Padded Armour

[mcbishop]

Curiously, there is an image of a Roman legionary wearing a type of padded armour (although it seems to differ in design a little from the garment shown in the relief from Estepa) in one of the plates of Imperial Roman Legionary AD 161-284, Osprey Warrior Series by Ross Cowan (illustrated by the famous Angus McBride).

Methinks Mr McBride has been a tad over-enthusiastic in his interpretation of the Croy Hill relief. The left-hand figure indeed appears to show this square patterning in the area below the waist but I see little reason to doubt that this is simply a crude attempt to render layered pteryges of the sort seen on dozens of other reliefs. There are reliefs showing arming doublets (Hansjörg Ubl talked about some of these at ROMEC XV) but these are generally genre pieces with the item in question draped across something like a tree stump.

Mike Bishop