Replica Roman Helmet vs Originals?

[Gaius Colletti]

Bauer I have to disagree for the fact that armor was predominately used by knights and nobility during the middle ages who had the luxury and privilge of not only having armor, but often the resources to have it look stunning, as opposed to the common legionnaire who made only slightly more than a peasant at the time. While armor used in the middle ages was a commodity, in Roman times, armor was mass produced for legions (no pun intended)

[Crispvs]

"the common legionnaire who made only slightly more than a peasant at the time."

I'm not sure I agree with you there. After all, wherever a fort sprang up, a village appeared next to it almost immediately, hardly likely to happen if there was not money to be made off the soldiers. Soldiers could certainly get themselves into debt, as demonstrated by a number of surviving writing tablets, but plenty also had sufficient money to spend on prostitutes and the Roman equivalent of 'fast food'. Funerary stelae also make it clear that many soldiers also owned slaves. They also gambled a good deal, to judge from the numbers of gaming counters which turn up on fort sites, and also found money to pay bribes. All this would suggest that soldiers were reasonably well paid. Don't forget that according to chapter one of the Acts of the Apostles, Judas Iscariot was paid thirty pieces of silver (presumably drachmae) and this was sufficient to buy an acre of land close to Jerusalem. As the drachma was more or less equivalent to the denarius (soldiers in the east were paid in Greek currency), this means that the amount Judas was paid amounted to just one tenth (or thereabouts) of what a soldier was paid. Even allowing for stoppages for the cost of equipment, food and money towards funerary costs, the soldier's income would have been sufficient to allow for a reasonable surplus which the soldier could choose to spend as he wished. How many peasants would have had sufficient surplus income to buy fields of their own close to a reasonably important city? Very few I would suggest, whereas soldiers had surplus cash to spend on numerous things.

As regards the manufacture of equipment, I don't think that the mass production idea holds very much water. It is true that many Montefortino type 'C' helmets are of very poor finish, possible reflecting the need for the state to equip large numbers of men at its expence in a way that it had not needed to before. However, equipment could stay in service for decades, so once a unit had a sufficient number of items of any particular type of equipment, it would only need to replace pieces which were no longer fit for service a few at a time, which might be only a handful a year. The surviving pieces of equipment generally demonstrate a high degree of care and skill in their manufacture and taking the time to add decorative elements which we might see as unnecessary seems to have been normal. In all likelihood most work was done by independent workshops with contracts to supply to the army, which some manufacturing and much repair work being done by soldiers themselves, prior to the setting up of the state fabricae in the third century AD. It is fairly clear that the people who worked in these workshops felt it important to produce pieces which took time and demonstrated their skill, even if there was a good deal of standardisation in the decorative forms chosen. Although we do know of the use of dies to produce multiple copies of some of the same things, the modern notion of mass production does not seem to have applied to any ancient item which I have seen.

Crispvs

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi John,

Didn't the Notitia Dignitatum specify certain armories as specialising in "arms decorated with silver and gold"?

Indeed it does. It refers, agonizingly, to the state factories (‘fabricae’) where arms & armour (amongst other items) were produced by semi-free (the tendency towards free) craftsmen for the army in a state monopoly. The craftsmen who added the gold and silver to the helmets were called ‘barbaricarii’, and the amount of precious metal to be added to these helmets were very limited. Both adding too much or too little carried a death penalty.

Hi Crispus,

"the common legionnaire who made only slightly more than a peasant at the time."
I'm not sure I agree with you there. After all, wherever a fort sprang up, a village appeared next to it almost immediately, hardly likely to happen if there was not money to be made off the soldiers.

I agree with you here, just adding to this view the fluctuations in policy of soldiers’ pay. The army varied in paying the troops, while deducting money for equipment, or paying them less and providing the cost of that equipment. We see this policy alter back and forwards throughout Roman military history. At times, the soldier would have had plenty of money for that vicus to appear, as they would have created a market for civilians who produced all the goods the soldier needed. But also, there would have been times when the state provided much of that, and I imagine that the economic basis of a vicus would be much smaller. Perhaps this is why, for instance in The Netherlands, such vici are in decline.

In all likelihood most work was done by independent workshops with contracts to supply to the army, which some manufacturing and much repair work being done by soldiers themselves, prior to the setting up of the state fabricae in the third century AD. It is fairly clear that the people who worked in these workshops felt it important to produce pieces which took time and demonstrated their skill, even if there was a good deal of standardisation in the decorative forms chosen. Although we do know of the use of dies to produce multiple copies of some of the same things, the modern notion of mass production does not seem to have applied to any ancient item which I have seen.

Agreed. Even though these fabricate come as close to mass production as possible, we have yet to find two helmets that are exactly alike.

[Gaius Colletti]

What I meant to say was that being a soldier was not a high paying job, although I was aware they did have to pay for food and sometimes equipment, they did not have to pay room and board, which I can imagine would be significant. I have friends in the US armed services, and although they do not make much on the grand scheme of things, they do not have to pay room and board or for food, which leaves them with a chunk of change that many other people on the same pay scale do not have in the civilian sector. Less expenses = more disposable income. That was the impression I got as to why soldiers could afford to gamble, get prostitutes and whatever else.

Perhaps I misused "mass production", what I was referring to was that equipment for an legions and auxiliary at anytime numbered at least 250,000 (and higher in the later empire), and when 10,000 new helmets were needed, craftsmen would need to crank them out quickly, which was my explanation as to why some surviving pieces, seem to have decorations or whatnot slightly off or crooked, as opposed to well crafted masterpieces. Still even the best metalwork was not perfectly symmetrical until the industrial revolution

[jvrjenivs]

Well, I would say that (at least on the good imperial times) soldiers had a good pay! Well, they got payed, were sure they got payed, and they got a reasonable pay.

I'm in the impression that if you would like to earn money, you could better be in the army than having a farm somewhere in the empire (unless you're an aristocratic fortunate man, who owns a big ranch or farm, of course)

[Buster]

Bauer I have to disagree for the fact that armor was predominately used by knights and nobility during the middle ages who had the luxury and privilge of not only having armor, but often the resources to have it look stunning, as opposed to the common legionnaire who made only slightly more than a peasant at the time. While armor used in the middle ages was a commodity, in Roman times, armor was mass produced for legions (no pun intended)

Actually, much armour from the 14th century on was produced by armour guilds and sold openly in shops, avaliable to any soldier that wanted/was able to pay for it.
Didn't Roman soldiers have to buy their own gear? If they did, perhaps armour was manufactured and sold by private workshops following guidelines set by the government.
If Romans were issued their equiptment, the "government contract" theory is more likely.
I'm just not aware of much surviving information on how Roman armouring or the Roman military industry functioned.

[Gaius Colletti]

Actually, much armour from the 14th century on was produced by armour guilds and sold openly in shops, avaliable to any soldier that wanted/was able to pay for it.
Didn't Roman soldiers have to buy their own gear? If they did, perhaps armour was manufactured and sold by private workshops following guidelines set by the government.
If Romans were issued their equiptment, the "government contract" theory is more likely.
I'm just not aware of much surviving information on how Roman armouring or the Roman military industry functioned.

From the 14th Century however is the begining of the end of the Medieval times, and a good 800 years since the Fall of Rome. Armor may have been sold at shops to anyone with enough money, but given that peasants usually lived in poverty (or were serfs) they had little ability to buy armor, let alone have a use for it. Until the Marius Reforms, soldiers were responsible for purchasing their own equipment is true, however do we know if they had to buy certain armor, or could they really buy anything as little or as much as they wanted? I do not believe we know. Post Marian Reforms soldier would have to pay if their armor had to be replaced, or if new equipment became available, but I would doubt they had to pay the entire cost, I am under the impression that they had to pay (and dont take it too seriously like this) but a deductable, meaning they only had to pay for a portion of their total equipment when upgrades were available