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

[Tim Edwards]

Brian,

Thanks for the feedback, I'm enjoying this debate!

I like to think I'm open minded, so following your reply I have had another look through my library.

Again, I've found nothing which closely matches the Chichester plates, though I'm sure there must be paralells out there somewhere. The belt set is published in one of the Chichester exacvations series. Godfrey Knight has a complete set, so I wil ask him to send you the salient information if you dont have it already.

I have however found a few more examples of other belt plate plates with rings on, which I'm sure will be of interest to you, although all are second century or later.

The well known 'UTERE FELIX' belt from Lyon exhibits a small ring underneath one of the 'E's. Another type of plate is visible in 'Roman Buckles and Military Fittings' by Appels and Laycock, again exhibiting a ring on the plate.

There will be probably more examples we can come up, but nonetheless, I have still to see any first century belt plates which exhibit this feature, from the hundreds I have already looked at in books ánd museums.

As I said, I'm open minded, but far from convinced. However, I do believe your theory could be valid for second century AD or later belt sets.

We do have isolated finds of complete, or near complete belt and sword sets occurring for the first century AD, e.g, Windisch, Herculaneum, Verdun, Idria etc.
To the best of my knowledge, none of these exhibit belt plates with integral rings. Some do however have associated button and loop fasteners.

Finally, I agree that most such button and loop fasteners excavated are clearly for cloaks/clothing. This does not change the fact that a distinct form of such fastener has repeatedly been found in association with sword and belt sets.

There is some discussion on this specific form of button and loop fastener in both Schlüter's 'Rom, Germanien und die Ausgrabungen von Kalkriese' and the 'Katalog der Militaria aus Vindonissa' by Christopher Unz and Eckhard Deschler-Erb, which shows numerous examples of such fittings.
I have copies of both publications if you want to get hold of this information.