Musculata Images

[ValentinianVictrix]

Romans were fashionable. Can someone explain to me, why an officer who makes really good money, would waste it on a plain looking, dark brown leather musculata? I can pretty confidently say that they wouldn't.

Paint it then? Ok...guess what happens to paint on a flexible surface, especially milk or casein? It cracks...then it flakes off. So now you have a high ranking officer looking like a piece of crap. Not exactly inspiring to the troops. So you can't have the leather flexing like it does and being painted. Not to mention the creases in the actual leather (if it will flex once it's been molded) will ruin the smooth finish on it.

Sorry guys, but we've been over this, and over this. There is simply nothing solid to lend weight to the leather musculata theory, especially if you look at it from all angles. Statuary alone isn't going to cut it either. If you look at the painted images of musculata, they are all light colours....white, yellow...etc.

Can you imagine what someone 2,000 years from now would think of our civilization if they took our "art" as being culturally accurate???

You of course know that leather is not painted, it is dyed? I have belts in a variety of colours, my current one that I wear most is jet black, and has remained the same colour as the day I bought it quite a few years ago now. My good lady has leather belts in colours ranging from pink, white, blue, green, red etc, and none of those colours have faded or run either.

It is simply a falsehood to say you cannot colour leather, in fact you can colour leather in any colour you see fit as leather takes dyes so well, so the colour argument is a complete red herring I'm afraid. You can also chaste leather and then fill it in with precious metals which will not fall out as the leather, when wet and untanned, will shrink around the metallic strips, holding it fast in place.

[Dan Howard]

Properly made metal armour is neither heavy nor uncomfortable. In order for leather to even go close to providing the same level of protection it needs to be both far thicker and far heavier than a metal equivalent.

There are plenty of cases of leather armour and other items being painted. In medieval Italy for example both paint and gesso were used to decorate leather armour and other items. In Asia the most common method of decorating leather armour was with coloured lacquer.

[Dan Howard]

This thread keeps getting more interesting with each new post!

None of this is new. It has been covered ad nauseum on previous threads with nobody being able to address the contradiction between the sculptural depictions and functional leather armour.

[Alexand96]

None of this is new. It has been covered ad nauseum on previous threads with nobody being able to address the contradiction between the sculptural depictions and how real leather armour functions.

I've seen and read through many of the previous threads...so I know what you mean. I'm not really interested in the leather vs. metal debates either - I agree with your conclusions. I'm just interested in the musculata in general.

[Sulla]

By the way I mentioned this before but we KNOW that the statues stylized. You can tell this by looking at the decorations. See when the musculata is shown twisted and bending the decorations are carved on it to make it look nice not to move like they were attached to it. This includes overlapping and being carved into the trim area and resizing to fit the shorter side of the body etc. So knowing this makes almost all of the cases for leather armor go away. The exceptions would be the crumpled bent over empty musculata but I would suggest those are the undergarments.

[Dan Howard]

Some leathers can be quite thick and retain some flexibility.

"Some" being the operative word.

I have a number of belts of various thicknesses, depending on the type of trouser I am wearing depends on the thickness of the belt i.e. when wearing jeans I wear quite a wide, thick belt that is very tough butl flexible enough to go around my waist

Try creasing it the way it is supposed to in some of the sculptures. Try stabbing it with a knife and see how well it performs. You can't get leather to do both. Either it is thick enough to resist a weapon point or it is thin enough to fold and flex the way it is depicted in the sculptures. Not both.

[Magnus]

I would love to see some pictures of dyed leather in yellow or white and see how bright it is. Otherwise it isnt going to resemble the paintings of roman musculata. And this of course would be a veggie tanned leather...oh and dont forget that if you are going to oil it, it will darken further. That to me eliminates dye as a viable option.

Laquered leather...usually in the form of smaller lames attached to each other, not a solid breast plate.

[Doc]

Alexander,

My musculata was made for me by Matt Lukes. We examined as many pieces possible from the Greeks, Etruscans, and the one from D'Amato as well as the statuary. Virtually having none from the Roman era (except the one) we looked at other musculatas and compared them to the statuary and D'Amata photo. They all have certain similarities enough that some of the Etruscan examples could have been what the Romans would have had. It is in my opinion one of the most accurate reconstructions of musculata not in the least because I own it. Months of research went into this project. Most if not all other reconstructions have musculature that is too pronounced. Albeit my musculata seems very muscular, I assure you it is the light that makes it even more so.

I live in NY and have personally seen the musculatas from the Metropolitan museum and none of them have ANY exaggerated musculature.

The picture is on pg 123 of the reconsturction section towards the middle.

[Sulla]

I agree most of the modern ones are very different fron the statues etc.

[Alexand96]

The picture is on pg 123 of the reconsturction section towards the middle.

Doc, from what I can see in your avatar it looks beautiful, but I'm having trouble finding the pics in the reconstruction section...you mean pg. 123 of the "Roman army re-enactment & reconstruction" section, right? What is the name of the topic that the pics are under?

[Doc]

Hi Alexander,

Yes it's in the section you mentioned on page 123 under the following heading: Show here your roman soldier impression. There is no specific title.

[M.VAL.BRUTUS]

I just wanted to post and talk about my expariaces with my muscalata, And just fyi, my muscalata was made by Antoni Feldon and is as accurate as any I've seen.

Okay so the point about muscalata not being anatomically correct and being able to bend over. This is true to a small extent. While you are able to bend at the waist, you lose any ability to bend at the solar plexis, just below the rib cage. You can not under estimate how much you use that particular bend until you can't. Even if you did bend at the waist, you would be so off balance you generally fall forward because your center of gravity is so misplaced.

And generally speaking about my leather muscualta and the comfort. I used a water hardening method to make mine, and the front and back of the cuirass is hard and hold the musculature well, but I purposefully left the sides un-hardened to give it some flex to the side and the ability be able to twist a little from side to side, and it works beautifully, I have signifigantly more freedom of movement in it than the metal, but the front I would dtill feel confident in, especially if I had shield in addition to the cuirass.

Now I'm just speaking from my expariances in wearing an using a musculata, but I think idea of the rich officer buying his armor swings both ways. Yeah, in metal, it looks great and shows his status, but if you had spent all that money to have the armor made of metal, would you wear it everyday, and risk it taking damage and having to be repaired? Or since you are a rich officer would you protect your investment and invest in a cheaper day to day piece that you don't really care about?

Again just my experiance.

[Doc]

With respect to Antoni Feldon, from his website it appears that he does good work but I am not entirely sure that we can classify his pieces as being always that accurate. Evenbody is entitled to their opinion but from my experience, few people make a musculata more accurate than Matt Lukes, very few. For me Feldon is not really in those few. I have seen his musculatas before. I am not going to judge yours because the avatar is too small.

Anyway, back to the topic. I apologize if I drifted there for a while.

I have to agree with Brandon. If you bend at the waist with a metal curiass, there is significant weight at the upper part of the torso to pull someone foward especially with the helmet on your head. Furthermore, with the epomides, there is even significant reduction in being able to put your amrs up in the air (when the police says hand up) Then again, for people who trained in their armor everyday, I think that they would be use to the weight and its distribution which means that they could learn how to properly balance themselves. On the other hand, most people who do this as a hobby are generally your weekend types and without continous training in combat which leads to difficulty dealing with equipment such as this.

[Alexand96]

Doc, found it. Beautiful piece of work you have there. It really captures the essence of the bronze musculata in D'Amato, as well as the Etruscan/Aponine? cuirass in the British museum.

And Brutus, both of the musculata that I've seen of yours look awesome. I, along with some other RAT members, may not be convinced that the Romans used leather in this function, but your opinion on the subject is appreciated (at least by me) nonetheless. I don't have ANY musculata recreated to speak of (although I would certainly like to).

And hey, for what it's worth, the existence of leather armor cannot necessarily be disproven, only proven less and less likely.

[Dan Howard]

It is a logical impossibility to prove a negative. It is up to those proposing the hypothesis to prove it and nobody has done so. Leather musculatas and segmentatas are pure speculation based on an inability to properly interpret contemporary illustrations and a misconception of how historical leather armour actually works.