Leiden - disc chape for gladius?

[drsrob]

I think they wore the same or similar armour as centurions. Either a mail shirt like M. Favonius Facilis or a scale shirt like Q. Sertorius Festus. On the monument at Adamklissi (Metope VI) a senior officer (Traian?) is shown with an armour that looks like a muscle cuirass, but is covered with scales.

Statius, Thebais, VII

• 'Multiplicem teneces iterant thorace catenae'
  'The little chains join the many-folded thorax'

Virgil, Aeneid, III, V. 467.

• 'loricam consertam hamis, auroque trilicem'
  'the three-fold lorica, held together with golden hooks'

Silius Italicus, Punica, V.

• 'Loricam induitur tortos huic nexilis hamos
  Ferro squama rudi, permistoque asperat auro'
  'He puts on the lorica - it looks terrible: scales of plain iron and gold intermixed, being knitted together with twisted hooks'

These quotes either refer to locked scale or to scale attached to a mail shirt. Of the latter an example has been found (See Robinson p. 173)

As I suggested before the hellenistic armour survived in sculpture as a symbol of (equestrian) rank and - after senators formed a seperate order - of senatorial rank as well.

As for Galba's linen cuirass, it could have been a subarmalis or a surcoat as worn by cavalry (see Arrian) and/or Praetorians (Cancelleria relief)