewinning jouster. I met Jeff at a historical timeline event on Long Island in October 2021 – the first outing of my hoplite group “The Greek Phalanx.” He was impressed with the tube-and-yoke corselets I’d made for us and arranged for me to visit his workshop in Queens. I was hooked from the moment I walked into his airy workshop, filled with armor and armor-making tools he’s made over the decades, all with a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline. I had never done metalworking before, but eager to spend time in such a happy place, I immediately offered my services as a weekly apprentice. After six months of learning to help make medieval armor, Jeff asked if I wanted to try making something for myself. Well, now that you mention it…

The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses one of the world’s largest collections of ancient Greek armor, a centerpiece of which is a 4th century BCE Apulian muscle cuirass widely considered to be the finest surviving example of its type. (Comprising the boot of Italy, Apulia had been heavily colonized by Greek settlers since the Mycenaean era, and by the 4th century was a prosperous and fully integrated part of Megálē Hellás.) The cuirass is notable for its excellent state of preservation and its exquisitely rendered anatomical detail. In the slight droop of its pectorals and the prominence of the belly and external oblique muscles, it captures the fleshy reality of a mature man’s strong but mortal body. It is an embodiment of ancient Greek artistic sensibility at its most refined, and its development tracks the evolution of Greek aesthetics more generally. 

The History of the Bronze Hoplite Cuirass

As exemplified by many kouroi figures depicting nude young men, art in the Archaic era (c. 800-500 BCE) modeled the human form rather stolidly, in the Egyptian manner: stoic features, ramrod straight posture, stiff arms and legs. The torsos of these figures have a minimalistic, almost abstracted idealism – an aesthetic closely reflected in the embossed anatomical features of the bronze “bell” cuirasses so ubiquitously worn by the hoplites of this era. Surviving examples and artistic depictions of this typology generally feature 1) a smooth silhouette tapering to a narrow waist before flaring out into the wide skirt or “bell” which gives the typology its name; 2) stylized swirls indicating pectorals and shoulder blades 3) an inverted “U” defining the ribcage; and 4) sharply defined vertical indentations on the abdomen and small of the back. In maintaining this relatively standardized form for nearly three centuries, the bell cuirass appears to have been a fixed totem of tradition, figuratively and perhaps literally handed down from generation to generation of hoplites as the proper panoply for fighting the relatively ritualistic battles of the Archaic era. 

In the latter half of the 6th century we start seeing modifications to the bell cuirass which prefigure the muscle cuirass. First, the widely flared skirt becomes less pronounced, eventually disappearing altogether in favor of a silhouette which more closely follows the contours of the body. This may not have been an entirely aesthetic evolution; new tactics may also have played a role. Scholars increasingly believe that Archaic hoplites fought in looser, heterogenous phalanxes, mixed in with lighter missile troops and quite possibly fighting as missile troops themselves, throwing the lighter of two spears they carried and rarely if ever coming to grips in the physical crush of phalanx combat generally known as othismos. The widely flared skirt of the bell cuirass would have provided considerable protection for the lower body from plunging projectiles in this style of more open combat, but as the classical phalanx emerged – perhaps as late as the Persian Wars – densely packed hoplites collectively pushing into each other’s backs with their shields would have crushed flared bell cuirass skirts flat. It was in fact the reenactor and AW contributor Giannis Kadoglou who first confirmed this phenomenon by personal experience at the 2015 Battle of Marathon reenactment after participating in othismos experiments conducted by Paul Bardunias wearing an authentic bell cuirass.

The second change we see in sculptural depictions of late 6th Century bell cuirasses is that the abdominal muscles are now being rendered more realistically, as soft sectional bulges rather than a single sharp vertical line; this corresponds with a contemporary evolution in Greek art toward more naturalistic depictions of the human body. Around the end of The Persian Wars, we see the first vase depictions of what can truly be called muscle cuirasses. Vestigial decorative features (e.g. pectoral swirls) are carried over from the bell cuirass on early transitional pieces, but the overall contours of the armor are now recognizably organic, with sensitively rendered musculature. By the middle of the 5th century, the aesthetic shift is as clearly articulated in armor as in the monumental art rising in Golden Age Athens: Classical Greece celebrates the human form, no longer just symbolically as votive or monument, but as a dynamic expression of humanity itself, and even the glorification of specific living individuals. The sensual vulnerability of flesh is part of what makes it beautiful, and the newest, most coveted armors – muscle cuirasses and anatomical greaves – now take the precise form of the specific bodies they are custom-made to protect.     

The 6th century rise and 5th century ubiquity of the tube-and-yoke cuirass is beyond the scope of this article, as is the probable trend away from body armor altogether by the Peloponnesian War. To some extent, both phenomena reflect the larger, longer, and more distant campaigns being fought by expanded hoplite levies unable to universally afford the full bronze panoplies of their Archaic ancestors. Given the relatively small number of surviving muscle cuirasses, it is likely that they were indeed quite rare. It is often supposed that the muscle cuirass grew in popularity in the 4th century, and it is true that virtually all of our surviving examples date to this period, but because they are almost exclusively found in Italy, this may not reflect a general hoplite trend so much as the more extravagant tastes of Megálē Hellás – both Greek colonists and Italian natives – which maintained a tradition of panoply tomb burials long abandoned in mainland Greece.   

Making the Muscle Cuirass 

So exactly how were these things made? How comfortable were they in battle? How well did they protect against the weapons a hoplite might face? These were some of the questions I set out to answer with my replica. As any good reconstruction starts with research, I made a number of visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to photograph the original cuirass from every possible angle. It is fortunately displayed disassembled, allowing close inspection of both the breastplate and backplate. The exemplary condition of the cuirass is rare, with even small details like hinges, loops, and the thickness of the bronze plate itself being clearly discernible. Most importantly, the shape is undistorted, unlike the many cuirasses which appear to have been ritually “killed” by flattening (or simply crushed by the millenia). 

Choosing a raw material for the reconstruction entailed some compromises. We don’t know exactly how Greek armorers acquired their bronze sheet, but they almost certainly left this to dedicated bronze smelters. This process involved melting down pure copper, probably from Cyprus, along with tin most likely imported from what is now Afghanistan. The molten bronze was perhaps then poured directly onto polished stone to cool in as thin a sheet as possible before being hand-hammered to the desired thickness for armor. Although Jeff has indeed forged medieval armor from smelted “bloomery steel” (the subject of a 2017 NOVA documentary) I happily skipped this first stage to start my project with the modern convenience of homogenous plate. 

Metallurgical analysis of Greek helmets indicate that ancient bronze was approximately 90% copper and 10% tin. This alloy is commercially available today, but only as small and expensive plates which would require a tedious process of assembly by brazing. A far cheaper and easier alternative would be standard yellow brass – an alloy of approximately 67% copper and 33% zinc, available in large plates. Brass is, however, a later discovery, more associated with Roman armor, and it has a more pronounced yellow color than ancient bronze. I found an acceptable aesthetic compromise in “commercial bronze” – an alloy of 90% copper and 10% zinc that is technically still a brass, but with the warmer reddish tone of bronze, and available in large sheets. Based on visual inspection of the several muscle cuirasses at the Met, the published weights and thicknesses of other examples, and Jeff’s seasoned estimation of what would work best, I ordered a 10’x 2’ sheet of 18 gauge (1.2mm) commercial bronze – enough for two cuirasses. (With the aforementioned qualification, I will henceforth refer to the metal of my cuirass simply as “bronze.”)   

Using my photographs as references, Jeff drafted a full-sized paper pattern for the breastplate and backplate based upon front and side tracings of my torso. We taped the pattern to my body to check and adjust fit before transferring it to the bronze and cutting out both pieces with a bench shear. After roughing in the anatomical details with a permanent marker, I was ready to start hammering.

Like most ancient Greek armor, the muscle cuirass is simple in design. A breastplate and a backplate, each hammered from a single sheet of bronze, flanged or hemmed along the edges and joined by a combination of hinges and tie loops. The complexity and artistry lies in achieving a sinuously organic shape, following the prominences and depressions of an athletic torso. The biggest curves are those of the pectorals, so it was there that my first hammer blows fell. Placing a leather shot-bag on a wooden stump under the bronze plate to absorb the impact, and using a wide-domed hammer to move as much metal as possible without creating sharp indentations, I “sank” in the pecs in a process so named because one is literally sinking the metal below its initial plane, stretching it out thinner. (This is also called “dishing.”)

The process of hammering a metal sheet invariably causes its edges to curl upward. You want this to work in your favor, as was the case here: as I sank  in the pecs and the belly, the sides of the breastplate curled around to create the basic shape of a torso. Indeed, it soon became necessary to occasionally push the sides and shoulders out by hand to maintain the right shape.  

The next step was to turn the breastplate over and “raise” the armholes. This process uses a form congruent to the desired shape – in this case a large iron ball stake, although the ancients could probably have used a wooden form – to support the metal adjacent to the hammering point. (Until the planishing process much later, you never want to directly pinch the metal between hammer and form, which thins it out.) Moving in passes over the length of the armholes with a rawhide mallet to avoid sharp indentations, each blow compressed and thickened the metal along the curvature of the form, essentially shrinking away the edge and creating a convex shape around the side of the pectorals. The basic shape of the breastplate was now established. 

In Part 2 of this article in the next issue of Ancient Warfare, we finish the cuirass and I test out its comfort and protective properties at a reenactment…