A breastplate is a device worn over the torso to protect it from injury, as an item of religious significance, or as an item of status. A breastplate is sometimes worn by mythological beings as a distinctive item of clothing.
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In medieval weaponry, the breastplate is the front portion of plate armour covering the torso. It has been a military mainstay since ancient times and was one of the last pieces of functional armour to be abandoned with the development of firearms, because it protected the vital organs without limiting mobility. They were usually made of leather, bronze or iron in antiquity, of iron during the Migration Period, and then steel during the Middle Ages and ever since. Bullet-proof vests are their modern descendant.
A "breastplate" or "breastpiece" was among the clothes of the Jewish High Priest. In the Bible, the word Breastplate is used figuratively to describe protecting oneself from unrighteousness (cf, Isaiah 59:17, Ephesians 6:14, etc.).
Both Zeus and Athena are sometimes depicted as wearing a goatskin shield or breastplate called an Aegis. At the center of Athena's shield was the head of Medusa.
The hair-pipe breastplates of 19th-century Plains Indians were made from the West Indian conch, brought to New York docks as ballast and then traded to native Americans of the upper Missouri River. Their popularity spread rapidly after their invention by the Comanche in 1854. They were too fragile and expensive to be considered armour, and were instead a symbol of wealth during the economic depression among Plains Indians after the buffalo were almost exterminated.[1]