Greaves and Vambraces in the rank and file

[L. Marius Victor]

Matthew Amt wrote:

Several literary sources state that legionaries were required to furnish their own gear, and there are surviving records from the Principate that show payroll deductions for equipment. We have letters that soldiers about getting weaponry from their families. We find from other records that the state only began *issuing* equipment in the 3rd century AD, so the soldiers would have had to pay for their own in the first century even if it was made and provided by the army. The preponderance of evidence that Roman soldiers owned their equipment outweighs the comparison to modern practice. That's how the study of history works.

So if they had to pay for it, maybe greaves would have been optional? And would also explain why chain mail was used by Legionaries right alongside the Segmentata? It may also be possible that Legionaries were given a sort of required gear list to fill, and anything beyond that was optional. Just a thought.

But they are the people who lived back then!! They understood their culture far better than anyone today, and they were intimately familiar with many of the practices back then. Dismissing them all as unreliable is incredibly arrogant.
If you dismiss the artistic evidence as fantasy, and the literary evidence as political hype, and the archeological evidence as somehow skewed or hopelessly incomplete, WHAT THE HECK IS LEFT?? You cannot study history without these sources! All you are doing at that point is making up what you want it to have been like, and scoffing at any attempts to inject some scholarly evidence into the debate. That is not how the study of history works.

I'm not dismissing them, nor am i calling it fantasy. I'm just saying take the info with a grain of salt. And I'm not scoffing at anything.

But if you go in front of the public and present your theory as fact or even strong possibility, you will be flying in the face of all the known evidence--artistic, literary, and archeological--and you will be teaching an untruth. It is my duty as one who loves and teaches history to try to convince you to stick with the evidence we have, rather than what we want to believe. THAT IS HOW THE STUDY OF HISTORY WORKS.

So is it your duty to be disrespectful to a person who is only trying to have a healthy debate? You have called me arrogant, and have been condescending by repeating "THAT IS HOW THE STUDY OF HISTORY WORKS". Thanks for that. I am trying to keep this post as respectful as possible, which is hard right now, because I dont want to get kicked off the site. Those who know me would be surprised, as I am not an easy man to get along with, nor am I one to take any bull. The problem is I'm not bowing down to your unquestionable knowledge, and you're taking it personally.
I also love history, specifically military history as it applies to the common infantryman. Having actually been an infantryman, this is where my interest lies. I also reenact Civil War and WWII.
I have not taught my own personal opinions as fact, but I do bring up the subject for debate (which is what a teacher is supposed to do, isnt it?). When the kid asked me about the lack of greaves, I was quite impressed because most of them were asking questions like "how many bullets does a machine gun shoot" (but hey, they were third graders). I responded by saying that most historians agree that greaves were not worn during this period, but some disagree. At the time, by the way, I wasn't wearing greaves. I'm giving another presentation in February about the Civil War soldier, but to 8th graders, I'm looking forward to the type of questions I'm going to get.....