Ptergis and Segmentata at the Turn of the Millenia AD

[Matt Lukes]

Or it was a style- again copied from Trajan's Column. The overall point here though is that because of the clear realism problems, while things might be 'based' on something real- there was scale and laminated armour, there were spears, there were knee-pants, the details are all pretty dodgy so it's as dodgy to see anything relatively uniuqe, like the segmentata guy wearing pteryges, as absolute truth; they're depicted quite often with scale armour and since there's a guy in scale next to the guy in the segmented armour, perhaps even the artist just wanted a continuity... who knows.