a little mythbusting about Roman Armor

[Marcus Aemilius Lepidus]

Great post JaM + rep


I actually find it surprising that we haven't found a single piece of this armour, even though there must have been thousands and thousands made in it's time... yet we've found ancient Scandinavian wooden shields, and ancient Roman clothing and dyes in caves... there must be at least on linothorax hiding out there somewhere.

The Italian scutum was practically designed for individual combat, but was still very effective in close formation... defensively.

They found a nearly complete Prototype of the "Segmentata" at Kalkriese, but the armour was instantly destroyed when they found it. It is sad but such things happend.

A point people allways ignore when talking about the change of the roman army is that one of the main points in changing your tactics and armour are the enemies you have to face. Taking over Auxillary Tactics and "Barbarization" is ofcourse wrong. The strongest militarisized area of the empire became Syria and the east in general, where the Legions had to face an enemy with a professional heavy armoured army and from ancient perspective a centralized state. Something entirely diffrent than their previous enemies.

We can asssume that the segmentata and the gladius was a good equipment to fight Britons, Dacians and early Germanics. In fact many of the 3th century and later gear is heavily influenced by Sassanidian and Steppe Warrior culture.

[daelin4]

It is interesting that segmentata is rarely depicted in anyone other than the average legionary. Centurions are most often depicted as wearing chainmail, among other things like discs for conspicuous display. If anything segmentata and it's use among legionaries certainly were not for the sole purpose of any superior protective qualities.

Speaking of which, it should be noted that changes to the army are not always for the best. Not unless you seriously think the US Army's transition to and out of UCP is a classic example of positive change.

Personally I think this is the best analogy we have on the matter: segmented armour may have been useful at some point, but not so for others, for which it fell out of use over time. Not to mention the far more prolific use of other armour types like mail that would have made its spread that much more difficult.

[GenTiberius]

your argument does not take into account battles where romans lost thousands or decades of thousands legionaries, and with "lost" i mean, "died". Carrae, for instance. So you do not answer my question. What you say can be valid in some cases where armies fled withouth having big casualties, but this happened to poorly trained armies not roman armies. They were disciplined to stay until the last man if they were ordered.

This is more of a mythical view of the Roman soldier than anything else. They did indeed run from battle and they didn't fight "fight to the last man". Sure, they were disciplined, but not to some super human extent.

[SD_Man]

This is more of a mythical view of the Roman soldier than anything else. They did indeed run from battle and they didn't fight "fight to the last man". Sure, they were disciplined, but not to some super human extent.

Yes I agree. Desertion levels were particularly high in the Roman army, those that didn't flee were too stupid enough to know that.

[JaM]

unit routing is not desertion... it happened all the time..its not like they routed and run all the way back to Italia... except few exceptions, every unit in the world would rout in case of unfavorable odds...


(you guys are funny.. its always one extreme against another.. no middle ground..)

[Anna_Gein]

(you guys are funny.. its always one extreme against another.. no middle ground..)

Why do you make generalization on everyone with a single user post as a basis ? His post was humorous by the way.

[Dunadd]

Really interesting OP and thread - thanks JaM

[JaM]

Dunadd: thanks

Anna_Gein: It was not meant against anybody in particular.. it was just my observation from several discussions here or on other forums (well except MyArmoury.com, those guys are golden exception.. probably because there is no anonymity, which always makes people to behave as they should), and from reading RomanArmyTalk posts of Dan Howard, he experienced same thing over and over... people tend to ignore the provided links, wont read the info you give them and usually keep posting same opinions over and over again, never accepting provided facts no matter what.. but hey, what would i want? some decency on the internet?

[SD_Man]

Well until real repeated tests are done to prove these "provided facts" than the "debates" will continue. We need the truth not the math, we need real-time experimentation with real people, not simple reenactors, to sacrifice the needs of the few for the needs of the many!

[Archimonday]

I'm a firm believer that there is a vast amount of information we simply don't have, because evidence of it does not exist. We always like to sit on our high horse and revel in our modern industrial capacity, but I feel that the Ancient world, though it relied heavily on man-power, livestock, and other primitive energy sources, was just as industrial as our modern world. Why should we do the ancients a disservice by condescendingly belittling their societies? Obviously they had the capability to equip massive armies, we know that they did, so their industrial power must have existed in one capacity or another.

This is no where near truer than with armor. I'm a firm believer that there is a lot of missing information on the vast array of armor that would have been worn by the Roman army. Even after Marians time, there would have been noticeable differences between Legions, and probably to a lesser degree, Cohorts. A vast majority of Roman soldiers could have been wearing other types of lighter armor, perhaps something similar to Linothorax, and leather, maybe no armor at all!

I see everything from a soldiers perspective, so when I see the carvings in stone, and the mosaics, and the archaeological finds I have to take a step back and realize that these things are depicting not only an artists rendition of the Roman Army, but also a propagandized version of it. Now how fortunate are we that we have literary evidence as well about the Roman Army? Extremely, but even reading books written by Livy, or Caesars own accounts of Germania must be taken with a grain of salt. They are afterall describing the 'ideal' not the reality. Think about how great of a tale it must have been; Caesars troops return from a great northern land, where uncivilized, non-latin speaking people, with crazed homicidal battle tactics with no sense of honor, screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs, throwing themselves onto the Roman shields, running into battle completely naked, tattooed with demons all over, and YET, the vastly more civilized, Latin, imperial lock step of professionalism that is Rome and the Roman Army defeated these beasts with minimal casualties at all times! Yea, I think you get my point.

I think one of my favorite claims is that Lorica Segmentata must've been custom fit to every single man who wore it. That simply makes zero sense to me. There had to have been a way to adjust the size of the armor, or, the armor was produced in variable sizes from smallest to largest, so that it could be removed from soldiers who left the army either by death or by separation; and then given to another soldier mustered to replace him. There is no way I can sit back and believe that the Roman army would intentionally modify, or destroy every piece of armor every single time a new man joined the ranks, that is just ridiculous.

[JaM]

Well until real repeated tests are done to prove these "provided facts" than the "debates" will continue. We need the truth not the math, we need real-time experimentation with real people, not simple reenactors, to sacrifice the needs of the few for the needs of the many!

Dan Howard is not some kind of a reenactor... he is historian and published author who wrote several books specializing on ancient armor.. you can easily google him up...

[SD_Man]

I dont think you know what I mean when I say: Sacrifice, Hardcore Reenacting, and Blood and Bones. At the very least, a pig in a suit ...

[JaM]

btw, here are some pictures of real Roman Hamata chainmail - it looks nothing like today's replicas imported from india or china..









look how thick these rings are...

[Kissaki]

just another Indian made butted mail replica.

If the comments section is anything to go by, the first one was made by Parker Brown. He certainly posts in the comments himself that he is the one who made it, but admits that he made maille too loose, and the rings too thin and too hard (they are supposed to be made out of soft metal, so they'll deform rather than break). I don't know about the maille in the other one, but both these mailles are riveted, not butted.

[Dunadd]

The mail looks bloody heavy. I can see how it would provide better protection, but it'd also be exhausting to fight in. They must have been extremely fit - and they must not have moved that fast either.

[SD_Man]

If the comments section is anything to go by, the first one was made by Parker Brown. He certainly posts in the comments himself that he is the one who made it, but admits that he made maille too loose, and the rings too thin and too hard (they are supposed to be made out of soft metal, so they'll deform rather than break). I don't know about the maille in the other one, but both these mailles are riveted, not butted.

I agree, you should really check your mail...

[Kissaki]

The mail looks bloody heavy. I can see how it would provide better protection, but it'd also be exhausting to fight in. They must have been extremely fit - and they must not have moved that fast either.

"A helmet is usually thought to be very heavy, but when one is attacking a castle or something similar, and arrows, bullets,large rocks, great pieces of wood and the like are coming down, it will not seem the least bit so."
-Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure

[Tiwaz]

ok you are right. Maybe this is why medieval knights stopped to use chainmail for plate armor , cause they wanted to be killed more easily and abandon the protection of a superior armor. Man, everyone knows that plate is better than chainmail (which is rather good compared to leather armor and everything else, maybe even to lorica squamata, which is better but just against arrows, against hard slashes can breaks)

You mean the knights who wore chainmail for centuries upon centuries? For example during these little irrelevant skirmishes called "Crusades"?
Chainmail was clearly superior armour to practically all other for millenia. Eventually it was surpassed by full plate when used in sufficient thickness, but that in turn was (compared to period of supremacy by chain) discarded in blink of an eye when bullets started to tear holes in it.

Chainmail is extremely difficult to defeat when built properly, not with butted rings with massive size. Modern replicas are far too large and far too thin, modern ones have INTERNAL radius of 6mm while for chain made for battle had EXTERNAL radius of that magnitude. It makes massive difference in terms of protection. Modern replicas are far faster to make with larger rings, but offer inferior protection. Only way to get one with correct protection is to make it yourself by hand.

Chainmails were premium armour for knights for ages. It is just modern fallacy to prefer to depict them in full plate no matter what age period. Or show chainmails easily pierced for purpose of flashiness. If you look at how in those movies lateral slashes across abdomen just drop people dead you would realize how silly it is.

So you take a hit and bam! you shed a few links .. Man that sucks, I need to repair my armor when I get back to camp. Dam, I don't have any extra links on hand b/c I'm a piss poor soldier who was apparently never taught how to maintain his own equipment. Thats ok tho!, Ill just use my a bit of string or wire to tie the hole closed until I can get the proper riveted replacement rings Its that easy, I myself did this with some string when I lost around 10 important rings that holds a section of the doubling secure after some friends and I abused the hell out of it with different weapons.

So, where would this legionary go to buy his bit of string or wire? I assume you mean metal string. There is no handy hardware store in Gaul that carries metal wire as a default part.

In fact, process of making wire which could be used to make rings was incredibly hard. Romans made wire by pulling it through holes on a plate with increasingly smaller diameter. That takes insane amount of time, and quality of iron has to be high or it keeps snapping under stress and you get short pieces of wire. Many people have this false assumption that wire was just there to grab from a spoon while actual manufacturing of resources was the most daunting task of making hamata. Actually putting it together was reasonably fast and easy.

i think horizontal handle might have something to do with fatigue reduction. Scutum was relatively heavy shield, 7-10kg is quite a lot if you have to hold it for several hours during battle.. i spent some of my free time in fitness centers, so can tell that when doing biceps pullups, i can use much greater weight with horizontal grip, than i would do with vertical,but it would also depends on type of grip. Fingers up grip, is the grip ,you can hold quite heavy weight even for a bit longer time, yet fingers down, not so much...

Look at the muscles which hold the weight and what is the weakest link. If weight rests on your fingers, then it is the muscles of your fingers because they have to take the weight fully. If weight can be held by larger muscles you can take it much better.

By the way, regarding curvature of the shield. There might be some benefit from the curve, as it could permit enemy weapon to slide to the side instead of transferring the full energy of the blow on the shield or turning the shield itself violently. Flat shield either has to turn with the blow or take it fully.

[andrew881thebest]

probably that mail was for cavalry, so it could be heavy but mainly horse should carry it. I do not think the regular (fit, ok, but not "rambo-like") infantry man would carry that mail, then the heavy shield, that all the 30-40 kgs impedimenta while marching 30 miles a day. It would simply be inhuman. I think a modern athlete would have hard time doing that nowadays. And you must imagine that regular infantry man was just man of the folks, trained for some time, ok, but not an athlete.

[JaM]

Average hamata suit had 10-15kg. Segmentate armor had around 4-5kg... Hamata was 2-3x heavier... so, average legionary was carrying 15kg hamata, 10kg scutum, 2kg heavy and 1kg light pilum, 1kg helmet,1kg gladius, and his personal staff.. overall, around 30kg of weapons and armor. That is not that far off what today's soldiers are carrying around in Afghanistan, so i don't see why Roman soldier that was used to harsher conditions would not handle.