Lorica hamata / segmentata

[Tarbicus]

I take your point, but I doubt any battle would last longer than a few hours, and not all troops would engage the enemy. For longer periods I imagine scale being one of the easiest armours to repair, needing only some spares and thread or wire. As hamata is often quoted as being more favoured than seg because it's easier to repair (not an opinion I subscribe to), the same popular reasoning should put scale way up there on top; Plenty of it on the Adamklissi metopes.

[Theodosius the Great]

Good points, I agree.

As a side note : I suspect cavalrymen would have fared differently wearing scale - fared better or worse I can't guess due to so many factors involved.


~Theo

[L. Marius Victor]

Ive made three Lorica Segmentatas (two conjectural "Kalkriese" versions and one "Corbridge type B" version), and Ive also attempted to make an authentic chain mail shirt (riveted links and solid links). Notice I said attempted. I wont touch riveted chain mail, way too time consuming and tedious and labour intensive. Its much easier to make the Loricas, even with the hand made fittings. I dont know if this helps.......

[Magnus]

So cite a single example of a Roman officer of any kind wearing a segmentata.

The examples we have numerically are not representative of the Roman Army at large during the time the segmentata was in use. The lack of sculptural or artistic evidence is not enough to definitively say they weren't used by officers, especially ones on the front line.

[Dan Howard]

I agree. My conclusion is still the same. It should have been prefaced with "based on available evidence." Which is how everything we discuss should be prefaced.

[wulfgar60]

I wonder if mail armor proved as costly as claimed.
I'll take this description from Ian Heath's "Armies of the Dark Ages, 600-1066".
When referring to Carolingian arms. The sort of equipment the "heerband" soldier was expect to bear based on an assessment of wealth of his landholding.
Helmet - 6 cows, Brunia - 12 cows, Sword - 7 cows, Greaves - 6 cows, Spear and Shield - 2 cows, Horse - 12 cows.
The cost of turning and "knitting" chain mail was inconsequential. Since that could be given to lowly labor.
As for the cost fabrication of wire. We may be underrating what Roman armaments factories could do with centuries of experience behind them. [/quote]

[Dan Howard]

How on earth is 12 cows an inconsequential cost? It required the labour of dozens of Carolingian farmers to be able to outfit a single warrior in the above-mentioned equipment (only those with landholdings in excess of 300 acres were expected to be fully equipped in the above manner).

And the above cite isn't entirely accurate. The original source (Lex Ribuaria, V, 36, 11) actually lists the items' cost in currency (solidi), not cows.
helmet 6 solidi
brunia 12
sword 3
lance and shield 2
warhorse 12 each (he had spares)
the other entry probably translates as mail leggings, not greaves (which would be much cheaper than 6 solidi)

Alternative sources give comparative costs for animals
horse (mare) 3 solidi
ox 2
cow 1 to 3

Consider that a fully trained warhorse cost 12 solidi and mail armour (brunia and leggings) cost 18, and you start to appreciate the true worth of mail armour.

[Matthew Amt]

Right, the usual ratio of armored men in most armies that I've generally seen is about 10 percent, the rest being mostly unarmored (or at least lacking much metal armor). So in this case all the mail for one man costs as much as spear and shield for 9 men--bingo. Ten percent of your force armored, the rest with spears and shields.

The Romans had an unusually wealthy and organized society, which is why their armor ratio was much higher overall.

Matthew

[wulfgar60]

Consider that a fully trained warhorse cost 12 solidi and mail armour (brunia and leggings) cost 18, and you start to appreciate the true worth of mail armour.

Don't forget to add the helmet in. Then we get 24 soldi. Or the helmet and greaves together were costed equal to the chain mail byrnie.

The soldi gold coin was minted from Constantine onwards at 4.5 grams of gold.

But in the Frankish Domain, not much gold circulated. So they used cows instead as money.

How on earth is 12 cows an inconsequential cost? It required the labour of dozens of Carolingian farmers to be able to outfit a single warrior in the above-mentioned equipment (only those with landholdings in excess of 300 acres were expected to be fully equipped in the above manner).

That's a little over a square kilometer.

[wulfgar60]

Checking Saxon England. One man had to serve in the Select Fyrd from each 5 hides. Which is about equal to 600 arces. The Select Fyrd served with similar equipment to the Frankish knight, except for the greaves. And a riding horse instead of a warhorse. (actually I don't know if the Heerband specified a warhorse?) The select Fyrd was one out of every 5 Freemen in the 15 - 60 year age group. There was about 4 to 5 bondmen to every Freeman. So it appears 5 hides may have held 20 to 25 adult males.

[Dan Howard]

But in the Frankish Domain, not much gold circulated. So they used cows instead as money.

Cite? Relevance? The document in question specifically uses solidi.

[wulfgar60]

But in the Frankish Domain, not much gold circulated. So they used cows instead as money.

Cite? Relevance? The document in question specifically uses solidi.

That appears to be quite the case Dan. It's appears Ian Heath quoted the prices measured in cows. 1 soldi = a heathy and average cow. Or up to 3 soldi for very good breeding stock.

But the Franks didn't appear to mint gold coins. Any they had, were acquired via trade from the Byzantines. This would mean very little circulation. The gold would be lost via foreign trade, or turned into ornaments. Or simply wear out. Or even be hoarded by those wealthy enough to do so.

So if a Frankish lord had to pay a fine. He would do so in kind. He would pay to the value of. Most of the time this would have been in cows. The Franks did mint silver coinage. And may have paid the fine in silver. But in most of dark age Europe, precious metal coinage would'nt have been common enough for a money economy.

It is only towards the latter middle ages that we find the various European kingdoms minting gold coinage.

But in the dark ages most transactions were in barter.

The Arab Empire initially used the Roman-Byzantine soldi. When these began to disappear, they minted local gold coinage to the weight of the worn soldi.......4.25 grams.

[Matthew Amt]

Huh, that's news to me. There were 37 gold coins in the Sutton Hoo burial, and I thought many of them were actually Carolingian. Ian Heath is an established wargame author, yes? Just curious.

Matthew

[wulfgar60]

Huh, that's news to me. There were 37 gold coins in the Sutton Hoo burial, and I thought many of them were actually Carolingian. Ian Heath is an established wargame author, yes? Just curious.

Matthew

Yes it seems you're right Matthew. Some gold coins were struck by european kings of the dark ages. Although the point was that gold coinage didn't circulate as regular currency during these times. These "economies", were way too weak to allow that to happen. Gold tends to be lost to the stronger economies.
However silver coinage was being widely minted. So these "economies" were strong enough to retain silver.

[url:1kqnaq55]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancus[/url]

Mancus (sometimes spelt mancosus or similar) was a term used in early medieval Europe to denote either a gold coin, a weight of gold or a unit of account of thirty silver pence. Distinguishing between these uses can be extremely difficult: the will of the Anglo-Saxon king Eadred, who died in 955, illustrates the problem well with its request that 'two-thousand mancuses be taken and minted into mancuses' (nime man twentig hund mancusa goldes and gemynetige to mancusan).

The origin of the word mancus has long been a cause of debate. One suggested interpretation linked it to the Latin adjective mancus, meaning 'defective', which was thought to be a reference to the poor quality of gold coinage circulating in eighth-century Italy. However, it has become clear that the earliest references to payments in mancuses, which occur in north-eastern Italy in the 770s, specifically refer to Islamic gold dinars. Consequently, a second theory is probably correct: that mancus derives from the Arabic word manqush, meaning 'struck', which was often employed in a numismatic context.

After its first appearance in the 770s, use of the term mancus quickly spread across northern and central Italy, and leapfrogged over Gaul to reach England by the 780s. A letter written in 798 to King Coenwulf of the Mercians by Pope Leo III mentions a promise made in 786 by King Offa to send 365 mancuses to Rome every year. Use of the term mancus was at a peak between the ninth and eleventh centuries, and was only restricted to very specific locations and contexts thereafter.

The number of actual gold coins circulating in the west that would have been termed mancuses is difficult to calculate. Because of their high value such coins were less likely than other pieces to be lost, whilst the rarity of gold and its close relationship to bullion meant that coins were often melted down for re-use. Indeed, many gold coins minted in the west between the eighth and thirteenth centuries were struck in small numbers with a specific purpose in mind, and probably did not circulate commercially in quite the same way as silver coins. In many cases they had strong associations with specific issuing authorities such as a king (e.g., Coenwulf of Mercia), emperor (like Louis the Pious)or archbishop (e.g., Wigmund of York). On the other hand, they might not reference any king at all, and may relate to the issuing city (e.g., Chartres) or moneyer (like Pendred and Ciolhard at London under Offa). Some gold pieces were simply struck from regular silver dies. In addition to these gold pieces with meaningful inscriptions issued in the west, there circulated some genuine Arabic dinars and imitations of them. Curiously, several of these imitative dinars - including the famous example bearing the name of Offa of Mercia - are based on originals struck in the year 157 AH (773 or 774 AD). The precise significance of this remains uncertain: it may be that careful copies of a coin of this year circulated widely, or that a particularly large number of dinars of this year entered the west for some reason.

For all that the surviving western specimens of early medieval gold coins must represent only a tiny proportion of the original stock, it must be borne in mind that before the thirteenth century gold coins were extremely rare in western Europe: in England, for instance, only eight native gold pieces with meaningful legends are known from c. 650 to 1066, which can be complemented by finds from the same period of half a dozen Arabic gold and perhaps ten Carolingian gold pieces or imitations of them. Substantial and regular production of gold coinage only resumed in the thirteenth century.

[Dan Howard]

How is any of that relevant to this thread? It has been suggested that mail cost more to produce than segmentata and I've yet to see anything to counter that.