03-11-2005, 02:49 PM
Graham asked me to post this<br>
Dear People,<br>
<br>
I can't understand the reluctance to accept the use of organic materials as armour. The Roman army was a very composite army, operating in different weather conditions and against different enemies. But especially was an Army which used, in dangerous moments, and in different ages, a lot of different protection adapted to the necessities of the moment.<br>
<br>
The sources are many. They will be collected and published soon in a work I am preparing with Graham Sumner, which will open (I hope) new horizons about the use of armour in different ages and especially the use of all the kinds of armour.<br>
<br>
I do not want demean people. But I think that the learning of Roman military equipment must be attached firstly at the sources, and not relegated only by archaeological evidence. The sources were written by people who saw with their own eyes the roman equipment: so how can we, after an interval of thousands of years, contest such people when the evidence we have is limited to few fragments of a immense world?<br>
<br>
Moreover: we accept without any conditions that Oriental people used for centuries organic armours, Russell Robinson himself, in his Oriental Armour, described the evidence of organic armour. Why then cannot the Romans wear protection in leather (see the significance of the word lorica in Varro, De Lingua Latina), or in linen (see the Caracalla Phalangite - I do not understand the quotation of CIL to contest the reconstruction of Sumner in his recent Osprey book), in horn (see the armour of Domitian described in the sources) etcc..<br>
<br>
The use of a thoracomacus/subarmalis/peristhidion as armour instead of the metallic one is attested by the Anomymus De Re Military in VI century; and do You think the army of the third century was so different? Why the armour of the Constantine Cornuti in the Constantine Arch could not be a leather muscled one, when the contemporary fresco in the Ipogeum of Vibia represents brown leather armour of the same type on the figure of a Roman miles?<br>
<br>
Of course metal armour was used as preference whenever possible but we have to distinguish the different unities, corps, èlite etc..and also in them a lot of people used the more congenial kind of armour for him, or the armour available. Then we have to distinguish among the different ages. The Army of Frontinus is not the army of Vegetius, the army of Titus is not the army of Agricola, etc...<br>
<br>
Do you think that when the enemy attacked, and some infantryman took a helmet of Hedderneim type, the cavalryman arrived to say "No this is the helmet for cavalry, use an another one!"...We have today problems of classification but not the Romans.<br>
<br>
In anycase: I suggest to begin with a new approach to the argument; begin we from the sources (which I will try to concentrate in a complete way and apply to the archaeology in a programmed work) and begin we to accept them, not reject them with modern interpretations that are not applicable to a complete different world.<br>
<br>
About the question of the bronze lorica: I advise to contact Mr Vagalinsky of Archaeologia Bulgarica, the number is Archaeologia Bulgarica I - 1999. It is not expensive and in anycase the magazine is interesting because there is a beautiful cover with a masked helmet from Thracia.<br>
<br>
Best wishes to all the people and I hope really that, with a new approach, we can go deeply into a new and for me a more adherent vision of the Roman world.<br>
<br>
Raffaele D'Amato<br>
<p></p><i></i>
Dear People,<br>
<br>
I can't understand the reluctance to accept the use of organic materials as armour. The Roman army was a very composite army, operating in different weather conditions and against different enemies. But especially was an Army which used, in dangerous moments, and in different ages, a lot of different protection adapted to the necessities of the moment.<br>
<br>
The sources are many. They will be collected and published soon in a work I am preparing with Graham Sumner, which will open (I hope) new horizons about the use of armour in different ages and especially the use of all the kinds of armour.<br>
<br>
I do not want demean people. But I think that the learning of Roman military equipment must be attached firstly at the sources, and not relegated only by archaeological evidence. The sources were written by people who saw with their own eyes the roman equipment: so how can we, after an interval of thousands of years, contest such people when the evidence we have is limited to few fragments of a immense world?<br>
<br>
Moreover: we accept without any conditions that Oriental people used for centuries organic armours, Russell Robinson himself, in his Oriental Armour, described the evidence of organic armour. Why then cannot the Romans wear protection in leather (see the significance of the word lorica in Varro, De Lingua Latina), or in linen (see the Caracalla Phalangite - I do not understand the quotation of CIL to contest the reconstruction of Sumner in his recent Osprey book), in horn (see the armour of Domitian described in the sources) etcc..<br>
<br>
The use of a thoracomacus/subarmalis/peristhidion as armour instead of the metallic one is attested by the Anomymus De Re Military in VI century; and do You think the army of the third century was so different? Why the armour of the Constantine Cornuti in the Constantine Arch could not be a leather muscled one, when the contemporary fresco in the Ipogeum of Vibia represents brown leather armour of the same type on the figure of a Roman miles?<br>
<br>
Of course metal armour was used as preference whenever possible but we have to distinguish the different unities, corps, èlite etc..and also in them a lot of people used the more congenial kind of armour for him, or the armour available. Then we have to distinguish among the different ages. The Army of Frontinus is not the army of Vegetius, the army of Titus is not the army of Agricola, etc...<br>
<br>
Do you think that when the enemy attacked, and some infantryman took a helmet of Hedderneim type, the cavalryman arrived to say "No this is the helmet for cavalry, use an another one!"...We have today problems of classification but not the Romans.<br>
<br>
In anycase: I suggest to begin with a new approach to the argument; begin we from the sources (which I will try to concentrate in a complete way and apply to the archaeology in a programmed work) and begin we to accept them, not reject them with modern interpretations that are not applicable to a complete different world.<br>
<br>
About the question of the bronze lorica: I advise to contact Mr Vagalinsky of Archaeologia Bulgarica, the number is Archaeologia Bulgarica I - 1999. It is not expensive and in anycase the magazine is interesting because there is a beautiful cover with a masked helmet from Thracia.<br>
<br>
Best wishes to all the people and I hope really that, with a new approach, we can go deeply into a new and for me a more adherent vision of the Roman world.<br>
<br>
Raffaele D'Amato<br>
<p></p><i></i>
Quod imperatum fuerit facimus et ad omnem tesseram parati erimus
