Another primary consideration in introduction & eventual disappearance of Segmentata?

[Robert Vermaat]

I'm not saying the Late Empire was totally inept, but it was definitely a period marked by high inflation and instability compared to Pax Romana when the armor was in its heyday.

The Principate had great metal.  The capacity for Roman metalworkers is drastically underrated.  They had folded steel, they had imported steel.  The outside of segmentata was hard to deflect the blade, and the inside was soft iron to absorb the shock.   Segmentata is case hardened, that's a pretty advanced technological innovation.  Yeah, mail was in widespread use for two millennia but I think you guys are reaching for reasons to prefer it over other armours.  It wasn't preferred in ANY age in which there was plate armour, period.

As to the first quote, I dare say that the early Empire also had it's problems from time to time. The 4th century was, comapred to the Principate, not a completely tranquil period but neither a time of prolonged crisis.

Mail was preferred in many centuries after the plate armour was disbanded by the Romans.
Literacy may have dropped in the West, but you seem to completely ignore that the Roman Empire continued for another 1000 years in the East. Here, too, the plate armour was disbanded, and maybe even before it was in the West. Are you really suggesting that the decline which we see in the West also happened in the East? I think not, so there must have been another reason for the abondoning of the plate armour due to a 'decline inliteracy'.

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Chainmail has a lot of great qualities, nobody argues against that.  Especially so in the military where one would spend 99.9% of the time doing things other than fighting.  

We should admire segmentata for what it is.  Although probably not an ideal armor for any society that has limits on its economy, it was a fantastic invention for its time; a precursor to the next step in military technology ca. 1,100 years later.  Dominate Empire's economy was a fraction of the Principate's.  It's hard to argue otherwise.

Sorry but like I said in the reply before thios, I think you are now completely ignoring Roman military history, Even during the principate more than half (or even less) of the army was not equipped with the segmentata. Why do you suppose this was the case? Either the plate armour was not good enough for the Multi-purpose role of the auxiliary infantry, and best used by the legionaries in their heavy infantry battlefiled role. Or it was too expensive to be used by all the soldiers of the Roman army.

Either way, the segmentata was of lilited use, and not the fantastic invention you make it out to be. After the changes in the Roman army of the 4th c. and afterwards, we never see the return of the segmentata, even though this would have been very much possible in the military history of the Roman Empire. We do see however a changing role in the infantry, from the purely heavy legionary battlefield role to a much more diverse infantry that can both fight pitched battles as well as patrol and raid enemy villages at night. And wear mail armour.

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Go watch the movie Contagion, and then try to imagine an ancient society trying to operate in THAT context.  It's difficult to and I can't fathom how rough it must have been.  They'd have lost vast numbers of educated or trained people, replaced by large numbers of children.
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That's a LOT less people in a position of authority in the army.  That's a LOT less people who know how to make extravagant armour and weapons.  That's a LOT less people who could govern, rule, and lead properly.  

I think you overestimate the impact of diseases in the Roman world. For one, these were as far as we know recurring disasters, and as we all know the world did not end. Apart from Justinian plague, these were no 'bubonic plague' events after all.
Also, the impact may very well have been different for the different parts of the Empire, and people may have been used to them. Also, the impact of any plague was different in the countryside and the cities.
Lastly, we have no evidence of Roman society being severely hit by a massive drop in population as you seem to suggest. No sources speak of such a disaster, no cemetaries show the loss of massive numbers of nobility, etc.
Nor, for that matter, do we see such mass extinctions in areas outside the Empire.

Therefore I see no reason to see a hypothesis of the Roman army being devoid of men and commanders. Wars continued being fought, inside and outside the Empire.

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Other evidence is the bodies of numerous plague victims, writings we have from the time (Galen etc.), and the near constant drop in the amount of soldiers the Empire fielded onward all the way to Adrianople.  Adrianople was a battle in which the Empire was dealt a lethal blow after ONLY losing 10,000 men.  

Excuse me, but no evidence speaks of a constant drop in the amount of soldiers fielded towards Adrianople. None whatsoever. To the contrary - due to the guesswork about unit sizes we can argue for a late Roman army strength between 450.000 strong (which is comparable of the number towards the end of Augustus' reign) based on the lower estimate of the Notitia Dignitatum, and no less than 645.000 as based on Agathius (Agath. V.13).

Also, what 'lethal blow' was dealt to the Roman Empire at Adrianople? That 'so-called blow' has been discussed here very often, and at no time could evidence be presented that the defeat at Adrianople presented the end of the Empire. Which, I should not have to repeat, continued on for another 1000 years despite its field army being destroyed at Adrianople.