How To.. wear the Pugio and Gladius (belts, fasteners)

[Crispvs]

I believe a baldric is generally understood to pass over one shoulder to suspend an item hanging on the oposite side of the body. Therefore something simply hanging around the neck does not really qualify as a baldric. It is the method in which it is worn which makes it a baldric not the material or the attachment method.
I am not saying, incidentally, that I think Suetonius made up the detail. For such a detail to be mentioned at all it would have to be notable enough to mention (and probably thus unusual). Sometimes with Suetonius we do have to be a little careful though as he is not above adding possibly spurious details to put his subject in a better or worst light (witness his description of Nero diguising himself as a common man and going out at night on his own to murder passers by in back streets for kicks - how likely is that to be a genuine fact and how likely is it that he has embellished his story with this detail to cast Nero in a worse light. It certainly flies in the face of most of the rest of what we know about him.
On balance I think that the detail of Galba's dagger is probably genuine as (a) it is unusual enough to provoke comment and (b) the assembled evidence does not suggest that senior officers normally equipped themselves with daggers, although there seems no reason why they could not obtain them if they wished (cf the daggers used in Caesar's murder and the dagger Commodus supposedly kept under his pillow). Not having Suetonius to hand right now, do we know how Galba was dressed and whether he was riding or travelling in a carriage? Both things could be relevant here.

Crispvs