Lorica Segmentata

[Raffles]

At any time was it common for chainmail to be worn beneath Lorica Segmentata?
Many thanks

[M. Demetrius]

Seems like this question came up a couple of years ago, but if you think about it, why would that be needed? The outer armor seems pretty good protection against most anything, and the weight of the extra metal wouldn't really be that much more. If something penetrated the seg and the subarmalis underneath it, the impact would probably be enough to break bones anyway, seems to me...and the soft tissue trauma from that impact would do the rest. Hamata wouldn't offer additional protection.

I don't recall seeing any sculpture that indicates the use of both.

[Matthew Amt]

Yeah, there's really no solid evidence for doubling up on armor like that. Not only is there no real need to, but you'd have to carry all that weight on the march. Marching is a certainty, but battles are very rare!

There are little suggestions here and there of different armor types being combined in one cuirass, though again not much. A couple late republican reliefs show a mailshirt with shoulder flaps that do not seem to be mail, though we don't know if they are supposed to show mail with a fabric or leather covering, or just leather or layered fabric, or even metal plate. One relief from Arles *might* be showing a cavalryman in a mailshirt with segmented shoulders, but it's very unclear. A much later statue at Alba Julia seems to be showing a segmented cuirass with shoulders of scale or lamellar construction. So we can't say that they never mixed armor types. It does seem, though, that one overall layer was generally considered enough.

Valete,

Matthew