Illustrations of Sassanid Persian Clibanarii

[Urselius]

Returning to the Roman cataphract, a description by Julian suggests that the elements of armour were connected by mail. This is a much greater technological leap - presaging Ottoman mail-and-plate - than merely wearing plate armour elements over a mailshirt or scale.

When I need help with Greek translation, I turn to a former Head of Classics at my old school. I consulted him on the passage from Julian some time ago and he offered the following translation, which he said was as near to literal as he could make it, no doubt (although he did not say it specifically) to minimize translator's bias:

'With them fitting to the thorakes by means of certain things made from a slender ring as if woven, no naked part of the body would be seen . . .'

This reads to me more like mail being attached to the cuirass than underlying it.

Indeed, but the application of Occam's razor would lead to a different conclusion. We know the Romans made mailshirts, we know that the Romans made various forms of plate armour articulated by leather strapping. Parsimony would reject the likelihood of mail-and-plate constructs as that would require the introduction of a technology, attaching plate armour elements to each other using mail links, that we have no concrete evidence that the Romans employed.