Leon Lorica Segmentata - Follow Up Question

[mcbishop]

Not wishing to take the fascinating topic off on a tangent and having failed miserably to find a previous discussion on RAT via a search may I please ask a potentionally earth-shatteringly easy to answer question?

When (and by whom)did the differentiation between lorica segmentata armoured infantry become defined as "heavy" as opposed to lorica hamata/squamata armoured personnel being termed "light" infantry? Is it an ancient source or a modern interpretation/assumption?

As far as I am aware, light troops in the Republican period had no/very little armour in comparison. I can also see why one would not wish to wear LS on a horse but do hamata/squamata (and even plumata) wearers necessarily have to be light troops in Roman terms? After all a trooper wearing squamata (and his horse) is considered heavy cavalry - or is this also a misnomer?

And, while we're on the subject; Trajan's column is often trotted out as the source for LS. What about the Tropaeum Traiani (inset on the attached photo - if it loads)? Was this not also victory monument from the early 2nd century? And erected four years before Trajan's Column and, allegedly, made by the legionnaries themselves?

First (to deal with the last), no-one has ever said legionaries couldn't wear scale or mail. They do so on lots of tombstones and on the TT. The metopes may well reflect the actuality of armour in the Dacian Wars as witnessed by the sculptors (or it may be more or less stylised, we don't know). TC is stylised to convey a political message within a narrative frame. That is why all the speculation about shield patterns is just so much BS. You couldn't see that level of detail from the galleries (wherever they may have been; no agreement on that) so it was overall general effect that was being sought, brought to fruition by sculptors who liked doing different twiddly bits according to their whim (how else to explain the seggie with mail chiselling on it?) – just think Slartibartfast and glaciers and you'll get it. The Good Dr Coulston's thesis and the resultant book... when it appears... are all about looking for patterns amongst the details that betray sculptural individuality.

As for the former, it's about the style of fighting. Think Napoleonic riflemen, who were light troops and skirmished, as opposed to line infantrymen, who fought in line and didn't (skirmish, that is). Line infantry could withstand a cavalry charge (as Ardant du Picq always pointed out) but light infantrymen couldn't because the poor little chaps were scattered all over the place. Same for the Romans: auxiliaries could fight as skirmishers OR as line infantrymen (as at Mons Graupius) whereas most legionaries fought as line or heavy infantry (but we do know that some legions at least had a light component too, as witnessed for example by the tombstones at Apamea). So light and heavy were not determined by putting them on a weighbridge, but rather by the number of them per hectare (wargamers express such things with different sized bases for their units... well they did when I was a kid).

Segmentata as a form of armour was better adapted to line infantry, but mail and scale were more versatile. Oh, and the when? Thursday 14th June 1992 at 10.17am. Ask a silly question... ;-)

Mike Bishop