He was armed with a coat of mail Made of plates of brass laid over one another like the scales of a fish. Five thousand shekels of brass The common shekel contained a fourth part of an ounce; and so five thousand shekels made one thousand two hundred and fifty ounces, or seventy-eight pounds; which weight was not unsuitable to a man of such vast strength as his height speaks him to have been. Greaves Boots. The staff of his spear like a weaver's beam On which the weavers fasten their web. It was like this for thickness. And though the whole weight of Goliath's armour may seem prodigious, yet it is not so much by far as one Athanatus did manage, of whom Pliny relates that he saw him come into the theatre with arms weighing twelve thousand ounces. A shield
Probably for state; for he that was clad in brass little needed a shield.