The first known use of armour was by the Egyptians (1500 B.C.) The armour was a cloth, shirtlike garment overlapped with bronze scales or plates sewn to it. The armour was very heavy, causing this style of protection to be short-lived.
The Assyrians (900-600 B.C.) developed lamellar armour; small rectangular plates or lames were sewn to a garment in parallel rows. This style of armour was used into the 16th c. A.D. The Assyrians also used bronze helmets, shields and arms.
In 8th c. B.C., Greek technology refined armour by fashioning bronze plates to fit over distinct parts of the body, i.e., following the musculature of the body part it was protecting. Their armour was the bronze breastplate and backplate, termed the cuirass, greaves, which protected the shins, and brass helmets. The Greeks used a massive shield called an argive which covered the body from chin to knee.
Rome was founded in 753 B.C., but 500 years of warfare were needed for Rome to gain dominance of the Italian peninsula. The Romans borrowed heavily from the Greeks using their version of the argive (scutum), greaves, helmets and cuirass.
By the 3rd c. B.C., Romans developed a cuirass of linen covered with bronze lames and a shirt of interlocking metal rings called mail. It is believed mail was a Celtic invention. (Celts were ancient people of western and central Europe including Britons and Gauls.) Mail, or chainmail, was made by winding wire tightly around an iron rod, cutting the wire into rings, and interlocking the rings together by soldering or riveting each individual ring closed. A mail shirt weighed between 14 to 30 pounds.
Roman military technology changed throughout the years of the Empire, and by the first c. A.D. they had developed the lorica segmentata, a body armour of iron bands fastened together with leather straps. Bronze or iron helmets were still used, as were mail and scale armour, and the scuta, a shield of laminated wood covered with linen and/or hides with a metal boss for holding the scuta.
Rome fell in 456 A.D., and bronze armour was rarely used for many centuries, instead leather and mail armour predominated.
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http://www.nps.gov/archive/colo/Jthanout/HisArmur.html
