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Quote:Antonius Lucretius:w50dg0i5 Wrote:That banded armour --it is indoubtedly banded armour or "seg"-- reminds me of a similar one on Trajan Column's base. There are two on TC, actually. One with the lower part hidden by something else --a shield or a tunic-- and the other one shown complete and going down the hips.
Like the one seen here?
[url:w50dg0i5]http://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/resources/www/pictures/trajan/colbase3.jpg[/url]
It is very hard to piece together such disparate evidence over such a time span. Can I ask a couple of dumb questions? (Trajan is way before my time  )
Is it thought that that pile of kit on the column base is captured enemy (Dacian?) equipment or Roman, (i.e. were the Dacians using captured Roman kit anyway by this point or is it thought that the artists carved familiar Roman kit anyway)?
Secondly, does that banded armour seem a bit bendy, or remind anyone else of a discarded gambeson with horizontal stitching? Will anyone hit me if I suggest it might be a thorachomachus, or textile armour?
:?
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Quote:Do you have a Roman example? :wink:
How do we know that everyone depicted on that mosaic is a Roman?
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Quote:Tarbicus:3350zie9 Wrote:Do you have a Roman example? :wink:
How do we know that everyone depicted on that mosaic is a Roman?
They're Biblical stories, so are you saying they're all Israelite and Egyptian armours? Did anyone in the Old Testament have late Roman tunics with clavii and orbiculii as seen in the rest of the mosaics? They're Roman, with Greek influences in some cases, which makes them even more Roman.
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I'd say they were modelled after Hellenistic examples, with Roman influences.
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Very strongly disagree.
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
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Quote:I'd say they were modelled after Hellenistic examples, with Roman influences.
Absolutely nothing about the Dura Europus mosaics or frescoes is Hellenistic. Almost everything about them points to them being Roman.
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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Quote:Very strongly disagree.
Look Jim, I'll never say that your segmentata can't be a segmentata, but I'm saying that it could a) be something else, or b) if a segmentata, then one that was totally unknown and hence misunderstood by the artist. How about that?
And can't you really see any Hellenistic influences in the mosaics?
Quote:Vortigern Studies:pp91gpdh Wrote:I'd say they were modelled after Hellenistic examples, with Roman influences.
Absolutely nothing about the Dura Europus mosaics or frescoes is Hellenistic. Almost everything about them points to them being Roman. Indeed!
But we were discussing the Santa Maria Maggiore church mosaics, weren't we? My apologies if that was not clear.
Here is the link:
http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/dbcourses/ ... ?view=666#
![[Image: JL-029.jpg]](http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/dbcourses/klein/medium/JL-029.jpg)
The crested helmets, the chariots, the shoulder-doublings (sp.?).
Hey, I'm a believer in the long hasta as infantry weapon - this would be prime evidence if all details were primarily based on Roman examples! But even so, I cannot help believing that the original influence of this particular artist were from military art from the immediate post-Alexander era.
And whilst I can see Late Roman influences too, such as in the female dress in the image below (if I'm correct), the male fashion seems rather pre-3rd c. to me than 5th c., the date of the mosaic. This all point to an archaising style, not a contemporary one.
![[Image: klein_042402_017.jpg]](http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/dbcourses/klein/medium/klein_042402_017.jpg)
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Leather segmentatas are BS, C&B and a load of crap!
the mosaic portrays LATE ROMAN soldiers, and has therefore the same technique as later Paintings by Dutch and other Masters, portraying biblical stories using contemporary armour and equipment.
stop this discussion, please!
"The only way to make a working version of the Column segs is to make them from leather"
study the column again please! it is proof that segmentatas existed. and the finds of segmentata corobberate that... so it is just nice someone tried to portray them.
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Maybe we should split off this part of the discussion and call it 'Santa Maria Maggiore mosaics' or something?
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Quote:Maybe we should split off this part of the discussion and call it 'Santa Maria Maggiore mosaics' or something?
Agreed.
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
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Quote:Indeed!
But we were discussing the Santa Maria Maggiore church mosaics, weren't we? My apologies if that was not clear.
Ah :oops: Sorry, my mistake!
Quote:The crested helmets, the chariots, the shoulder-doublings (sp.?).
Hey, I'm a believer in the long hasta as infantry weapon - this would be prime evidence if all details were primarily based on Roman examples!
The peaked helmets could be a Hellenistic influence, I can't think of later Roman examples of soldiers wearing similar Thracian helmets in art. However, I know that in the later Roman period, the Phrygian peak, rather in cap form or in helmet form, came to be a kind of generalized trademark of the generic "Oriental." The Chariots really aren't Hellenistic, just fantastical. The shoulder doublings could be the shoulder yokes of linen cuirasses, but they could just as easily be a part of that system of braces and crossbraces which can be seen on the chest portions of many Byzantine cuirasses.
Quote:But even so, I cannot help believing that the original influence of this particular artist were from military art from the immediate post-Alexander era.
Looks more to me like a Classicized effort to represent an "Oriental" army to me.
Quote:And whilst I can see Late Roman influences too, such as in the female dress in the image below (if I'm correct), the male fashion seems rather pre-3rd c. to me than 5th c., the date of the mosaic. This all point to an archaising style, not a contemporary one.
Well, if you break it down into its individual components, it's a bit easier to analyze:
A) The tunics. Since tunics didn't really change in shape too much from the Hellenistic to the early Roman period, the shape of these could go either way. Clavi were a Hellenistic decoration which caught on later on in the Roman empire, they were much more common in the 1st C. AD Roman world than in the Hellenistic world. There are two exomeis there, but they are being worn by pastoralists, for whom that was typical Classicized clothing.
B) The cloaks. If these were Hellenistic, we would expect the long chlamys. Instead we see plain old knee length cloaks. There's nothing Hellenistic about that at all.
C) The footwear. This type of "bound sock" footwear is found being worn by Hellenistic soldiers, but as far as I know it was a soldierly type of footwear alone. I haven't really done any research into it but I'm fairly sure this type of footwear persisted into later periods.
There is a definite "Archaising," or Classicized element to these mosaics, but they are not Hellenistic really, more a mish mash of by-then heavily reused images from earlier periods.
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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Just a little observation here amongst all this high powered discussion, but as the mosaics are in Rome (or am I mistaken about this?) then the artist had numerous visual influences to consult. Some examples: the segmental armor depicted on the base of Trajan's column which has already been referred to; the 'smurf' helmets of some soldiers on the arch of Septimius Severus and on one or two sarcophacae; the depictions of armour on the column of Marcus Aurelius; the dress worn by the soldiers in the triumphal reliefs on the arch of Titus - if we can see them, then so could he, along with a host of other sculptural works which have now disappeared which may have depicted other details which are unusual to us. What did they show? Perhaps someone decided to go one better than the arch of Septimius Severus and sculpt taller smurf helmets which ended up accidentally looking like Thracian helmets. If so he could have seen it and copied it and we would be none the wiser because 90% of the sculptures and paintings he could have used as influences have disappeared since then.
It is a commonplace (and I think Travis will back me up here) that even competent artists use existing models as influences. It has often been pointed out how heavily the sculpture of the column of Trajan influenced the sculture of the column of Marcus Aurelius. Similarly it has also been pointed out that many figures on the Bayeaux Tapestry are copied straight from illustrated manuscripts from the library of Canterbury Cathedral, which can be seen now as part of the Cotton collection. Therefore it follows that the artist who laid this mosaic was not necessarily 'hellenising' as such. He could merely have been using convenient elements of suitably themed sculptures, paintings and mosaics which he saw in everyday life to create a composite which seemed believable to him.
Crispvs
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I split the mosaics discussion from the Leather Lorica Segmentata discussion.
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ah okies..........
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Katte Kabuto no O wo shimeyo!
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Quote:the 'smurf' helmets of some soldiers on the arch of Septimius Severus and on one or two sarcophacae;
....Perhaps someone decided to go one better than the arch of Septimius Severus and sculpt taller smurf helmets which ended up accidentally looking like Thracian helmets. If so he could have seen it and copied it and we would be none the wiser because 90% of the sculptures and paintings he could have used as influences have disappeared since then....
An example here:
[url:jbnjmgl8]http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic.php?p=108832#108832[/url]
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
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