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I do not know if this has ever been put forth as a thought about the fascia ventralis but here it goes. I had an idea about the fascia ventralis. Maybe, just maybe, the fascia ventralis is not only to hide those folds and rolls that the tunic bunches into at the waist to achieve a pleated appearence. Rather it could be to make up the volume that is missing since the belt is too long. What I am thinking is that the belt might have been made to fit the armor but when the tunic was worn, they used the ventalis to make up for the void.
With my armor my waist is 48 however with just my tunic and undertunic hanging freely my waist is 42. Imagine if I bunched up this material to raise the tunics or try to get the pleated effect. You can add a few more inches to that circumference. Then you have the fascia covering all that. I think that it is plausible that the fascia ventalis had two functions.
"You have to laugh at life or else what are you going to laugh at?" (Joseph Rosen)
Paolo
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Hmm, but if you make the belt to fit over your tunic AND long enough to go over the armor, there's no problem. There are depictions of soldiers wearing the military belt without the fascia ventralis, after all.
Vale,
Matthew
Matthew Amt (Quintus)
Legio XX, USA
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Good point, Matt. That could be an explanation for why they typically made ALL belts too long, with a long belt strap hanging down.
M. Demetrius Abicio
(David Wills)
Saepe veritas est dura.
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Agreed. However, if you make the belt to fit the tunic but long enough to go around the armor, keeping the number of belt plates the same leaves huge gaps.
For instance: If your waist is 40 inches without the armor and with your armor it is 50 inches, then there will be a 10 inch gap between your belt buckle on one side of the belt and the first belt plate on the other side of the belt when putting it on your armor. However, strapping the same belt onto the tunic only, will leave little space between the two components mentioned above.
Now if we go on sculptural evidence for a basis there is the issue that the soldier had to own two belts; one for tunic and one for armor. This proposition does not really make sense. But how else would you explain on some of these tombstones that the belt is full of belt plates with no gaps? One possibility is that the buckle was somewhere at the side and cannot be seen which would be, at least to me, the only way to have belt plates all around and no visible gaps.
Thus the point I am making is that those soldiers with the fascia could have had one belt both for the armor and for the tunic. However, for the belt to be fully covered with belt plates so that there are no gaps (except for the pugio area) when worn either on the tunic or on the armor, the fascia was used to compensate for the larger belt circumference.
The soldiers that do not have a fascia maybe owned two belts. No one knows or even can attest to exactly what they owned at any given point in time.
Anyway, my two cents.
"You have to laugh at life or else what are you going to laugh at?" (Joseph Rosen)
Paolo
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Well, one other good thing about the F.V. is that it helps keep the middle age spread from being quite so spread. Squeezes the midblob into a waist, if you can imagine that!
M. Demetrius Abicio
(David Wills)
Saepe veritas est dura.
