How To.. wear the Pugio and Gladius (belts, fasteners)

[Crispvs]

Well the pieces from Hod Hill aren't definitely Pompeii parts. They just seem about the right size. I am following Martin White here (article in 'Exercitus' from a few years back). I think you are right that the earliest indisputable Pompeii type evidence is Loughor. Do we know any sort of date for the Long Windsor sword incidentally?

Magnus,

If your sword knocks against your greaves or interferes with your walk, perhaps the issue is not so much that the baldric is not strapped down, so much as that you baldric may be a bit long. I gave up passing my belt over my sword baldric more than three years ago. To begin with, I found, like you, that it got in the way as I walked. However, I then went back and looked at lots of stelae and noticed that sword pommels are fairly consistently shown quite close to the armpit. I shortened my baldric until my sword pommel seemed to be at about that height and tried it at that length for the next show. Lo and behold, this seemed about right and I have never had anything but the most minor of problems with it ever since. Obviously I know than Favonius Facilis is shown with a very long baldric, but he really is the exception.

Sometimes it can be instructive going back and trying to imitate what we see in the surviving evidence. I went looking for evidence for baldrics being secured by belts and ended up noticing the evidence for baldrics being short enough not to require belts in any case.

Crispvs