Roman Full Plate Armor?

[SigniferOne]

That's a bit misleading. When dismounted knights fought commoner infantry, the knights usually won unless the commoners had another major advantage (numbers, surprise, standing behind entrenchments or at the top of a hill). Pure examples are hard to think of, but the first phase of Sempach (1386) is suggestive. Of course, the knights had the advantage of morale and training and not just armour. Battles between mounted knights and infantry are a whole other can of worms ...

That's not exactly true. At Courtrai (1302) the number of Flemish was pretty much equal to the French, and they slew them in great numbers with a simple goedendag weapon, which was basically a wooden plank with a sharp nail attached to the top of it. The only thing the knights had was the factor of chivalric morale, and armor too when the enemy didn't have it. When the enemy was equally ferocious (as the Flemings at Courtrai were), and had a bafflingly simple armor-piercing weapon, the odds were evened out very quickly.

That's why I am skeptical about Endre's more armor = better principle. I don't disagree that the matters of economy and supply could've played some role in the decision not to employ full-plate, but heck, Segmentata was not exactly the simplest armor to maintain either. As I understand it it was the most complicated armor to maintain for pretty much the next 1 thousand years. Yet the matters of economy and supply, important and relevant, still did not prevent vast numbers of legionaries from outfitting themselves with it, because it did exactly what they wanted. Some, at least some, tactical consideration still must've played a role when they considered the Cataphract/Crupellarius and went in another direction. If Flemings, Halberdiers and the Swiss discovered how to dethrone the knight a thousand years later, there's no reason not to assume that the Romans saw it ahead of time as well. For, if we realize that the knight lost on the battlefield long before gunpowder came into the equation, then more armor doesn't equal better indeed.


P.S. Sorry about the misattribution Duncan, it was Tarbicus who said that he found segmentata comfortable to wear.