Pugiones and Cingula

[Crispvs]

A little, but not in a way which impedes me or causes me any problems. I have to admit that to begin with it did take a week or two to get used to but I quickly became comfortable with it and it has caused not problems since. Most of the time I do not even remember that it is not fixed in place. However, to do this it is important to adjust the length of your baldric to something approximating the length suggested by the positions of sword pommels on tombstones. When I first tried to wear my sword unbelted, I had not shortened the baldric sufficiently and my sword jumped out of the scabbard while I was running and landed up on the ground. Since shortening the baldric to fit better with the available evidence this has not happened.
One objection which has been levelled at me is that sometimes I can not resheath my sword quite as quickly as those who have belted their swords. However, I believe that it is unlikely that a soldier in combat would be likely to wish to put his sword away in a hurry once he had drawn it. He would resheath it when he no longer needed to use it, which would presumably when he was out of immediate danger and therefore had a little more leisure to put his sword away again. As we are told that the Romans treated training as bloodless battles and battles as bloody training I see no reason to think that they would have needed or wanted their swords to be rigged up differently for everyday use.
Normally I can re-sheath my sword in about the same time as everybody else, but when it does take a little longer, I am sure the second or so delay would have made little difference in practice.


Crispvs