Polybius, horse archers arrows, roman armour, oh my.

[Gregg]

We don't know what the Romans wore underneath their mail.

You're suggesting the Romans used something equivalent to the padded jack, a heavy multi-layer garment not developed until the late 14th century? Even the Roman use of a lighter early-medieval style gambeson would be debatable, but a jack? Seriously??

In this case Williams was being generous when he said the combination was defeated because the plastilene was only penetrated by 35mm. Hardly a serious wound.

Yes, hardly a serious wound, and it might even be a legitimate comparison if the Romans wore 15th century mail over a heavy 15th century medieval jack.

The spike used in the test had a 18 degree point and was far harder than any extant arrowhead so far analysed.

Exactly as I said, an 18 degree point, roughly equivelant to a late medieval short wide bodkin style, NOT a needle bodkin or even broadhead, so not a style that was ever intended to defeat mail. And do I need to remind you again that of the thousands of arrowheads yet found only a statistically negligable few have ever actually been analyzed? In fact, the Royal Armouries drew their conclusions based on a grand total of TWO tested bodkins, one of which actually contained steel (an often forgotten detail).

The Knight and the Blast Furnace p. 942 says that both the modern reconstruction AND the 15th C example required 120 J.

AND the heavy jack beneath it, you keep forgetting to mention that for some reason.

Not if you use the data presented by Williams and the data presented by McEwan.

So, we can conclude that Parthian arrows could not have penetrated 15th century mail over a heavy medieval jack using arrows equipped with a wide late medieval bodkin. In other words, armor the Romans didn't wear over heavy padding the Romans didn't wear using arrowheads the Parthians didn't use.

Glad we got that cleared up.

Gregg