Sources about the Roxolani/ leather armour

[Dan Howard]

Trajan's column doesn't tell us anything useful because it doesn't depict armour in a realistic manner. If your armour isn't representative of what was actually worn, then how can it tell us anything about weight or movement or anything else? If a reconstruction doesn't serve to stop spears and arrows then it is a costume, not armour. Realistic leather armour slows a person down more than a similar construction made from metal because it is more bulky (and thus less comfortable), less flexible, and weighs more. Metal scale and lamellar affect movement more than segmentata because they weigh more than segmentata. They get even worse when mud or blood or water or ice is involved and all four are implicated in the battle described by Tacitus.