For a 4th C Roman in or around Germania, and I realize that's a little vague, what would be the kinds of gear he would carry with him on campaign or travelling?
Obviously his weapons and armor (if any) but was the furca still in use? Did the soldiers generally carry the same stuff a 1st C soldier would carry?
Shoulder bag (pera)
Typical camp gear (mess kit, fire steel, cleaning and cooking gear)
But then what? Did the patera and situla still look similar? Or could a 1st C situla be found in a 4th C camp?
I'm such a greenhorn to this era, I need some direction. Any helps appreciated. I'd prefer to get it right and not have to double back and fix things afterwards.
I would suggest you to get a copy of Paul Elliot - The last legionairy.
The 'Marius mule' wasn't the general way to do it anymore, as far as I understand. But of course it all also depends on situation. Especially as the whole tactics had changed and structure. More fortresses were made of solid material, and it seems that 'dog-tents' came into use, in favour of the bigger contubernium tents of the old period. This will also change the need of carrying stuff.
Patera designs will probably have changed, but I don't know of any study about this.
There were pen and ink drawings made of both the mostly destroyed Column of Theodosius and the almost utterly destroyed Column of Arcadius, both found in Constantiople. These drawings show baggage trains and one in particular shows gear carried on porters, mules and carts. It might be worth seeking those drawings out and examining them as they might hold some clues. I might also point out that the drawings of the Column of Arcadius also show what appears to be a baggage Elephant...
A search on the Net didn't return any line drawings of the Column of Theodosius, do you have a link to something that does? And thanks in advance.
The only examples I have are contained within a couple of books about Late Roman art. There is a book, (in French unfortunately) which has all the line drawings, its mentioned on the wiki page that discusses the Column of Arcadius.
Hey, thanks for the lead. I'll check it out.
@Jvrjen I have that book on my wish list.
Thanks, John for the effort, and I commend you memory! That was a long time ago. However, both links appear to be bad now, at least from here. I get only:
erreur As45Cf
I'll keep looking. Seems like the Later Romans weren't as artistic as the more ancient, or perhaps, their stuff was destroyed in the sacking of towns more than the Early Imperial period. Don't know.
Thank you, Robert, that one works!
Without wanting to spoil the debate about baggage etc, but those drawings, which I am surprised no english language book version exists, show the vast majority of the infantry in muscle cuirasses, many of them which appear to be flexible and one or two of the drawings show what appears the cuirasses done up at the back by what almost looks like lacing!!!
Very interesting that both the infantry and cavalry have the shorter veruta javelin rather than the longer spiculum.
I'm not sure if we can deduce much from these drawings, but I notice a lot of oval shield shapes and what looks like armoured cavalry.
I especially like the manner in which scuta are tied to the baggage horses:
[attachment=661]95-000844.jpg[/attachment]
I know of more drawings of this column, they're in a book by Liebesschütz, in the library.
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They drew the same 2-point shield grips that we see on Trajan's Column. We know that was not the way it was. But I suspect the clothing was probably more correct than the shields.
Who are these prisoners? The Goths? Alans? I'm not nearly up to speed on 4th C history as I hope to be.
The clothing and shield grips will have been influenced by what the artist already knew. The prisoners are indeed Goths, this monument celebrated the end of the Gainas affair I think (400 AD).
Ok, at the risk of making myself look stupid ....:oops:
The Column of Theodosius was erected to commemorate the victory of Fravitta over Gainas 'the Goth' in AD400. I write 'Goth', but it's probable that the army he led had many different Germanic 'nationalities' and so the representation is probably 'generic Germanic barbarian', but I stand to be corrected/have my opinion changed.
At least one of the drawings appears to show segmentata, but that may just be my eyesight! If it does, it could be an accurate representation of the column, or an interpretation of what the artist thought was on the column, possibly with Trajan's column in mind.
The difficulty of apparent depictions of muscled cuirasses is that some may indeed represent such armour, but there remains the possibility that the original sculpture had holes drilled to represent chain/ring mail, but that these holes have either not be represented by the artist or have weathered away so that the artist could not see them.
Of course, I could just be spouting rubbish ... :roll: