Padded Armour

[Crispvs]

To me it looks as if Mars is wearing an armour of the type which is often taken to be subarmali but I suspect might by a small metal breatplate (or in this case possibly a pair of breastplates such as the small locking breastplates known from late second and early third century sites, with a heavy kilt of padded pteruges which starts above the waist and heavy pteruges at both shoulders with some sort of metal or thinkly padded fabric shoulder doubling, which gets us nicely back to padded armour. I have seen several representations now which could be an armour of this sort, which would give a high degree of flexibility and could still reatain a good level of protection. The small breastplate would give rigid protection to exactly the spot which the Republican pectoral plate protected. I think an armour like this could be worn by either cavalry or infantry and I am sure I have seena photograph of a damaged statuette of a mouted soldier wearing what appears to be such an armour. Unfortunately I did not save the picture when I saw it.

Crispvs