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01-23-2004, 12:43 AM

I have three related questions regarding roman mail. 
 
During the time that plate lorica (lorica segmentata) was worn in the legions, what evidence is available suggsting that mail was still worn (albeit to a lesser degree)? 
 
Is there any source that notes the comparative costs of mail and plate lorica during this time period? Was mail more expensive? 
 
Is there any evidence to suggest that plate lorica was worn mainly by the common soldiers while the wealthier classes preferred mail?

Crispvs · 01-23-2004, 01:58 AM

Daniel, 
 
This is probably more a matter for the eminent Dr Bishop but I'll wade in anyway. 
 
We actually have more sculpural evidence for the wearing of mail by legionaries during this period than for the wearing of segmentata. Well known examples are the stelae of Caius Castricius Victor, Caius Valerius Crispus, and the centurio Marcus Favonius Facilis, and the Adamklissi metopes. The evidence for the wearing of segmentata is mostly archaeological and could be baised, due to segmentata's vulnerability to broken fittings (which are the most common finds). Mail exists, but is not so common in the record, but then, Roman mail by its very nature is unlikely to break or fall off in the way that segmentata fittings often did. 
 
In terms of man-hours used in the production of the different armour types, segmentata was probably cheaper, although both would have been (and still are) extremely time consuming. The cost in labour/time would probably dwarf the cost of the raw materials. Mail would almost certainly have lasted longer, as it is more flexible and less inclined to break or become caked in rust and so in the long run would probably be more cost effective. 
 
The evidence for exactly who wore segmentata is extremely limited. Although Trajan's column shows a multitude of legionaries wearing it, there is an unknown degree of formalisation/stylisation to be found there and so it is unwise to depend on it as primary evidence. No officers or centuriones are depicted wearing it, but then again we have only a handful of images or armoured officers to look at and it is likely that they do not represent the full range of equipment available to Roman officers. Finds of broken or detatched fittings or the occasional fragmentary piece of plate assemblage do not help to prove who wore the armour it came from. 
 
In all probability mail, scale and segmentata were worn side by side and I find it tempting to think that the original custodes armoria may have had the attitude of "if it fits you it's your's", when equipping tyrones from the armoury. More experienced soldiers may have been able to exercise some personal choice over the type of armour they wore, as I suspect, could centuriones. Mail if well made and worn regularly is cheap to maintain and gives excellent protection from slashes if properly padded, although it is less effective against thrusts. Scale if properly made and padded, gives good protection against slashes and some against thrusts. It is liable to suffer from deterioration faster than mail but is relatively cheap to repair. Segmentata gives excellent protection against both thrusts and slashes but is prone to breakage and is time consuming and potentially difficult to repair. 
 
I hope this helps answer your questions. 
 
Regards 
 
Crispvs

Daniel S Peterson · 01-23-2004, 09:41 PM

As for relative cost between mail and segmentatae, I believe we can realistically state that mail, even riveted was probably cheaper in Roman times. This is based on the relative costs for both types of armor as hand made in India from my observations there. While a segmentata is a bit cheaper, it is made from prepared steel plate, reducing the work by half. Also, in Indian riveted mail, every ring is riveted. In Roman usually only half the rings are, also considerably reducing the labor. The manufacture of Lorica segmentatae also requires more skilled laborers. Every step of Indian mail making is done by Moslem women as a "at home" industry, and similarly could have been done in Roman times with female slaves, which would have been the cheapest work force. These aobservations are based on typical 8 - 10 mm rings. Much finer mail would have been more time consuming, and probably more typical of privately owned mail cuirases of wealthier/higher ranking men. 
 
Dan 
Dan

01-24-2004, 12:27 AM

Romans didn't utilise 8-10mm links very often. 4-6mm seems more typical (links as small as 3mm have been found) and as such, the production costs would have been much higher. If we can make segmentata from prepared plates, then why couldn't the Romans? I acknowledge that plate today is much cheaper than in Rome however, wire for making mail is also cheaper today so the relative costs for raw materials is the same. Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=danielraymondhoward>Daniel Raymond Howard</A> at: 1/24/04 8:41 am

01-24-2004, 12:41 AM

Another question. Several sources state that segmentata lends itself to mass production. I was wondering how true this actually is and how likely is was for mass production to reduce the cost of plate lorica.

Matthew Amt · 01-24-2004, 04:38 AM

Ave! 
Well, Roman mail with 10 mm rings has been found, I believe, though I agree it's at the upper end of the scale. (And it would take a little digging through my books to find a good reference.) 
 
Certainly the Romans could have made the lorica from prepared sheet iron, but buying that is part of the cost, yes? The question is usually studied as to the comparative cost and difficulty of producing either type of armor from iron billet to finished product to make sure that everything is counted. It was probably easier to cut small bits off a billet to forge into individual plates, rather than work the whole billet out flat and THEN cut it up. 
 
Anything can be "mass-produced", but I wouldn't say the lorica is particularly designed for that. True, you could have scattered workshops cranking out just fittings or girdle plates. But many of the plates have to be made to fit the wearer at least pretty well, so they can't all be the same. We just don't have enough pieces to tell if they had some sort of system like 4 "standard" sizes for some parts, that could be mixed and matched for different sized soldiers. Often it looks like every darn plate we find is different from every other! And really, that's not impossible to do when every piece is hand-made--if they wanted to make every lorica a different size, it wouldn't really be much more trouble than making them all the same. But they still have to fit the troops! (Not sure if I'm contradicting myself, here, or not!) 
 
It's a complicated question that we've worked on before, and there really aren't any solid answers. Lots of variables, though! 
 
Vale, 
 
Matthew/Quintus, Legio XX

Daniel S Peterson · 01-25-2004, 07:01 PM

Yes Matt, Mail shirts with rings up to 10mm have been found. I believe an almost completely intact one was found at Nydham in association with many swords and other Roman military equipment. 
 
I believe 7 - 10 mm represents the normal 'arsenal' grade Roman mail paralleling roughly what was common in medieval times. The very small link Roman mail probably represents 'parade' or 'dress' type armors and the amount of survivals, much like so-called parade and sports helmets are not an accurate refection of what was in common use by soldiers as normal armament. I own an original antique riveted mail mail shirt of 4mm riveted links, and in this size, though splendid to behold, it is not very protective. Rings this size are easily cut with a powerful sword slash. 
 
The same applies to some of the tiniest Roman lamellar and scale armors. These are easily defeated in actual combat conditions, and again, probably for parades, sports and ceremonies. 
Dan

01-26-2004, 12:51 AM

This makes sense. Mail becomes more dominant and plate lorica disppears around the same time that the large state run factories begin to produce armour for the legions. One could infer from this that mail was easier (quicker and cheaper) to produce in these factories and that plate lorica was no longer necessary. This presupposes that Romans preferred mail over segmentata if they had a choice. The pictorial evidence seems to suggest that those who could afford better armour preferred mail although there aren't enough examples of segmentata to be sure. Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=danielraymondhoward>Daniel Raymond Howard</A> at: 1/26/04 1:56 am

Gregg · 01-26-2004, 04:56 PM

I shouldn't dive in without my sources close to hand, but hey, it's never stopped me before... 
 
I've always imagined mail taking longer to produce and requiring more skilled and semi-skilled laborers than segmentata. With segmentata you would need to pound a billet into plate, then the plate is cut to the size necessary. Then you punch the holes, bend the plates to the right shape, and attach it all to leather straps. The hinges would require a bit more finesse, but not much more actual skill. All in all, the skill required to produce a segmentata is really not much different than the skill required to construct scale armor. 
 
With mail, you need someone to pound the iron billet into a bar, then the bar has to be drawn repeatedly through a series of smaller and smaller holes, until you get the wire gauge you need. Then the wire has to be wound, cut into rings, and the ends of each ring has to be flattened and punched. Meanwhile someone else has to pound an iron lump into a plate, and the solid rings have to be punched out one at a time (a two step process I believe). After all the rings are finished, they have to be connected one at a time, and the open rings riveted together (using rivets, not the simple metal slivers used by medieval craftsmen). It seems to me you would need far more workers using more specialized toos to put together a hamata than a segmentata, and it would be more heavy-labor intensive; besides pounding out the rod and the plate, drawing the wire probably required some real muscle, and/or a horse or oxen. Preparing the two types of rings, and then lacing the shirt together and riveting the open rings would have taken considerable skill, much more than simply punching holes in segmetata plates (or scales, or lamellae, or laminata, etc.). 
 
If this is a correct reading, then any workshop producing mail would need more workers overall, and more skilled workers, all working longer hours, than a workshop producing segmentata. All of which adds up to greater labor costs. 
 
Though segmentata offered better protection against slashing, stabbing, and (most especially) smashing blows, I still can't imagine it costing more than mail. However, if, as Matt suggests, at least part of a segmentata had to be tailored to each individual soldier, I suppose that could increase the price, as it would require more time and more skilled workers. 
 
Still, the deciding factor may not have been cost of production, but cost of repair. It would have been much cheaper and easier to repair a damaged ring or patch of rings on a mail lorica than repair or replace a damaged segmentata plate (not to mention those hinges). The lorica segmentata was introduced near the peak of the EmpireÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s wealth, and seems to have fallen out of use as the empireÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s economic base began to seriously erode. This alone seems to suggest that the segmentata was more expensive overall, which probably explains its disappearance. 
 
Personally, I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t buy the theory that the decline in the segmentata was due to its unpopularity among soldiers. It seems to have offered torso and shoulder protection superior to any other form of Roman armor, and itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s abandonment due to poor protection compared to mail or scale doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t seem likely. For instance, one does not see the armor of the medieval knight go from the mail hauberk, to full plate, and then back to mail again. Also, if TrajanÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s column is any indication, the lorica segmentata may have had some kind of symbolic meaning to the legionary. I also imagine the average legionary thinking that segmentata was Ã¢â‚¬Å“cool;Ã¢â‚¬Â

01-26-2004, 09:50 PM

In medieval Italy, mail manufacture was a highly specialised business. Wire drawers created the wire and sold it to link makers. Link makers created the links and sold them to mail makers. These people created the mail "fabric" and sold it to the armourers. The armourers tailored the fabric into armour for their customers. There is no reason why you can't have all these processes under one roof in a large state-run factory. 
 
The fact that mail requires less individual tailoring also suggests that these fatories are more likely to produce mail than segmentata. 
 
I would also dispute the statement that properly made mail of riveted/solid links was worse than plate lorica at resisting slashes and punctures. It was obviously poor at resisting crushing attacks. 
 
The medieval knight is a poor example since he went from wearing plate to wearing armour even worse than mail (buff coats, etc). 
 
I'm proposing that once the state run factories could produce mail cheaper than segmentata then mail would be the preferred type of armour since the state decides what armour it issues.

Gregg · 01-27-2004, 10:18 PM

ThereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s no reason the same manufacturing process you described for mail could not have also been utilized for the production of segmentata. And segmentata would have been cheaper and faster to produce (in theory) since it would have required fewer skilled workers (less workers overall, in fact), fewer specialized tools, and fewer steps in the production process. If we assume that scale and mail hauberks could be produced in basic Small, Medium and Large sizes to fit all possible recruits, then it was only the need to tailor some of the individual lames (assuming you couldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t get around this by tailoring your subarmalis instead) that would have prevented the segmentata from completely fitting into this system of factory mass production. 
 
From what IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve read, the segmentata was a remarkably advanced form of armor. That it offered superior protection against slashing, piercing, and smashing blows seems pretty self-evident. Mail was obviously far more vulnerable to blunt impact (partially ameliorated by the subarmalis), but also to piercing weapons, particularly arrows (against arrows, even scale may have been a superior defense to mail). But while a segmentata might stop just about anything it could reasonably expect to face on a battlefield, it probably sustained considerable damage in the process. To help absorb the force of a blow (from what I understand), the plates were constructed of iron and not steel. Therefore large (and comparatively expensive) repairs after combat were probably not uncommon. As long as cost was not an issue, this does not seem to have been a problem. 
 
If IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m reading the evidence correctly (and IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m not all that up on the late Empire), the Romans decided that low-maintenance armor that could be mass-produced at speed (like scale and mail) was preferable to armor like the segmentata for no other reason than because the segmentata may have required some individual tailoring, and was comparatively high maintenance. However, in doing so they consciously chose to abandon a superior and proven (and probably often preferred) defensive armor for simpler and more easily maintained types. The evidence for the change in helmet styles from highly advanced single-bowl types to lower-quality composite designs would seem to support this. Personally I canÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t see this kind of technological de-evolution as anything but a response from a system in serious trouble. 
 
Though my comparison to the development of medieval armor was obviously rather simple, I believe it still holds true. There was no real move towards decrease in armor coverage in the Middle Ages until gunpowder weapons finally began to change the way war was fought. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s difficult for me to imagine the last great knightly armies, like the French at Nancy, or the Yorkists at Bosworth, charging their enemies clad only in buff coatsÃ¢â‚¬Â¦. 
 
Gregg

01-27-2004, 11:44 PM

My theory for the preference for mail is its longevity. If given the most rudimentary maintainenance, a good mail shirt will last for generations, even centuries. Thus, the store of mail would increase over time as new shirts were made while the old ones continued in service. There may have just come a time when there was overwhelmingly more mail than anything else.

01-28-2004, 02:26 AM

I thought steel did not come into use until the early middle ages?

Matthew Amt · 01-28-2004, 03:20 PM

Steel was indeed used by the Romans, though they did not have a different word for it. In other words, they didn't know the molecular differences between iron and steel, so to them it was all just different forms of iron. By modern definitions, "steel" is just iron with a fairly narrow range of carbon content. Some Roman items are a "steely iron", or a low-carbon steel, including some lorica parts. Blades often had a higher carbon content, meaning they were definitely steel, but not necessarily like a modern tool steel. A few lorica plates show a layered effect, being harder on the outside and softer on the inside. So the metallurgy was quite sophisticated. They knew what they could do with various ores treated in particular ways to get the metal they needed. 
 
And by the way, recent studies have shown that mail is far more resistant to cuts AND thrusts than has generally been acknowledged. It would be very difficult to pierce with arrows or spears even under good conditions. See The Mail Research Society, 
 
www.erikdschmid.com/research-main.htm 
 
Valete, 
 
Matthew/Quintus

FlaviusCrispus · 01-28-2004, 06:08 PM

Matt-- 
 
Could you try that link again? Doesn't seem to work for me. 
 
T. Flavius Crispus 
Legio VI Victrix Pia Fidelis 
California, USA

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