Armour Flexibility

[Gaius Colletti]

A suit of plate - definitely. Segmentata is far from that since it offers no protection at all to the stomach, groin, armpit, etc. I've been hit pretty hard with baseball bats, cricket bats, blunt swords while wearing mail and most of the time you hardly feel it. The problem is when "bony" spots are hit - skull, elbow, collar bone, etc. You really need rigid protection or lots of padding in these areas.

Each armour type has its pros and cons regarding protection. But when you consider all of the other advantages of mail and the shortcomings of segmentata, mail comes out in front IMO. The only clear advantage segmentata has is speed of construction. If mass production techniques can close the gap enough between mail and segmentata becomes less viable as an armour type.

Dan, I appreciate your passion for mail, but too many times over the course of this thread you make it the "end all be all" for armor. While it does have some unique aspects, primarily keeping mobility it was by no means perfect.

You give segmentata little credit, it covers very well what it does cover, which DOES include the stomach. As long as a Roman is properly using his fighting techniques, their should be little to no exposure to the armpit, the segmentata does NOT cover the groin, therefore cannot protect it, however all legionaries regardless of whether they had scale, mail, or segmentata would all use a large scutum, which should provide proper coverage for most of the body anyways.

Dan do you honestly believe the segmentata offers no protection to the stomach? That is absurd and beyond ridiculous, I expect better from someone as learned as you. Not only is it hard to stab through overlapping curved 16/18 gauge steel plates and get deep enough to cause grievous bodily harm, assuming you did that, but congratulations you just possibly blunted your weapon, and if you did get it in deep enough, probably got it wedged inside the steel armor, also for this attack to be effective, I assume you would need both hands to thrust inside the armor? That means you just approached a wall of legionaries without a shield of your own.

Either compare the usefulness of segmentata in actual fighting contexts or not at all, but as your argument stands now, you have convinced me of the disadvantages of segmentata as much as the 8 yeard old child at an event last month who suggested a barbarian could just cleanly cut through all the leather ties on my segmentata and my segmentata would be open