10-20-2006, 08:36 PM
Quote:Why did the early reconstruction of a Roman soldier in Mainz have armour entirely in leather? Even the (strange to us) leather leggings that figure wears are repeated in a medieval sculpture on display in Turin Museum and on another thread (help me out here Jim!)
Assuming that is not a rhetorical question... because Ludwig Lindenschmit (pater) interpreted the tombstone of Crispus from Wiesbaden rather literally and assumed the armour to be leather (those dinky little frilly shorts turned up on the Airfix legionaries many years later!) and it was not until Robinson that this was questioned. Interestingly, there were no finds of lorica seg when he wrote Tracht und Bewaffnung (the Osprey of its day and I would argue one of the best, if not the best, books ever written on Roman military equipment) but shrewdly guessed that it must be of iron and articulated on leather straps; he even speculates as to why none had been found (this was nearly 20 years before Max von Groller made the first major find at Carnuntum). Von Groller made the capital error of going back to the Column to interpret the artefacts and not using the evidence of his eyes and what he had in front of him (no Gil Grissom, then). Lindenschmit is significant as he was the first to notice the accuracy of the Rhineland tombstones (Crispus excepted, perhaps!) in comparison to the artefacts that were starting to be discovered at a rate of knots (pun intended) as the major European rivers, especially the Rhine in his case, started to be dredged big-time for navigation.
Mike Bishop
