09-07-2011, 04:39 PM
Quote:Maybe the choice to wear one over armour was, again, linked to status/display of wealth. After all, you'd need two different belts, the one to wear over your armour and subarmalis being a few inches longer than the one you'd wear over a tunic?If I would wear a hamata, I wouldn't use a baldric, which I find more cumbersome. The wide belt will support the spatha very well. Only when I wear the squamata, the belt will eventually slide down, so a baldric is needed. As the balteus is evidently the mark of the soldier, I have no dout that it's worn under the armour when we don't see it - it's that important.
Quote:None of the ones which Robert put up as evidence of their use over armour seem to have stuff dangling from them though. I wonder if ANY depictions of wide belts do.Actually, I only use the rosettes because I was told years ago that's what they were used for. But my purse, my big knife and my bag are suspended in a different way, not from the rosettes - I hate dangling bits. :wink: So maybe the rosettes are for decoration only? Do we even know of rosettes used in earlier or later belt sets? We know of stiffeners, even propellor ones, but they're practical - rosettes aren't? Same with the belt plates, which we really don't know where to put exactly - or why. Purely decorative. If I were an archaeologist I'd say it was a sign of religion. :mrgreen:
Robert Vermaat
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)