Hanging straps on balteus?

[Forty-One]

Terminology like "quite a few" and "often" lead the reader to believe that [whatever] is the norm, when it may be the exception instead. It's generally believed that the styles and equipment of gladiators stylistically mimics different ethnic group's soldiery, not the other way around.

There are enough representations of them to exclude the idea that they're a rare exception. I only posted two images to avoid bombing the thread.

They may well represent a pastiche of foreign soldiery but the actual details of their equipment is thoroughly Roman. What enemies of Rome do you know of that wore these decorated danglies on their belts, then?

[Matthew Amt]

Thanks Demetrius and Matt, I figured for the $60 I paid for the belt, it was bound to have flaws, but with so few balteus that we know of, I feel that what a single balteus of a 250,000 man army could be up to interpretation in this case.

That kind of reasoning is basically backwards. It's best to start with what we *know*, and work from there. Don't worry about what the ancients *might* have done when we have plenty of examples of what they DID do. As Magnus says, there are lots of original belt parts out there! And even though they are all individually made, the vast majority follow strict fashion trends. Even if we only had a few examples to work from, there would be enough variation in our reproductions that we wouldn't be identical.

To me, the balteus is less of a make or break part of the costume. I know some of you disagree, and one day I would like to have a very high quality belt, but that day wont be for another few years.

Why is that? The two *good* Deepeeka belts are $130 and $150, about twice the price of the belt you bought. That money could have gone towards something good, eh? OR you could buy a buckle for about 30 bucks (or even make one for almost nothing!), a strip of leather, and cut out 8 or 9 plain plates out of sheet brass, and end up with an even more accurate belt for less than you paid for the bad one. Not flashy, but cheap and very correct. True, for a REALLY spiffy belt with silver plates and such, you may need to make some long-term financial arrangements! But there's no need to waste money on a reject in the meantime.

My centurio approved it, and if it means getting my first reenactment done this summer, I am willing to sacrifice total authenticity.

Well, a belt isn't vital for your first few events, though it is certainly a distinctive piece of a Roman soldier's equipment. As such, it draws proportionally more attention, and therefore deserves to be correctly made. If you were turning out with my group, we'd just loan you a spare belt until you got your own. There is no need to sacrifice authenticity.

I am certainly not questioning your expertise on Roman equipment Matt, I'll be the first to admit I am but a simple novice, but I am curious, are you aware of a certain original belt, of which this belt is based off of, and fails to meet certain criteria?

Well, it looks like they were going for something like these ones in the British Museum:

http://www.larp.com/legioxx/belt3BM.jpg

These are cast brass, with the design elements recessed into the surface. The Deepeeka version is thin sheet, stamped from the rear so that those design elements are raised. So not only did they not really match the feeling of the design, but they made it a "negative". Wrong construction method and wrong design. Bizarrely, you can also find CAST repros of plates that WERE stamped originally! Probably the manufacturers are only looking at line drawings.

Vale!

Matthew

[M. Demetrius]

Don't get angry, Forty-One. Here's what I meant.

Gladiators were very specialized, and by the 1st C AD, very restricted in the types of armor and weapons that they carried. Yet, they represented at the root, certain military types, most of which were from former adversaries of Rome. Thracians used the curved sica, like their ancestor soldiers used. Hoplomachi were an abstract representation of Hoplites, etc. The gladiator forms followed their historical counterparts, not the other way around. Likewise, there were specific pairings of gladiators which you might expect to see. They were not chosen to fight like drawing names out of a hat. You would not see a retarius in combat with a Thracian, for example. The retarius represents a fisherman, with net and fish spear, and there are other clear examples.

As to the belt, and the use of the phrases I mentioned, there are those who will try to prove a point by using loaded words. Not saying you were, but there are people who do. "Leading scientists say..." then some premise that they want you to believe. Scientists likely look at each other and ask, "Did you say that? I didn't say that." It's a different matter to say, "I found these carvings of belts with the apron in the back" from "Quite a few of these..."

Maybe there are (hypothetically) fifty carvings that show this or that, and the pool of carvings is many thousands. Maybe it's only a couple of hundreds. But the percentage will be very different depending on the total numbers of whatever thing we're talking about. That's what I was saying. I wasn't picking a fight.

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

What you can do is harvest all belt plates from the one you have, buy some leather and make a proper belt yourself.

By the way it is called a Cingulum Militare, not a Balteus, that is a 4th century belt.

M.VIB.M.

[Matthew Amt]

What you can do is harvest all belt plates from the one you have, buy some leather and make a proper belt yourself.

Oh, the leather is all right (well, sometimes at least!), it's the plates that are the problem. But you do NOT want to try taking all the plates off just to save the leather!

By the way it is called a Cingulum Militare, not a Balteus, that is a 4th century belt.

Huh, I thought it was the other way around? Typically "balteus" for the first century, and "cingulum" later. Though I doubt that was carved in stone!

Matthew

[mcbishop]

By the way it is called a Cingulum Militare, not a Balteus, that is a 4th century belt.

Huh, I thought it was the other way around? Typically "balteus" for the first century, and "cingulum" later.

Yup, you're spot on - references in B&C2 p.106.

Mike Bishop

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Must have misread it then.

[M. Demetrius]

But you do NOT want to try taking all the plates off just to save the leather!

Quite right. You will have mangled, perforated leather with irregular coloration. Not much good.

[mcbishop]

Quite right. You will have mangled, perforated leather with irregular coloration. Not much good.

But exactly the sort of thing Roman soldiers would have done. You only have to look through catalogues of leather (and other) finds to see how much gets re-used. Perhaps they were less vain than modern re-enactors ;-)

Mike Bishop

[Alanus]

A few years ago, when I wasn't much younger than I am now, I bought an India-made balteus that weighed more than I do.

The first thing I did was slide the danglies off, so I could at least walk. Then I discovered that all those heavy brass studs could be used for other things. I hammered some onto my helmet, the one I'm wearing right now in the picture.

Then I needed a stud to attach jade stones to an early Wusun sword, the ancestor of those that are found in the Bosphon Kingdom and Kuban. So I drilled a stud, tapped it for a threaded post, and-- Wha! La!-- I had a way of affixing stones to the sword pommel.
[attachment=657]wusuncavalrysword016.JPG[/attachment]


You can't beat recycling!:grin:

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Exactly what I meant...

You want to remove the apron straps the way they are on there, and reassemble a new apron which you attach to the same place, but without the plates there... so whats better than removing all plates, throw away the leather and use NEW leather. It was done in ancient times as well...

M.VIB.M.

[A_Volpe]

they bounce of my legs, and clank off each other and make noise.

Yup, that appears to be the purpose of the "apron", "Danglium", or "Fun Meter" - Matt, that's a new one for me, that is awesome. I'm using that from now on

I won't try to repeat too much from what's already been said.

It's very hard for us moderns to get out of our current military fashions and traditions. The concept (and nearly tactic) of "showing off", "pimping it out" on the battlefield existed from ancient Egypt all the way until the First World War. yes, people wearing bright shiny bits and brightly colored trim and tape on their uniforms in the trenches. French wore Sky blue uniforms, in the trenches. French Zouaves wore bright red trousers and fezzes (until late 1914 when they switched to Khaki colors, but still in the poofy pants pattern). Eventually people took on the Earthen tones, khaki's, grays and greens as camoflauge became the Big Thing. (but then in WW2, some German units were wearing black, not very camoflaugy.) By then, people were hiding behind obstacles and shooting at each other at longer distances with high powered, rapid fire guns.

For the better part of 7,000 years, you had a spear or a sword and you had to physically get close to your enemy and kill them without getting killed yourself. But seeing as your chances were 50/50, you might as well Look Good Doing It!

Now it's Dress Uniforms (ie: U.S. Marines "Dress Blues", a design from the 1910's and damn does it still look good!) that's the Big Thing when Not In Combat.

Magnus hits it right on the head - We believe the idea behind the danglies on the belts is to add Presence. It's a form of intimidation. An analogy I [used] for years is the same with your typical [although rather phony] Western Cowboy - Think Spurs, ammo belt, pistol hanging from him...Or, your typical [again rather phony depending on how you see it] "Gangster", with their oversized pants hanging on knees, with a backwards baseball cap, "colors" and a pistol hanging from the pants zipper and not much else....Representin'

You know exactly what you're looking at. We tend to think this was the -same thing- Roman Soldiers were doing with their belts. Everyone around will know it's a Roman Soldier, make no mistake.

I will be another to say the belt you got is sorely lacking. I strongly urge [new] Romans to make their own belts, not only to learn how to do it, but to also make it sized to YOU so you don't have too many holes in the tongue, or worse, it's too short ~ but that you can customize and decorate it to your own extent and 'tastes', so as long as you base the plates off of the tons of existing plates and bits in the archaeological record.

Matt Amt suggested using plain plates - I think that is a -great- place to start, very rarely seen in the reenacting world (because we all want fancy blingy overly decorated belt plates! Why not?!) - But you can always add MORE decorations to those plates and your belt as you go. I personally think this is exactly how the Romans were doing it. Some of them got "pre-made" parts, inasmuch as they could make and add their own parts in their spare time, which could have been a lot of time depending on the Legion/Location/Time.

[Gaius Colletti]

I suppose I didn't think much of a belt being possibly "too flashy" (of course I end up with all the bad Deepeeka stuff). Now I understand what you guys are talking about with making your own belts after seeing this page (one of many) on armamentaria: https://www.armamentaria.com/store/index...Path=13_35

Though I lack any skill (not to mention tools) required to build my own balteus and apron. Once again you guys have put me on the right path, again, thanks for your help everyone

[M. Demetrius]

Don't sell yourself too short. Skills are teachable/learnable. Talent is a gift, skill is the result of practice. You once didn't have the skill of typing messages on electronic forum pages, right? And look at you now!! :wink: :!:

Riveting is not hard, just tedious, especially until you get the feel of moving the little bits of metal rather than smashing them. Cutting plates like those is slow going, but can be done with mostly inexpensive tools and practice. Cutting all those parts out of flat plate will take a lot of time, but mostly, after the first one, they are cast metal, not hand cut. I'm sure that's the same now as it was then.

Grit your teeth, buy some leather, rivets, a ball peen hammer, some brass sheet, and some kind of drill. Measure the plates (you can mark on them with a Sharpie and remove the black lines later with after-shaving liquid--denatured alcohol in there). Cut in any one of several ways, tin snips work, but you'll have to file the edges. Drill some holes for rivets. Stick one on a punched piece of leather. After one or two tries, I'll bet you can rivet like a pro.

I'm fully convinced you can do it, and I've never even met you face to face. Be confident. Start simple.

[Magnus]

Though I lack any skill (not to mention tools) required to build my own balteus and apron. Once again you guys have put me on the right path, again, thanks for your help everyone

Dave is right, don't sell yourself short. Peening is the hardest skill to acquire, and even then it isn't that hard. If you are using copper rivets, when you are peening the shank over the washer so it mushrooms out, just use a lot of light taps, vs heavy ones. You'll have more control this way. Also, do a search on youtube to see video tutorials on how to rivet.

Making your own kit is much more satisfying than buying...plus it can then potentially be a one of a kind belt. I don't know if anyone has a simple plain belt plate balteus...that would look really cool.

If you don't want to make your own buckle or pugio frogs, these are the cheapest but best ones I have found and I order them fairly often:

https://www.quietpress.com/Roman_Brooche...lt_Fi.html

So figure out as Dave mentioned, what size you want your belt to be, using Matt's site as a guide: ummmm...anyone else getting an expired domain name for the legio xx site? lol.

Anyway, once it is back up, figure out if you want to make a single wider belt, or dual thinner belts...then cut your plates to those dimensions. So far I've made just the wider style... plates are just under 2 inches wide, and 2.25 inches long.

Apron studs can be cut, or you can find discs in brass or copper (which can then be tinned) on ebay, or there are other sources if you are creative. The apron strap ends can also be easily cut from thin brass sheet, filed and then attached to the strap.

We're here to help, so feel free to post/email us any step of the way. I probably sent Matt Amt dozens of emails PER project back in the day...and he was a pile of help. But mostly, you just have to get some basic tools and try it. It's not hard, trust me...I made most of my own gear and I'm a terrible craftsman!