What happened to the Eagles?

[Matt Lukes]

It seems odd to me given (all) that still remains, that these would 'all' simply vanish. :?

But you have to remember Andrew that there were a REALLY tiny number of them- there were only ever 20-30 LEGIONES standing at the high points, so even if sometimes there were new Aquilae made that might mean a total of what, 40 or 50 made? Consider the number of gladii that must have been made- some hundreds of thousands and how many do we have? We have nearly no scuta and they must have existed in the millions, there's little mail, only a handful of examples of segmentatae, more helmets but only a tiny percentage of the total number made, no provably authentic muscled cuirasses such as are depicted in sculpture. There are no complete signa, and only one or two elements known, one Vexillum, and so on and so on.