Lorica hamata / segmentata

[Peroni]

Under such conditions one would think that we should see an increase in the use of simple, cheap armor like segmented plate.

Don't forget scale armour, it was used a great deal because it was so cheap and less labour intensive to produce than mail. It is also easily repaired. There is no skilled labour required to repair a missing scale or two.

[Theodosius the Great]

Good point.

Though wouldn't it take considerable skill and extra labor to make squamata vis-a-vis segmented plate ?

~Theo

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Actually, I would imagine it is easier to repair a seg than a squamata....unless you had the plates falling apart, which I imagine is less likely than the rivets and fittings giving way, or the leather falling apart.

[Peroni]

A broken hinge is more destructive to plate armour than a missing ring or sclae is to the other armour types, as it will still function without them.

What I mean is that plate armour repairs possibly need to be taken to fabrica to repair but mail and scale can be done by the owner in the field if necessary. Even just a simple stitch or tied string/thong will work.

Any untrained fool can cut a scale and wire it/stitch it to the backing, but it takes a certain amount of skill to fashion a rivet and get the tools to repair a loose plate or make and mend a broken hinge.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I am just imagining a field repair kit with a recess anvil, and recessed punch for field repairs..a bag full of rivets or even heavy wire?
Cut a bit off and make a repair.... :?
It may not be as pretty as the job done in the armoury at base or in a fabrica, but it would do?

[Q. Vipsanivs Praetextatvs]

We must consider also that during 3rd century the most presence in army was ''barbarian'', with his ''habits''. We musn't forget that mail was a Celt ''invention''.
I can't imagine a German using segmentata... like the tunic...

[M. CVRIVS ALEXANDER]

...A friend of mine was making a lorica hamata, but abandoned it because it took too much time.

According to Erik Schmid, the production of a hamata does not have to be that long if done by several unskilled workers (not including the production of the wire):
http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic. ... 947#195947

...these people should be able to produce upwards of around 15,000 riveted links per day. This is only using ten of the twenty to twenty-five employees you claimed. This means that your shop should be able to produce a complete shirt in a little more than a day with ease.

[Matthew Amt]

We must consider also that during 3rd century the most presence in army was ''barbarian'', with his ''habits''. We musn't forget that mail was a Celt ''invention''.
I can't imagine a German using segmentata... like the tunic...

Sure, there were all kinds of fashion influences back and forth between the Romans and the people around them. But why shouldn't a German wear lorica segmentata? By the end of the first century AD there were plenty of Gauls, Germans, Spaniards, Thracians, Britons, Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Africans, and other folks in the legions, and no indication whatsoever that any of them refused to wear a particular type of armor just because it didn't look like what Grandad used to wear. We know Roman swords were exported to Germany and other places, after all.

Heck, I'm German on both sides of my family, and the lorica segmentata is what enticed me to start making Roman stuff in the first place!

Valete,

Matthew

[Cipher]

The amount of labour required just to make bloomery iron wire is way higher than anything involved in the making segmented plates and the quality of the iron must be much higher or it cannot pass through the draw plate without the slag inclusions causing it to continuously break. So the cost of labour is higher and so is the cost of the raw materials. A little of this is covered in Sims' "Iron for the Eagles". Apologies to all those who like segmentata but it is peasant armour. The state might have provided it but the cost was deducted from your pay. Those with the means would have worn hamata, squamata, musculata - anything but segmented plate.

What I don't understand is why Segmentata completely disappeared in the middle ages.
Wouldn't a quick-to-make cheap armor be very useful to arm the militia and levies?

[M. CVRIVS ALEXANDER]

One could dispute the above statement on the grounds that it was difficult to hammer out a thin plate without using a multiple-tonne hammer, since iron would hardly compress beyond a certain point. That difficulty would also be exacerbated by the necessity to have the plate - especially if it was a larger piece - evenly heated for the hammering. So, in my view, the statement that

The amount of labour required just to make bloomery iron wire is way higher than anything involved in the making segmented plates

requires further investigation.

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Edward,

The amount of labour required just to make bloomery iron wire is way higher than anything involved in the making segmented plates and the quality of the iron must be much higher or it cannot pass through the draw plate without the slag inclusions causing it to continuously break. So the cost of labour is higher and so is the cost of the raw materials. A little of this is covered in Sims' "Iron for the Eagles". Apologies to all those who like segmentata but it is peasant armour. The state might have provided it but the cost was deducted from your pay. Those with the means would have worn hamata, squamata, musculata - anything but segmented plate.

What I don't understand is why Segmentata completely disappeared in the middle ages.
Wouldn't a quick-to-make cheap armor be very useful to arm the militia and levies?

First of all, I think that Dan Howard just said that the segmentata was not a quick-to-make cheap armor. :wink:
Second, the segmentata was in all probability already long out of use during the Roman period, and unknown to any Medieval European.
Plate armour was indeed re-introduced later, but as add-on armour over mail if I'm remembering correctly.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

That was my first recollection of armour anyway...

[Matthew Amt]

What I don't understand is why Segmentata completely disappeared in the middle ages.
Wouldn't a quick-to-make cheap armor be very useful to arm the militia and levies?

Cheap as it may have been, its cost would still have been far beyond the means of any medieval peasant. Roman soldiers could only afford it because they were decently paid, and the cost came out of their paychecks over the course of their 20-year enlistment. Even back in the Roman Republic, when soldiers had to equip themselves, legionaries were all landowners, and the most common armor was a little bronze pectoral plate. Most of the population was landless, and couldn't afford even that--that's why they were not elligible for military service.

Similarly, in the middle ages, only nobles and their immediate retainers had armor. Societies that had militias generally required those men to equip themselves, and had specific laws concerning minimal equipment, often relating to wealth. So if a man was too poor to afford even a shield and spear, he didn't fight. But remember that from very ancient times, shield and spear was very typical equipment for a warrior--armor was NOT seen as some sort of necessity.

One could dispute the above statement on the grounds that it was difficult to hammer out a thin plate without using a multiple-tonne hammer, since iron would hardly compress beyond a certain point. That difficulty would also be exacerbated by the necessity to have the plate - especially if it was a larger piece - evenly heated for the hammering.

Eh? Heat any piece of wrought iron to a bright red heat and you can work it to almost any shape you want. The metal doesn't compress or stress if you hot-work it. And it doesn't take huge power hammers. As I understand it, working a large bloom or ingot could be done with one man holding the piece on the anvil with tongs, while 2 or 3 "beaters" hammer it with sledge hammers. When it cools, the piece goes back into the forge while the beaters rest. You can keep this pace up all day long. The iron doesn't have to be heated evenly, since only the parts that are hot enough will be hammered. If a larger area needed to be worked, they'd just use a fire large enough to heat a larger piece. Also, none of the plates on a lorica segmentata are very big, so you don't need to make a whole sheet of iron (such as a modern 4x8 sheet) and then cut out the parts. Just hammer out small sheets that will fit one or two plates, and trim off whatever you don't need.

Valete,

Matthew

[M. CVRIVS ALEXANDER]

Thanks for the info, Matt. Do you happen to know of a contemporary reproduction of a segmentata plate using the method you described? I would be interested to learn about such an experiment.

[Wander]

While it's technically true that you can keep reheating iron or steel to beat it into a flat plate, it's not quite as easy as it sounds. First, each time you reheat the metal, you're likely to lose some mass -- usually in "scale", which is oxidation. Second, as it becomes thinner, the ratio of surface area to volume will increase dramatically, which means it'll be cooling much faster. After that it would be work-hardened, so you'd want to anneal the metal so you can cold-work it (bends, folds, etc.). You might imagine it would be easier to shape it while hot, but most armorers I've known primarily work it cold -- probably because it cools so fast anyway.
(For what it's worth, the plates in a lorica segmentata look far simpler than some of the complex curved pauldrons and other pieces of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance.)

Finally, for best-quality plate armor, when the cold-working is done, you'd want to heat it to a tempering heat and quench it for maximum hardness.

Obviously they could and did make plate, and I'm sure it's less time-intensive than mail (I've made that, but only the butted kind; I never had the courage to make riveted mail), but it's not exactly a walk in the park.

And, as was pointed out earlier, it takes a smithy to repair plate, where any monkey with pliers can replace missing links in mail.