PERIMERI´DIA
PERIMERI´DIA or
PARAMERI´DIA (
περιμηρίδια, Arrian.
Tact. 4;
παραμηρίδια more usually), armour for the thighs,
cuisses. These articles of armour, though not in
common use in the ordinary Greek panoply, are shown sufficiently often on
the monuments as occasionally employed by Greek warriors at least as far
back as the fifth century B.C. The accompanying illustrations show what may
be
gathered as to their general form. They seem to have been adapted
to the shape of the thigh, clasping it round in the same way as the greave
clasped the leg. The lower edge is in some cases curved out in such a way as
to allow room for that part of the greave which protected the knee (see fig.
1). Like the greave, too, the parameridia seem to have been constructed of
metal, as is probable both from the character of the decorations traced upon
them in the vase pictures, and also from the fact that they are usually
there coloured like the greave. [n the British Museum is a bronze object
which from its form would be adapted to the parameridion, and may have been
actually intended for this purpose.
For instances of its occurrence in vase-paintings, see
Brit. Mus. Cat.
of Vases, Nos. 473, 557, 591, 608; vase in Brit. Mus. B 50;
Gerhard,
Aus. Vas. ii. pl. cxxii.;
Mon. Ined.
6.78; and
Mus. Greg. ii. liii.
All these instances occur upon black-figured vases; at present no
illustration of these weapons is known in art later than the fifth century
B.C. In Greek writers, however, of the third century B.C. and downwards,
they are frequently mentioned, but here almost exclusively as employed by
cavalry, both for the rider and his horse. Xenophon (
Xen. Anab. 1.8,
6) describes the armour of the 600 horsemen with Cyrus as consisting
of thorax, parameridia, and helmet. The same writer (
de Re
Eq. 12, 8 and 10) speaks of them as among the necessary equipment of
a cavalry soldier: cf. especially Id.
Cyr. Inst. 7.1, 2,
where they are described as of bronze, alike for horses and riders; and
Arrian,
Tact. 4, where the riders have
περιμηρίδια, the horses
παραπλευρίδια. For parameridia as part of the protective
armour of the horse in action, see also
Xen.
de Re Eq. 12, 8, and Pollux, 1.140. Xenophon
(
Cyr. Inst. 6.4) makes a further distinction of
παραπλευρίδια for horses driven in chariots and
παραμηρίδια for those ridden by the
cavalry.
[
C.S]