Discovery Channel Antony & Cleopatra show

[John Maddox Roberts]

Last night (3/17) the Discovery Channel had a show about the battle of Actium. Pretty good, within its obviously low budget, and had some scenes and reconstructions of the Actium monument, but not the reliefs we've been hearing about.<br>
The best thing is, somebody did his homework. In the battle reenactments all the Roman soldiers wore hamata, not a segmentata in sight, and some of the shoulder doublings had the serpentine designs seen on the Ahenobarbus monument. The helmets were sort of generic I-G, but without brow reinforces, causing me to wonder if the costume designer was working from a photo of the Guttman helmet. In all, not a bad effort. <p></p><i></i>

[Quintius Clavus]

I watched it too. And I must say was very pleasantly surprised by the Roman soldiers wearing hamata. Personally I could not quite figure out what the costume designers had in mind with the helmets (not as up on the latest information, etc.), but, that was a small price to pay for the accuracy of the body armor for a change! I will, of course, be ecstatic the day they portray late Republican/early Imperial legionary troops in the lorica hamata with either Montefortino or Coolus or Imperial-Gallic Type A (Robinson's system) helmets. I saw that they showed some variation in the hamata worn by the soldiers, not all identical; they had at least two basic shoulder doubler designs.<br>
Another good point in the show was the information that the men at the oars in the warships were part of the military forces and NOT slaves.<br>
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M. Quintius Clavus/Quinton <p></p><i></i>

[Anonymous]

The funny thing is the Discovery channel usually does a better job on it's historical pieces than the History channel. <p>[url=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Segontium/" target="top]groups.yahoo.com/group/Segontium/[/url]<br>
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