Hanging straps on balteus?

[A_Volpe]

they bounce of my legs, and clank off each other and make noise.

Yup, that appears to be the purpose of the "apron", "Danglium", or "Fun Meter" - Matt, that's a new one for me, that is awesome. I'm using that from now on

I won't try to repeat too much from what's already been said.

It's very hard for us moderns to get out of our current military fashions and traditions. The concept (and nearly tactic) of "showing off", "pimping it out" on the battlefield existed from ancient Egypt all the way until the First World War. yes, people wearing bright shiny bits and brightly colored trim and tape on their uniforms in the trenches. French wore Sky blue uniforms, in the trenches. French Zouaves wore bright red trousers and fezzes (until late 1914 when they switched to Khaki colors, but still in the poofy pants pattern). Eventually people took on the Earthen tones, khaki's, grays and greens as camoflauge became the Big Thing. (but then in WW2, some German units were wearing black, not very camoflaugy.) By then, people were hiding behind obstacles and shooting at each other at longer distances with high powered, rapid fire guns.

For the better part of 7,000 years, you had a spear or a sword and you had to physically get close to your enemy and kill them without getting killed yourself. But seeing as your chances were 50/50, you might as well Look Good Doing It!

Now it's Dress Uniforms (ie: U.S. Marines "Dress Blues", a design from the 1910's and damn does it still look good!) that's the Big Thing when Not In Combat.

Magnus hits it right on the head - We believe the idea behind the danglies on the belts is to add Presence. It's a form of intimidation. An analogy I [used] for years is the same with your typical [although rather phony] Western Cowboy - Think Spurs, ammo belt, pistol hanging from him...Or, your typical [again rather phony depending on how you see it] "Gangster", with their oversized pants hanging on knees, with a backwards baseball cap, "colors" and a pistol hanging from the pants zipper and not much else....Representin'

You know exactly what you're looking at. We tend to think this was the -same thing- Roman Soldiers were doing with their belts. Everyone around will know it's a Roman Soldier, make no mistake.

I will be another to say the belt you got is sorely lacking. I strongly urge [new] Romans to make their own belts, not only to learn how to do it, but to also make it sized to YOU so you don't have too many holes in the tongue, or worse, it's too short ~ but that you can customize and decorate it to your own extent and 'tastes', so as long as you base the plates off of the tons of existing plates and bits in the archaeological record.

Matt Amt suggested using plain plates - I think that is a -great- place to start, very rarely seen in the reenacting world (because we all want fancy blingy overly decorated belt plates! Why not?!) - But you can always add MORE decorations to those plates and your belt as you go. I personally think this is exactly how the Romans were doing it. Some of them got "pre-made" parts, inasmuch as they could make and add their own parts in their spare time, which could have been a lot of time depending on the Legion/Location/Time.