Subarmalis in the literary sources

[M. CVRIVS ALEXANDER]

Severus intended to disband the Guard but obviously wanted to conceal that fact until the last minute. Therefore allowing them to carry any type of weapon does not seem like a good idea to me.

Who has suggested that the praetorians were allowed to carry weapons?

[Graham Sumner]

MCA Wrote:Who has suggested that the praetorians were allowed to carry weapons?

Sorry, late night house move, I misread your post.

If the Praetorians normally carried or concealed a weapon under their armpit as you have suggested then I do think it would have been a wise move on the part of Severus to have forbidden them to do so on this occasion as I am sure that this would have immediately aroused their suspicion.

However if they normally wore a padded garment the same as or similar to something usually worn under armour during training, of either of the types Speidel suggests, then they would have presumably believed they were undertaking a normal training exercise.

Edwin wrote: but if we look at words which refer to a fabric / substance, the prefix seems to refer to something that is underneath something else: examples: sublinteatus - covered in linen, subtemen - the lower thread in weaving, subaeratus - a metal that has copper under it.
To which the Vindolanda tablets add subuclae-undertunics; subpaenulae-under paenula and subligariorum-underclothes or pants

Nevertheless if there is one certainty it is that as usual the available evidence is open to interpretation.

Graham.

[M. CVRIVS ALEXANDER]

As mentioned in the previous thread. Speidel rejects Tomlin's theory and argues that the Carlisle tablets refer to two types of garment used in training.

To further add weight to the garment theory, as also mentioned in the previous thread, a subarmalis is included in a list of clothing in the Vindolanda tablets.

I would like to see Speidel's article - does anyone have a reference? His argument that the Carlisle tablets refer to two types of garment does not appear obviously logical, since the text talks about missing 1) fighting lances, 2) smaller subarmales, and 3) regulation swords. The third one is obviously a weapon (sword), as well as, at least on the most obvious reading, the first one (lance). Anyway, I would need to see the article to be fair to the author's argument.

Tomlin notes the Vindolanda reference to subarmalis as a garment and interprets both meanings (i.e., a weapon and a garment) as deriving from the adjective's primary sense of "under the arm."

[Graham Sumner]

I would like to see Speidel's article - does anyone have a reference?

Yes, over in the earlier thread.

M. Speidel suggests that the subarmalis mentioned in the Carlisle writing tablets was a padded garment that could also be worn in training, not an underarm lance as proposed previously by Tomlin. M.P. Speidel 2007: The Missing Weapons at Carlisle' Britannia 38 p.237-39'

A subarmalis also appears in a list of clothing supplies from a Vindolanda tablet which would seem to support the theory that it is a garment rather than a weapon. Tab.Vind.II,184,iii,38

[Robert Vermaat]

Speidel guys, not Spiedel. I keep editing your threads. :???:

[Graham Sumner]

To which can be added the following

Wearing the Cloak: Dressing the Soldier in Roman Times
edited by Marie-Louise Nosch and Henriette Koefoed

144p, 24 col & 34 b/w illus (Oxbow Books in association with the Centre for Textile Research, 2011)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84217-437-1
ISBN-10: 1-84217-437-1 Hardback. Publishers price GB £25.00, Oxbow Price GB £18.95


Table of Contents
1. Dressed for the occasion: Clothes and context in the Roman Army (Michael Alexander Speidel)

Just keeping you on your toes Robert. Thanks!

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

This is the grammar thread, so the debate on the terminology could be seperated from the actual discussion of design.
Seems nobody gives a f#& anymore about those things..lol

[mcbishop]

M. Speidel suggests that the subarmalis mentioned in the Carlisle writing tablets was a padded garment that could also be worn in training, not an underarm lance as proposed previously by Tomlin. M.P. Speidel 2007: The Missing Weapons at Carlisle' Britannia 38 p.237-39'

Gosh, I wonder where he got that idea from! I remember discussing his interpretation with Roger Tomlin in 1997 at the conference that eventually got published as The Roman Army as a Community (where he gave the first paper on this particular tablet). The SHA reference naturally does not make sense if you interpret it as meaning the Praetorians were only allowed to parade equipped with a particular type of underarm javelin!

Mike Bishop

[D B Campbell]

The invention here may actually be the waterproof covering to be used in conjunction with it.

That's certainly how it appears to me. The under-the-armour bit is an ancient custom, but if you don't want it to get wet, you'll wear this new-fangled leather covering.

[Robert Vermaat]

Just keeping you on your toes Robert. Thanks!

No problem. :wink:

[Robert Vermaat]

This is the grammar thread, so the debate on the terminology could be seperated from the actual discussion of design.

it's actually the sources thread, where we discuss the source as well as terminology.

[Renatus]

I remember discussing his interpretation with Roger Tomlin in 1997 at the conference that eventually got published as The Roman Army as a Community (where he gave the first paper on this particular tablet).

Dare one ask what consensus was reached, if any?

[mcbishop]

Dare one ask what consensus was reached, if any?

You can ask, but it was a long time ago and I can't remember much of the detail, other than he was aware of the SHA reference, obviously, but had decided upon his interpretation for reasons that were not all that clear to me (he didn't know of my Thoracomachus paper) – I hope I'm not doing him a disservice! I remember sitting and listening to it thinking that the idea of the subarmalis as an undergarment worked perfectly well in the context of the tablet and I couldn't see why it had to be a type of javelin. Anything else still seems like special pleading to me, I'm afraid (I just press the Occam's Razor button and be done with it). Coulston agreed with me and Simon James just looked wistfully enigmatic, as only he can.

Mike Bishop

[Renatus]

he didn't know of my Thoracomachus paper

Would that be the one in Exercitus, vol.3, no.1 (Spring 1995)?

the idea of the subarmalis as an undergarment worked perfectly well in the context of the tablet

It is the context that worries me. Normally, I would agree with you and Speidel but the positioning of minores subarmales between two undoubted weapons, lancias pugnatorias ('fighting spears') and gladia instituta ('regulation swords'), immediately makes one think that they too were weapons, rather than garments, even garments associated with armour. If they were weapons, they could have fallen into the same category as those before them or those after them in the list, or they could have been of a completely different character. In the first case, they would have been a type of spear, as Tomlin suggests; in the second, they could have been a form of side-arm, although one would then have to ask why there always seem to have been two of them missing. If they were undergarments, one has to ask again why they seem to have gone missing or to have required replacement in pairs and why this should have occurred with such frequency in a single unit.

The weakness of Tomlin's argument is that he cannot cite any direct parallel for the interpretation that he suggests and, of course, that the term exists in relation to another piece of equipment. That said, one does not have to look too far in any language to find a word having different meanings, distinguished only by context. On the other hand, I do not find Speidel's arguments particularly convincing either. I am not happy with the notion that subarmalis could mean both a javelin and a protective undergarment but I am drawn reluctantly to Tomlin's interpretation. However, I am open to persuasion to the contrary.

[D B Campbell]

I am not happy with the notion that subarmalis could mean both a javelin and a protective undergarment but I am drawn reluctantly to Tomlin's interpretation.

I'm drawn in the opposite direction. I'm unconvinced that the tablet refers to a lance that can only be used under-arm (and Tomlin doesn't adequately explain how armalis indicates something to do with the arm-pit, when the obvious meaning of arma is staring us in the face).

As for their position on the tablet in between two weapons, I wouldn't like to press that argument too far. The tablet concerns the belongings of cavalrymen. There's no particular reason to suppose that only weapons could be listed. You could dig out a dozen "lists" from Vindolanda where the items appear to be haphazard. I think this is similarly "untidy".