Roman Equipment in Judea

[Crispvs]

I was responsible for equipping (and training) the Roman soldiers for the 'Christ in the Centre passion play in Leicester for a number of years. Most of the equipment I borrowed from members of my own group, meaning they were equipped with mail armour, mainly brass helmets of 'auxiliary' or Coolus type, a mixture of Pompeii gladii and spathae, and spears according to what I could borrow. One thing I made sure of though was that the shields were all of the flat oval clipeius type with a blazon inspired by one from Trajan's Column to ensure that they were obviously auxiliaries. To give them a proper connection to an actual unit I painted a small tabula ansata on the back of each, containing the words: COHORS I SEBASTENORUM. If I had been able to I would probably have chosen to equip them with conical helmets too, as this shape seems to have been fairly widespread in the East. Mail and scale would probably both be appropriate for both body armour and helmet neck guards.

Here are a few pictures from 2011 and 2012 to show what I mean. I did not finish my squamata until the middle of 2011, hence the change in appearance for yours truly. I sorted out a better piece of material to use as a paludamentum as well (it looks black in the picture but the actual material I used in deep green, for no reason other than that that was what I had lying around. The third picture shows the clipeii with the small round shield and conical helmets I made fr the temple guards. As these were not intended for re-enactment use, I glued fabric over the faces but mocked up shield bosses from modified balti dishes and didn't bother with shield edging. Had I done so though, I would have used rawhide edging. The odd appearance of the conical helmets is due to the fact that I made them out of a mixture of plastic bowls and large funnels. The joins were intended to be hidden under 'turbans' wrapped around the lower halves of the helmets.




Crispvs