Roman saddle & Stele of Silius

[Crispvs]

Rich,

When I read your original post again, I found myself wondering if you meant the sculpture showing a stumbling horse with a four horned saddle which Peter Connolly illustrated in his original 'The Roman Army' in 1975 when dealing with saddles. I don't know where it was from but I do recall that he said it was a Gallic sculpture. Someone else might know it. I recall it also exhibits the draping side panels which survived on the Carlisle covers but had been lost from the Valkenburg ones.

Moi,

In the absence of stitching holes on the leather horns I too had concluded that the bronze fittings must have been fitted to the underlying frame and that the names were scratched onto them so that they could be teamed up with their covers again when after the covers had been repaired or stored away for whatever reason. The Carlisle covers showed extensive evidence of repairs. As we also now know that the saddles were not sewn under like those depicted in Connolly's 1988 reconstruction, we can envisage them being fairly easy to remove, either for maintenance to the cover or to the tree. Then again it may have been easier to store a turma's saddles by stacking the (uncovered) trees into one another while the covers were looked after by the men who used them. Assuming that the trees were modified for each horse and rider to ensure the best mount it would make perfect sense to have the user's name marked on it. That might also be a reason that modern reconstructions, which often are not make with a particular horse or rider in mind, are sometimes less than satisfactory.

Crispvs



Crispvs