In reference to the fleet, it seems the Roman Navy used the same type of warships that were found in most navies. During the Punic Wars, the heaviest types of ships would have been the quinqueremes. Polybius states that the Roman ships were crewed by 300 men and carried 120 marines. During the battle of Actium, Octavian's forces used these smaller Liburna to defeat Mark Anthony's heavier quinqueremes. Check out this website for more information. http://www.roman-empire.net/army/leg-fleet.html
"Corn" is an older word for "grain". It's not the corn that grows as high as an elephant's eye in OOOOOklahoma. :lol:
We get the word "kernel" from "corn" (or corn from kernel, I don't remember for sure). But kernels are many types of grain, including the mainstay of Rome, wheat.
Yeah the article was wrong there! It should be grain supply, although as previously mentioned, corn originally meant any grain, not just maize. You could also try the Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Navy, though I'm not sure how accurate it is. Looks good though, and lots of pictures!
Wow! Why can't we just name things one thing or the other!! My wife was explaining to me that in the Latin language(which I have almost no understanding of! :oops: ) that one word in Latin could cover a bunch of different words we use today, so I'm sure all this word confusion can be blamed on the Romans!!
To return to your original set of questions for a moment, there is evidence that the equipment of sailors and marines may have differed from that of regular infantry.
Letters dating to the early second century AD by Claudius Terentianus, who was in the navy, but wished to join a legion show that he lacked equipment which would have been normal for legionaries and he asks his father, who was a legionary, to send him pieces of equipment such as a sword, caligae and a pickaxe, which were presumably not issued to him by the navy.
With regard to corn (to refer to the OT part of the thread), 'corn' is simply an alternative word for 'grain' and therefore it is as correct to refer to the 'corn supply' to Rome as it is to refer to the 'grain supply'. The problem is that in recent decades, the general word 'corn' has often been appropriated to refer to one particular sort of corn, namely maize, whereas in truth, the same word can equally refer to any other type of grain, be it barley, spelt, rye or anything else.
With regard to Latin words that can mean a number of different things, a quick look in any decent English dictionary will reveal numerous English words which suffer from the same multiple personality disorder. :wink:
Crispvs
Who is called \'\'Paul\'\' by no-one other than his wife, parents and brothers. :!: <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_exclaim.gif" alt=":!:" title="Exclamation" />:!:
Does anyone know how many people there would be on a roman merchant ship? I know for a fact that most merchant ships didn't have oarsmen but how many people would there be manning the rudder of the ship and the sails?
Quote:Do we even know the percentage of the Roman army that actually had armour? It's possible that the most common body armour was "no armour"
I thought there was some group of Gauls who tried that only to find it didn't work too well. Are there any references at all to non-metal armors by Roman historians? leather, padded, thick clothes?
I was referring to Polybius' description of the Gaesatae. Or I suppose more specifically I was referring to the difference between being without metal armor and being naked.
Quote:The Insubres and Boii wore their trousers and light cloaks, 8 but the Gaesatae had discarded these garments owing to their proud confidence in themselves, and stood naked, with nothing but their arms, in front of the whole army, thinking that thus they would be more efficient, as some of the ground was overgrown with bramblesb which would catch in their clothes and impede the use of their weapons. . . But when the javelineers advanced, as is their usage, from the ranks of the Roman legions and began to hurl their javelins in well-aimed volleys, the Celts in the rear ranks indeed were well protected by their trousers and cloaks, 2 but it fell out far otherwise than they had expected with the naked men in front, and they found themselves in a very difficult and helpless predicament. 3 For the Gaulish shield does not cover the whole body; so that their nakedness was a disadvantage, and the bigger they were5 the better chance had the missiles of going home.
It is commonly said that in hotter regions, the legionnaires preferred squamata or hamata armour (it is supposed to be cooler), meanwhile cold regions it is preferred the lorica segmentata usually linked to germanic limes (their wide sheets would be heated more easily).
But segmentata armour was found in warmer climates (Israel area if I am right)
I don't know whether that is commonly said or not, but there is little in the ancient sources to support such an idea. We have evidence for mail, scale and segmentata from both the colder northern regions of the empire and the hotter eastern regions. I am not convinced either that mail is any cooler, since to be effective as an armour it requires a padded undergarment to dissipate concussive force.
Normal Roman practice was simply to wear more clothes in cold weather. It is also possible that covers were normally worn over armour and this would help to prevent armour from heating up so much in a hotter climate. The wearing of surcoats by medieval knights is believed to have begun during the crusades and probably has its origins in a pre-existed Arab practice of wearing robes over armour to keep it cool.
"The Romans tended to either wear metal armour or none at all."
Do you have evidence for this statement Dan? Although Pliny the Elder notes that armour made from hippopotamus skin was useless when wet (which, incidentally, tells us that soldiers somewhere wore such armour), there is a reasonable body of sculptural evidence which is strongly suggestive of some sort of padded textile armour in use by the Roman army in the imperial period.
Crispvs
Who is called \'\'Paul\'\' by no-one other than his wife, parents and brothers. :!: <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_exclaim.gif" alt=":!:" title="Exclamation" />:!:
I thought there was some group of Gauls who tried that only to find it didn't work too well.
The Gauls defeated the Romans just as often as the Romans won.
Are there any references at all to non-metal armors by Roman historians? leather, padded, thick clothes?
Not really. The Romans tended to either wear metal armour or none at all.
Hi
You could read Raffaele D'Amato's Books
'Arms and Armour of the Imperial Roman Soldier' or
'Imperial Roman Naval Forces'.
Both have numerous sources to non metallic forms of body protection.( I won't say "armour" so as not to offend Dan! ) Whether you believe them is another matter entirely!
There are certainly some sculptures which show what appears to be padded garments and when I have shown pictures of them to textile historians they agree that they are padded garments. Again however something open to interpretation. The problem being if you can see them then they are not just being worn under armour they are being worn instead of armour. While it is known in other periods that padded garments offered sufficient protection in their own right, it is something else to suggest that this was done in the Roman period too. Nevertheless it has been proposed that a recent Carlisle writing tablet implies padded garments of various sizes were used in training. I put as many as I could of these sculptures and anything else I could find on the subject in my own recent 'Roman Military Dress' book. But John Peter Wild. Ian Stephenson and Mike Bishop have also written elsewhere on padded garments.
Also as Dan suggests there are some sculptures which again quite clearly show soldiers in battle with just a helmet and shield with no body armour at all just a tunic. Sometimes they are shown alongside other soldiers fighting in armour such as on the Arch of Orange. How we interpret, this is again open for debate. In general the consensus tends to be that the sculptures alone are not a totally reliable source.
An article and reconstruction of the clothing and items sent from home to the marine Claudius Terentianus appeared in Ancient Warfare magazine Vol IV,4
Graham.
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream" Edgar Allan Poe.
"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.
"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
) Whether you believe them is another matter entirely!