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Nathan Ross · 03-17-2004, 11:06 AM

Magnus - 
 
Yes, Crassus' troop would have been wearing mail indeed - also they would have carried the 'long' republican scutum, which I believe would have covered the body if the soldier knelt behind it, as I rather imagine they might have done at Carrhae. My point was not an argument against the protective qualities of segmentata in this case, but of the armour-piercing ability of Parthian arrows. To shoot a few holes in my own argument, however, I would add that Plutarch mentions the arrows striking sinews, and in the same passage mentions the hands and feet of the soldiers being pinned to thier shields, or to the ground - sinews suggests wounded limbs, and the pinning suggests that it was principally arms and legs - hit through the shield - that were most at risk. However, 'armour' is mentioned too... 
 
Going back to the original point about segmentata - I do believe that it was intended as a defence against glancing or oblique blows. As Germanicus points out, a hard enough direct hit with a strong enough weapon can penetrate virtually any armour, and no soldier is impregnable - still, it is strange that the segmentata should have initially been so uncommon (or so it would appear) on the arrow-infested eastern frontier, if it did offer such an excellent defence against archery. 
 
I'm curious though - do you hold Cannae to be a draw? The Punic wars are not my strong point, but I'd always taken it to be a major defeat for Rome!

03-17-2004, 11:42 AM

Ave! 
 
Cannae was, if not the major, surely the most famous defeat for the romans. And the most brilliant victory for hannibal, something like Austerlitz for Napoleon. Other interesting things: 
 
1) Like you said, probably romans used their large shields to take cover, and (Plutarco says) kept a serrated order. I doubt there were too bare points: every soldier was behind his shield and (except the ones in front) a lot of his comrades. Every soldier has his lorica and his helmet. 
And, obviousy, they kept their head down. 
 
2) If an arrow could penetrate 2 cm of solid wood and nail the arm of the soldier to the shield it could penetrate an armour, too. Two centimeters of wood is strong like a wooden door. A better defence that the lorica. Surely an arrow could not penetrate the shield and the lorica, but only one of these yes. I think the wooden shield was a better defence than the lorica. Lorica was the second line of defence, i mean. 
 
3) The lorica was about 12 kg, the shield about 5. The helmet al least 2. Al least 20 kg at all, with the gladius. You can imagine to fight 4 or 5 hours in summer in southern italy or in tunisia or spain? Thirty-five celsius are absolutely common, in that places. They had to be REALLY strong. In their body and in their mind. 
 
Germanicus

03-17-2004, 03:43 PM

Ok...obviously i'm confused. It wasn't cannae, or carrhae...what was one of the earliest encounters (first century?) between Rome and Parthia/Persia that resulted in a stalemate because neither side was able to gain a decisive victory over the other? (BTW - I wouldn't consider the punic wars to be a loss to the romans...they sacked Carthage what, twice? And in the end annexed all of the Carthaginian territories.) 
 
All my books are on loan right now, and doing a quick search on the net didn't find me the right battle I was looking for. Magnus/Matt 
Legio XXX "Ulpia Victrix" 
Niagara Falls, Canada

Goffredo · 03-17-2004, 03:49 PM

well the romans defintely got beaten very badly! 
On the grander scale it was a stale mate as neither could win over the long run: Surena was a talented general and taught rome a healthy lesson; similarly the Parthians, that evidently underestimated the romans after the simple Carrhae victory, also learned a lesson about 20 years later when Ventidius, similarly talented, beat them soundly.

Nathan Ross · 03-17-2004, 09:47 PM

Might Phraaspa have been the stalemate battle you were thinking of, Matt? It was a pretty indecisive encounter, though Antony lost so many men on his retreat march that it would have seemed a serious defeat without some swift and effective propaganda and a timely invasion of fairweather-friends Armenia. Good job they didn't have CNN back then. 
 
It would seem that anything short of a crushing victory beyond the eastern frontier tended to be costly to the Romans - the mobility of the Parthians, and their habit of ignoring 'gentlemens' agreements' making any strategic retreat into a running battle. 
 
As for the Punic wars - I was referring only to Cannae, not the wars as a whole! I think we can safely say that the Romans left no stone unturned in their pursuit of total victory after that!

Crispvs · 03-17-2004, 10:16 PM

Some years ago we (the R.M.R.S.) did some experiments with our artillery. At full tension, measured at 730psi (probably somewhat less than the poundage the Romans had at their disposal but still considerable) we shot our manubalista at a lorica segmentata and found that the shot failed to penetrate the armour but did push the plates in so far that any soldier wearing it would have died instantly or soon after from the massive crushing of bones and organs which would have resulted from the impact. The full details of the tests are to be found in Len Morgan and Alan Wilkins' paper in the 2000 edition of JRMES, along with David Simm's paper on the reconstruction and testing of a falx. 
 
I appreciate that a manubalista is a good deal more powerfull than a hand bow, but I thought that this might be instructive. 
 
Crispvs

03-17-2004, 10:50 PM

Germanicus - I do agree with you, I think body armor, esspecially at this point in history, and esspeically for the Romans, is meant to be a last-defence against weak, deflected, richocet, and oblique blows not immediately deflected by the Scutum. It goes back to my mention that Romans were fighting in tight formations in [deep] ranks. Yes the shields are big and act as a mobile wall to fight behind, but all sorts of weapons and nasty things are going to find thier way bewteen all of the gaps, and it's awfully nice to know you still have some sort of armor to protect the most vulnerable parts on you. With the chaos of having raining arrows coming down on you constantly, and a force of enemies infront of you, you can't just decide which way to put your shield, or be paying attention to the arrows and the soldiers at the same time. 
 
But I still stand behind my point, it's not just the penetrative power of [arrows], it's also the force of the blow and the resulting effects. I also like Crispvs' experiments showing that the armor would be bent to all heck from these weapons, and I think that certainly backs up my point, even if the armor itself isn't penetrated, the sheer force of the blow is going to do some serious damage, and the resulting Roman being thrown back/sidewards from that blow is going to knock into the other Romans around him, and as I said before, a major dominoe effect can occur. 
 
-ANDY

03-18-2004, 01:46 AM

I'd be interested in the references to any tests that showed that bows could not penetrate plate even under "optimum" conditions. 
 
Possibly the "drawn battle" beign referred to is Mark anthony's expeditino to Parthia in about 55BC (?) - IIRC he took 60,000 men, including as many light infantry missile men as he could get, and lsot about 20,000. 
 
He was undefeated, but the Parthians never tried to oppose hime in a formal field battle, instead harrassing his forces, espectially in retreat. 
 
The campaign is described in Plutarch's "Life" of Mark anthony.

03-18-2004, 02:38 AM

Nathan, I've come to the conclusion that nothing I say this week makes sense. I had lost my car keys for the last 24 hours, only to find them in the fridge. Anything I say from here on in, just humour me. That is, until I deem myself sane again... 
 
I'd have to get my A Goldsworthy "Roman Warfare" back from my friend...it could have been an entire campaign he was refering to, not just some battle. Sometimes my memories fuse together, like m&m's you put in your pocket on a hot day. Magnus/Matt 
Legio XXX "Ulpia Victrix" 
Niagara Falls, Canada

03-18-2004, 08:32 AM

Andy, what you say is surely true talking of balistae ecc ecc, weapons firing REALLY HEAVY shots. Do you remember phisics in the high school? 
 
Mtot*Speedtot = m1*speed1+m2*speed2 
 
So, only a blow with a weight about ten pounds or so on can kick you like the bullets of a 44 magnum in a Schwartzenegger's movie. In real life, a 44 magnum shot (about 12 grams & 420 m/sec) DOESN'T lift you as in the movies. 
 
An arrow, even a long wooden arrow, is light. Or pierce the armour or bounce without harming you. 
 
So, there are two hypothesis: 
 
1) The experiments demostrate that a body armour is impervious to the arrows. If it is true, a lot of "sacred books" are false. Plutarco lies and lies the tale of the battle of Crecy. 
It is not impossible. Ancient history is really difficult to check. But...why then parthian and english used the bows so extensively? And the slingers? If a body armour can stop an arrow, you can imagine the effectiveness of a slinger. 
Zero or something like this. Are you english or canadian? Do you have the militay duty, in your country? 
I was in the paratroopers in my military duty. I did'n fight in Somalia because the "war" finished before i finished the boot-camp, but I remember the tales from older soldiers and the exercitations: in a battle, expecially a close quartes battle, is REALLY difficult to choose your target with an assault rifle. With a bow is surely impossible. They used the bows like the muskets in the napoleonic wars, shooting in the mass, like plutarco says. They could not aim to the faces or the necks. If you aim to the mass, you have REALLY small probabilities to get a face a neck or some naked body parts. An arrow on 100, maybe. Plutarco tells a very different tale. 
 
2) The experiments are wrong. Why? I don't know. I try to guess. Many years ago i had the idea to hit an empty water bottle with my hunting-bow from 12-15 meters. 
And what happened? 
The arrow bounced and the bottle felt down without any damage. 
 
Because it was too light and absorbed the blow bouncing backwards. Maybe, in the experiments, the used an empty lorica attached to a tree. The right thing is using a wooden mannequin to wear the lorica. To make it heavier and get the hit like a real warrior, It would be really interesting. 
 
Valete 
 
Germanicus

scythius · 03-18-2004, 08:45 AM

Avete, omnes! 
 
Germanicus wrote: 
Quote:<hr>Maybe, in the experiments, the used an empty lorica attached to a tree. The right thing is using a wooden mannequin to wear the lorica. To make it heavier and get the hit like a real warrior, It would be really interesting.<hr> 
 
Not wood - MEAT! the armour really should be filled with meat. Live human meat would be my first choice - but that probably isn't a good idea. 
 
Freshly butchered large domestic mammal (pig would be second best)would work nicely as well. 
 
LEG IX HSPA - COH III EXPG - CEN I HIB 
 
- FIDELITAS - - VIRTUS - - MAGNANIMITAS - Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=scythius>Scythius</A> <IMG HEIGHT=10 WIDTH=10 SRC="http://www.legio-ix-hispana.org/07ftmac02scythius.gif" BORDER=0> at: 3/18/04 9:46 am

aitor iriarte · 03-18-2004, 12:24 PM

Crispus, 
Of course, I've seen the pic of the indented lorica in Alan and Len's paper. My question (and my doubt) is, would such indentation have caused such devastating effect on the soldier inside as Alan says? I'd like to know what a coroner would have to say to that respect, not forgetting that the legionary would carry a padded undergarment over his body. 
To my mind the nearly correct approach to the experiment would be that stated by Scythius (A little gruesome, as it is! ) 
 
Aitor

03-18-2004, 02:23 PM

Actually, you could use one of those test dummies they put in advanced car crashes. They have sensors located all over their "body" to measure kinetic energy and calculate the damage to a real human body. 
 
Better yet, we can just use some criminal. Magnus/Matt 
Legio XXX "Ulpia Victrix" 
Niagara Falls, Canada

03-18-2004, 02:46 PM

...for gladii, pilii, frameas...ecc ecc. It would be really interesting. 
Who volunteeres to be the dummy? 
 
Germanicus

03-18-2004, 03:44 PM

Concerning the famous victories attributed to the longbow at Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt, etc. it should be remembered that, whatever the penetrative power of the arrows against enemy armor, it was killing the unarmored horses that brought about the defeat. A horse is a target ten times the size of a man. The unhorsed knights who survived the fall were often suffocated and in any case their battle effectiveness was greatly reduced. It is only in movies that cavalry ride into storms of arrows or bullets, the riders fall off and the horses trot away unhurt. Imagine hundreds of horses collapsing with every volley and the ensuing chaos. 
In ancient battles likewise, superiority of archery must have just about negated the other side's cavalry, which could have been decisive on many occasions.

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