Leather Subarmalis

[Tarbicus]

Anyway, I thought that the purpose of a SUBarmalis was to support the actual armor, and provide padding at crucial contact points (trapezius, clavicle, shoulder socket) for the secondary protection and padding of the armor.

The mail is the secondary defence, where the padding underneath is the primary armour. The mail gives the padding a protection against cuts. At least that's the way I understand Middle Age examples, which doesn't exclude Romans using it to simply prevent "chaffing".

I agree, Mike, as we have no evidence, to argue against either is pointless,

Not so. There's a 4th-C AD primary source reference to by-then-ancient Roman soldiers using a felt undergarment, so the evidence says a simple one layer leather subarmalis is simply wrong (De Rebus Bellicis). Nor is it certain that the Libyan hide cover on top of the felt was leather, where I've seen it translated as Libyan fleece.

As a supplement to this thread, this one should also be read:
http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic.php?p=43871

and we should just do our best to make it suitable, and try to copy what we can see from sculpture,

You can only talk about pteryges there, and I ain't yet seen a single leather pteryge that looks like sculptural evidence.

If you like leather, go for it, it's your subarmalis. But don't try to make out there's no evidence either way :wink: