Strange Gallic Armor on Julius Caesar's Coinage

**Hirtius** · February 25, 2021, 06:57 PM

I was curious to look for archaeological depictions of later Gallic armor when I came across depictions of captured Gallic trophies depicted on Caesar's coinage. There are quite a few of these, generally following the same formula. However, something bothered me.

https://imgur.com/a/jo0Yhdi

I'm focused on the torso armor. A few of them seem to obviously represent mail. No mystery there. However, the vast majority of depictions show something different. Many of them appear to be striated, and some are smooth. They really don't look like the representations of mail. However, they also don't look like the type 4 (tube and yoke) armor present in earlier La Tène imagery. This is most likely armor, since it is depicted with other arms and the mail examples are very clearly armor. What do you think this is?

I know there is artistic license, but the prevalence of the striation and the clear depiction of mail in some examples makes it seem as if they represent different things. These coins also have lots of variations, and I'm guessing there were more than a couple artists.

Why the striation? Could this be some representation of mail? It's certainly a possibility, but there are also examples that depict mail in a far better way. I also considered that it could be an organic armor. However, as previously mentioned this depiction doesn't line up with any other examples I know of.

What do you think?

**Sar1n** · February 25, 2021, 07:15 PM

I don't think there's a reason why to consider it armour. Not using armour to show off one's bravery (or for other reasons) was not unheard of among Gauls. It could be just an expensive tunic taken from such warrior. Or it's simply there because without anything on torso, the coin would look weird.

**Roma_Victrix** · February 25, 2021, 10:25 PM

The coin is rather faded, worn out and details on coins weren't always fantastic, especially ones lacking a portrait of a god, goddess, posthumous or legendary hero or contemporary ruler and instead had little figures like these. It's probably just a coat of mail armor.

You have to remember that ancient Greek and Roman coins were simply mass produced pieces of propaganda, sometimes containing beautiful works of art with very detailed portraits of deities, Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors. However, most coins were meant to relay a simple message to a wide audience and they didn't bother making every single one a detailed work of art totally faithful to realistic portrayal of subject matter. You often find coins with cartoonish depictions of animals like Egyptian crocodiles or crude depictions of naval warships. Sometimes even deities are shown in full-bodied miniature form instead of profile portrait and these also have rough rather than fine detail.

**Hirtius** · February 25, 2021, 11:07 PM

Originally Posted by Roma_Victrix

The coin

You're using the singular. Are you just talking about the very first picture? That one is mail. I'm talking about the other type. I have a list of pictures in the link, scroll down. The striated examples clearly have that as their design, where the more obvious mail examples use a different pattern.

It's also not necessarily a matter of detail. While some are obviously very worn and probably weren't too detailed to start off with, the striated design is repeated through various designs. The mail type is also repeated through several different designs. Some of these designs are actually quite detailed for what they are.

**Hirtius** · February 25, 2021, 11:23 PM

Hang on, I think I have something here.

https://imgur.com/a/YRgE1LS

I did some digging and looking at Gallic coins, and these three coins are from the Arverni and depict a warrior in the same pose. The top two have traces of what look to striations on the garment. Are these related to the objects in Caesar's coins?

I also did the same for the Aedui.

https://imgur.com/a/VO7D50E

They also share a type of armor, but I'm going to guess that it is mail even though they don't have a defining texture. Some of the examples display that shoulder drape that Gallic mail is sometimes depicted with.

**Roma_Victrix** · February 26, 2021, 07:35 AM

Ah, I see. I didn't realize that.

So I scrolled down and looked at the others. I'll admit they do look weird, but they're probably just representative of tunics as suggested by Sar1n. I don't recall Caesar's Commentarii De Bello Gallico mentioning some funky type of armor wholly unique to the Gauls. Surely he would have mentioned something like that, especially since it appears on coinage and prominently in the tropaeum monuments set up in Rome.

**Hirtius** · February 26, 2021, 06:38 PM

I don't think it's just a tunic. Why would the Romans display it with captured arms and armor? And Sar1n also mentions how it might be there because the coin would look weird, however there are examples without it.

While the missing attestation by Caesar would seem weird, does he really talk about specific equipment much in the first place? In general, he tells us frustratingly little about the Gauls. And to reverse that logic, if there was some tunic that was so cool they had to strip it off of a defeated warrior and display it, why doesn't Caesar mention that?

**Marvzilla** · February 28, 2021, 04:03 PM

Originally Posted by Hirtius

I don't think it's just a tunic. Why would the Romans display it with captured arms and armor? And Sar1n also mentions how it might be there because the coin would look weird, however there are examples without it.

While the missing attestation by Caesar would seem weird, does he really talk about specific equipment much in the first place? In general, he tells us frustratingly little about the Gauls. And to reverse that logic, if there was some tunic that was so cool they had to strip it off of a defeated warrior and display it, why doesn't Caesar mention that?

The ones in your first post with the vertical stripes look somewhat like a gambeson style garment, like the subarmalis.

**Hirtius** · February 28, 2021, 10:15 PM

Originally Posted by Marvzilla

The ones in your first post with the vertical stripes look somewhat like a gambeson style garment, like the subarmalis.

To be honest, a gambeson-like armor is my actual thought, but there's not enough evidence. Between Caesar's coins and the Arverni coins (I added a few more, https://imgur.com/a/YRgE1LS ), these are the only evidence of that type of garment. To make matters worse, the Arverni coins have very little detail around the upper torso. It's impossible to tell if it's just coincidence or representing a similar object.

I've scoured La Tène statues and artwork, but that is pretty limited and contains no trace of a gambeson-like armor. There are type 4 (tube and yoke) examples though, which proves that at some point organic armors were used by the Gauls. However, those examples found are before the late La Tène context that the coins are from.