05-15-2015, 09:26 PM
Yeah it's a bit of a head-scratcher. Not sure what's going on.
We might be missing information on how we wear L. Seg. armor. Maybe we're supposed to have a tight(tighter?) belt to set the plates onto the hips and help transfer the weight, not unlike wearing maille. Perhaps some of our reconstructions/copies need to be adjusted for this, but then again, we only have the surviving pieces in the archaeological record. We don't have any kind of literature or "user's manual" for their arms & armor.
I'm willing to go with the "whatever works for you" mentality with some of this stuff. I happen to like wearing my gladius slung on a baldric when wearing L.Seg. it's just something I've become accustomed to, and, actually, still making little adjustments here and there as I'm trying to move away from using the balteus to "hold" the gladius to my hip/side of the armor, as it bangs around and gets caught under the plates, as mentioned, if I don't do this, but then I risk getting yelled at and accosted for daring to put my balteus over the baldric, which is blasphemy according to some. But I'm also not at all looking to kick a bee's nest either with that.
(I will say when I'm not in armor, I've been wearing the gladius/baldric "loose", over the belt, and seem to have little problems with it dangling around, unless I'm leaning over or doing a lot of moving around, but I'm probably just needing to get used to wearing a sword more often, and while un-armored. I have made the baldric adjustable to draw the gladius up "higher" when in just a tunic, which seems to help a bit but I digress)
If [your] interpretation of the very little bits of evidence points you to being able to wear both sword & dagger on one belt, even when wearing L. Seg., then, great. But if others still want to continue using a baldric, I don't see the problem with that. I'm a big supporter of being up-front and honest with the questioning public, as well as the context. We just don't know for sure, but we're still trying different things to figure out what seems to be what the Romans were doing and why they did it that way.
Until we build that time-machine...
Anyway
Your post did get me thinking of the images seen on Trajan's Column and why we see images of not only TC but of others that seem to show some soldiers wearing no belt at all, but have just a sword on a baldric. It's confusing yet intriguing. Sometimes I wonder if wearing a decorated/plated belt is a -Roman Thing-, and these other dudes we see with just a sword slung on a baldric are Non-Romans. (also considering it appears that Auxiliaries tended to have more elaborate balteus compared to Legionaries, at least going from tombstone depictions; Auxiliaries trying to be "more Roman looking" than the Romans!) It seems like there are more layers of Roman "troop types" than just Legionaries and Auxiliaries, yet the distinctions seem to be terribly blurry to us. And at that, Romans may have gotten the idea of a belt around the waist perhaps from the [Celts], since the earliest Romans seemed to have worn a pectoral plate and very rarely a belt (I am thinking the "Villanovan" all-metal "belt"), although wearing a tunic "properly" one does need some kind of tie or belt across the hips. But I also think of Hoplites who didn't seem to wear a sword on a belt, but instead seemed to have preferred to wear a sword slung from a baldric, incidentally.
We might be missing information on how we wear L. Seg. armor. Maybe we're supposed to have a tight(tighter?) belt to set the plates onto the hips and help transfer the weight, not unlike wearing maille. Perhaps some of our reconstructions/copies need to be adjusted for this, but then again, we only have the surviving pieces in the archaeological record. We don't have any kind of literature or "user's manual" for their arms & armor.
I'm willing to go with the "whatever works for you" mentality with some of this stuff. I happen to like wearing my gladius slung on a baldric when wearing L.Seg. it's just something I've become accustomed to, and, actually, still making little adjustments here and there as I'm trying to move away from using the balteus to "hold" the gladius to my hip/side of the armor, as it bangs around and gets caught under the plates, as mentioned, if I don't do this, but then I risk getting yelled at and accosted for daring to put my balteus over the baldric, which is blasphemy according to some. But I'm also not at all looking to kick a bee's nest either with that.
(I will say when I'm not in armor, I've been wearing the gladius/baldric "loose", over the belt, and seem to have little problems with it dangling around, unless I'm leaning over or doing a lot of moving around, but I'm probably just needing to get used to wearing a sword more often, and while un-armored. I have made the baldric adjustable to draw the gladius up "higher" when in just a tunic, which seems to help a bit but I digress)
If [your] interpretation of the very little bits of evidence points you to being able to wear both sword & dagger on one belt, even when wearing L. Seg., then, great. But if others still want to continue using a baldric, I don't see the problem with that. I'm a big supporter of being up-front and honest with the questioning public, as well as the context. We just don't know for sure, but we're still trying different things to figure out what seems to be what the Romans were doing and why they did it that way.
Until we build that time-machine...
Anyway
Your post did get me thinking of the images seen on Trajan's Column and why we see images of not only TC but of others that seem to show some soldiers wearing no belt at all, but have just a sword on a baldric. It's confusing yet intriguing. Sometimes I wonder if wearing a decorated/plated belt is a -Roman Thing-, and these other dudes we see with just a sword slung on a baldric are Non-Romans. (also considering it appears that Auxiliaries tended to have more elaborate balteus compared to Legionaries, at least going from tombstone depictions; Auxiliaries trying to be "more Roman looking" than the Romans!) It seems like there are more layers of Roman "troop types" than just Legionaries and Auxiliaries, yet the distinctions seem to be terribly blurry to us. And at that, Romans may have gotten the idea of a belt around the waist perhaps from the [Celts], since the earliest Romans seemed to have worn a pectoral plate and very rarely a belt (I am thinking the "Villanovan" all-metal "belt"), although wearing a tunic "properly" one does need some kind of tie or belt across the hips. But I also think of Hoplites who didn't seem to wear a sword on a belt, but instead seemed to have preferred to wear a sword slung from a baldric, incidentally.
Andy Volpe
"Build a time machine, it would make this [hobby] a lot easier."
https://www.facebook.com/LegionIIICyr/
Legion III Cyrenaica ~ New England U.S.
Higgins Armory Museum 1931-2013 (worked there 2001-2013)
(Collection moved to Worcester Art Museum)
"Build a time machine, it would make this [hobby] a lot easier."
https://www.facebook.com/LegionIIICyr/
Legion III Cyrenaica ~ New England U.S.
Higgins Armory Museum 1931-2013 (worked there 2001-2013)
(Collection moved to Worcester Art Museum)
