Re: DEVA 2012

[Robert Vermaat]

Trousers being worn by first century AD legionary re-enactors are another thing which annoys me. People start to feel cold so they say to themselves: 'the Romans must have got cold in cold weather just like me. They would have seen the trousers being worn by Germans and Gauls and thought: those seem like a good idea - I'll get myself a pair'. Yet I would like to see some evidence before people start using or recommending trousers or either type. We certainly know they were in use fifty to sixty years after the period most of us depict, but that does not necessary mean they were in use by legionaries as early as the mid first century AD, especially when they had so many other options for keeping themselves warm already which did not come from the 'barbarian' realms. People tend to forget that the Romans were not like us and did not think like us.

True, but they felt the cold like us and died of pneumonia as well. Like you I can get annoyed by people copying other people without understanding why. And right now, by far the most of 1st-c. re-enactors thinks it's a dogma that arms and legs must be bare. So did the Romans never cover their bare limbs when the temperatures dropped, or did they take 50-60 years to start feeling the cold? No trousers yet, agreed. But if not trousers, what?