Lorica Segmentata / common error

[Kai]

Such comparisons can only be made if the parameters are crystal clear. What mail exactly (material, diameter, and thickness of the rings, how are they interlinked, how many layers of mail), what segmentata (thickness of the plates mostly, where are the plates thinner, where thicker), what weapon applied with what force in what situation in what angle etc.
Just saying armour x is worse than armour y is like saying a green car is faster than a big car, especially as the terms to describe armour base on different principles. Sometimes it is morphology (muscle cuirass e.g.), sometimes the construction method (ring mail).


on topic...

The inevitable connection between the segmentata and the Roman legionary not only stems from the media as said already, which includes ancient media as well, but also from the expectations of modern people. They expect Romans in this armour, so the media is offering them, again causing people to think Romans had this, and again expecting it.

I don’t even condemn it. After all, the segmentata is about the only genuine armour the Romans ever created.


PS: scale armour is very much underused it seems to me, however a descent armour of this type costs quite lot more than a decent mail shirt AND it needs to fit exactly in order to avoid looking awkward. Also I could be mistaken since my experience not that great.

[Newbyus]

ok; question answered; thx. Funnily enough ( ive just noticed, looking at pictures of the trajan´s column) the same problem seems to appear with the testudo; -@Kai according to the tc they actually wore segmentata only- is this the ancient media ur referring to?

[jvrjenivs]

@Kai according to the tc they actually wore segmentata only- is this the ancient media ur referring to?

I think so.

[Titvs Statilivs Castvs]

I have been wondering... Would the 17th-century Classicism have to do something with this? They idealized the ancient Rome, but were not quite scientific in that. As far as I know/can remember, Romans in Classicism are depicted either without armour, or with a segmentata. Would this have influenced the common idea about the Romans?:?:

[jvrjenivs]

probably, as did the 'asterix and obelix' comics

[Caratacus]

I had thought that this topic had been just about flogged to death! Both hamata and squamata have a very long lineage in use by the Roman army, which predates the use of segmentata by several centuries. If the Roman squaddie bought his own gear, it would argue for a rather mottley appearance for any given group of soldiers - each one wearing what he could either (a) afford, or (b) favoured - or maybe a combination of the two?

I had also thought that it has been generally accepted that the scenes depicted on Trajan's column give what amounts to 'visual clues' to the viewer. Those wearing a muscle cuirass are either the emperor and/or his staff, those wearing lorica seg are 'citizen' (i.e. legionary) soldiers, while those sporting hamata or squamata are auxiliary (i.e. non-citizen) soldiers. It may (or may not) be significant that the Roman soldiers depicted on the Adamklissi metopes (roughly contemporaneous with TC) nowhere show the banded iron armour - only mail and scale armours are depicted.

What is 'certain' is that segmentata armour is known (at the earliest) from Dangstetten (around 9 BC) as well as from Kalkriese (AD 9). Finds of this armour are very common in the first two centuries AD from just about any Roman military site within the empire. I know of over 120 sites where it has turned up: from Britain, all along the Rhine/Danube frontier, into "Palestine", North Africa and out into eastern Europe. Where the army went, so went L.Seg.

Yet, I would agree that the 'general public' always seems to believe that the soldiers of Rome always wore this stuff - as do the film-makers ('Gladiator' had them wearing a curious pastiche of the armour seemingly made of leather and opening up the sides, while 'Centurion' had a rather accurate portrayal of it - but showed every soldier wearing it, to mention just two relatively recent instances). Even Peter Conolly in some of his paintings seems to suggest that the whole army was kitted out with it! Yet there is apparently no instance where a soldier is shown wearing this type of armour on a tombstone but plenty where the scale/mail armours are shown. It is, as they say, "a puzzlement"!

Where Rome is concerned we (today) have a terrible tendency to believe that, because they were so 'organised' and therefore resemble modern armies, they were also 'uniform' in appearance as are modern armies. Yet even within the modern scene, there are plenty of instances known where non-standard kit is worn/used. One example: in the 1982 Falkands War some members of the SAS were photographed carrying AMERICAN 'Armalite' rifles - certainly non-standard issue for the British squaddie! There are also lots of instances where the soldiers have gone out and purchased their own gear, because it's better quality than the stuff issued by the Government. Why, then, should we be so surprised to think that a bunch of Roman miles gragarii should present a totally 'uniform' appearance?

Mike Thomas
(Caratacus)

[Crispvs]

I generally get the feeling that, given the degree of standardisation we find, most equipment was probably produced to agreed specifications by civilian workshops with contracts to supply to the army, which might account for the degree of similarity as well as variation. Further equipment was clearly made by soldiers in workshops within their own forts and the Terrentius letters also demonstrate that equipment could be purchased privately. For these first two categories, surely soldiers were charged the cost of their equipment as deductions at source from their pay. In the latter category, obviously it would would come down to what you or your family could afford.
As to choice of style, that would surely depend on a number of factors. If buying privately, it might still be limited by what the workshop you went to was capable of producing, and if being supplied by the army and the cost deducted from pay, the soldier might still have had some degree of choice from what was already in the armoury.

Crispvs