pteruge

English

Reconstructed Roman legionary armour, including pteruges hanging from the belt.

Etymology

Derived from Ancient Greek πτέρυξ (ptérux, “feather”).

Noun

pteruge (plural pteruges)

1. (historical) A flexible feather-like strip of material at the edge of body or head armour, particularly used in Greco-Roman times.
   • 1975, H. Russell Robinson, The Armour of Imperial Rome, Charles Scribner's Sons, page 160:

     In Metope VI a mounted officer, probably the Emperor Trajan himself, wears a lorica squamata of very small scales with a double skirt of pteruges and a cingulum about the waist.

   • 1989, Emily Vermeule, “Carved Bones from Corinth”, in Thomas A. Holland, editor, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization‎^[1], number 47, Chicago, Illinois: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 274:

     Under this come three fragments with vertical pteruges that are rectangular with rounded lower ends, and another fragment with pteruges angled up to the right, which perhaps form a swirl at the left hip.

   • 1998, Stuart W. Pyhrr, José-A. Godoy, chapter 19, in Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries, The Metropolotan Museum of Art, →ISBN, page 120:

     Internal leather straps also fasten the eighteen pteruges, which are arranged in two overlapping rows. Each pteruge, which expands slightly at the end, is constructed of a leather backing superimposed with a steel border with a boxed edge and a raised row of leaves pointing inward, the center filled with riveted mail.

See also

• lappet