To Balteus, or not to Balteus...

[Matt Lukes]

The statue is Augustan, but its subject is a general from the Balbus family. Nick Sekunda thought the statue represented republican dress and I agree with him.
I also agree with you that there's not much proof. My whole idea is based on my conclusion that Facilis carries his sword slung from a greek style baldric. If you disagree with that (which you do if I remember correctly) there is not much to explore or explain.
However there is some proof that this Greek suspension method was actually used: the Delos sword.

Do you know of any online photos of the statue? I'd be curious to see it. An Augustan date doesn't exactly make it hard to believe that the dress depicted is Republican- and I'd see it as more recent Republican with respect to details, since that's what the artist and commissioner would have been most familiar with, even if the idea was to depict things centuries older.

As for the Delos sword, is it absolutely certain that there never were rings on the right side, or could they simply be missing? There's a very similar Gladius hispaniensis from Berry-Bouy, France, that is dated to c. 20BC that has 4 rings...

I just can't see something hitting a shoulder belt interfering with the sword the way it would a waist belt...

It surely would be much more difficult to hit a baldric then a waist belt. But if you wore the sword Greek fashion I imagine you would not keep it under your left arm when fighting were it would interfere with your shield handling. You would sling it to the back. If so your sword would be entirely out of reach once the baldric was pinned to the spear.
I'm more concerned with how the spearpoint can get stuck without wounding the centurion. That wouldbe more easily explained with a waist belt.

Well I'd think that the armor he was wearing, presumably hamata or squamata at that time, would would have protected him equally in either case; thus far my evidence (artifacts) has shown that Roman waist belts often were made of not terribly thick leather, so I'd be surprised if there was much difference between that of a shoulder baldric and a waist belt.

As for sword interference, I can't say I agree about that- even when on a belt, I've never found any issue with shield handling and an undrawn sword on the left side (although granted I've never fought with Gauls that way :wink: ), and I'd think that somoene rushing into close-quarter battle wouldn't deliberately move his sword where he couldn't easily reach it- especially when the text suggests the move caused by the Gaulish dart was so debilitating with respect to Pullo's ability to fight.

Actually, the reason I think Caesar's centurions already wore baldric has to do with my idea (speculative!) as to the origin of the 1st Century AD practice. I you can convince me that they did not do so - and you're making a decent job of it - , I'll have to come up with a different idea about the origin of the practice. It does not interfere with my identification of Facilis' baldric as a Greek one.

If the suggestion is that baldrics never went out of use with the higher-ups, I'd certainly say there's no clear evidence of that- all the double waist belt funeral stelae I know of showing them are regular solders, not centuriones- but there seems to be little or no evidence for it either, at least nothing that doesn't have significant issues with its use as evidence.

The problem, however, with pointing to Facilis' as evidence is that he's not alone- there are regular soldier stelae from the late 1st century AD who also wear baldrics. And Facilis' depiction is not the best one to point at very specific details because there's clearly some artistic license taken- just look at the width of his belt, it's HUGE, and his shoulder pteryges go all the way down to this elbows- not the normal length depicted on very high-quality statues, which can more easily be taken as accurate. And the sword scabbard itself is of very low detail in that the suspension rings aren't even shown- just what seems to be a band, which is not the way a real scabbard's suspension elements look, or at least not how any of those yet found look (dozens). The baldric also seems to be split into three near the scabbard- an oddity considering there are only 2 suspension rings on each side of any known scabbard- if it's as you suggest, only attached to the scabbard on one side, then both ends of the baldric should be unsplit, yes? Then again if it's attached as is usually reproduced today, one or both ends would only be split in two, not three. Another issue of the baldric, with respect to reality, is that it's REALLY long- were Facilis not holding the sword up, it'd hang very low, and it would be quite unwieldly. Even on a short baldric, I've found it an issue such that like so many others, I find passing the waist belt over the ends of the baldric to be the only reasonable way to wear it- otherwise it flops around far too much- and that's even a shorter baldric sized to hold the sword high on the hip.