I am no expert on Roman archery, but I am getting the feeling that we are talking about 2 or maybe 3 different things here: As I understand it is known that Roman Legionnaires also trained in shooting with bow and arrow. Apparently they did that also during battle and I presume in an organized way somehow...?
And then there are the Socii and Auxilia units, they would have brought their skills and at first their own clothing and equipment with them. And from there developed (or not)into more Romanized soldiers.
So I think Roman archers could have been 2 or even 3 things:
1) A roman soldier shooting with bow and arrow. In my opinion this soldier would have looked just like every other Roman soldier of the time but then... with a bow...
2) There's the "just left home" or "just at home" socii/auxilia, compleet with his own clothes, equipment, hairstyle and everything else...
3) And there's the Romanized auxilia already enlisted for a longer time, probably most of his own traditional clothes mostly gone, and all other things changes into a way that made them easier to make and maintain in a Roman camp or castella environment....
So I guess that if you say: "I am gravitating towards the Sarmatian or Eastern look" You mean number 2?
Folkert van Wijk
Celtic Auxilia, Legio II Augusta.
With a wide interrest for everything Celtic BC
Sutoris post=333731 Wrote:Watch this video, Lajos Kassai is shooting twelf arrows in eighteen seconds, on horseback.
Too bad the film does not show if they all hit.
Hi, Robert
It really is too bad, but there is another film of Kassai shooting rapidly tossed flying targets. He hit them all!
To Lisa,
Oh, yes! Go for the "eastern look." It's the coolest. :cheer:
And to YOU ALL,
I have no doubt that a gaggle of archers equalled or exceeded the fire of a modern machine gun. I'm an old-kinda-guy, hardly ever shoot much these days, but I can still release six arrows in less than 30 seconds and hit what I'm aiming at. Transfer this to an archer who grew up with a bow from 3 years old, add another 20, and you've got someone you want to stay friends with. :whistle:
Alan J. Campbell
member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians
Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)
"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
Hi, in regard to the armor shown on Trajan's column regarding the Roxolani. I found this other image of battle trophies, armour weapons and shields on Trajan's Column. This one interested me with the helmet and armour and what looked like a sagaris to the right of the helmet. The site said it was Sarmatian battle gear but I can't be sure.
There is even more interesting armour on the column base, of three fairly long, at least hip-length but apparently almost knee-length, sleeved hauberks of mail, scale and segmented appearance respectively, very much like later Roman armour (except for the peculiar segemented hauberk of course), but I have not not found any photographs of them that I could copypaste. Most of the helmets on the base are too damaged to be usefull, but note the scale neck-guard on the helmet of Michael's picture. Piranesi has made some good drawings of the helmets before acid rain had destroyed them, showing not only scale but also mail neck-guards, and "leather" neck-guards, though some show small studs that makes me suspect they are of some sort of brigandine or perhaps jazerant construction, to prevent the iron baking in the sun from burning the neck and the long hair of the Sarmatians from getting stuck in the mail.
Yes, that's one of them! Compare that with the scale hauberk shown on the well-known 4th century soldier relief in the Museo Chiaramonti. The Romans adopted this type of armour (Cf. Coulston Late Roman Armour The Journal of Roman Equipment Studies I 1990). The segmented hauberk is the most peculiar, though.
Unlike the representations of the battle-scenes, those of the trophies might wel be reliable, because they were carried to Rome and decorated an enormeous bier as shown in Connolly's book on the Roman army. It was shown to the rejoicing populace, so an artist could sit down and take a good look at them.
Hi Sutorus, not disappointed, just jealous that you have a good hi-res pic to pick out detail.thanks for posting. Equipment on bottom looks more Sarmatian.
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
Hi Michael,
I meant disapointed because it's not a sagaris.
I took the pictures two years ago when I was in Rome.
We had a friend who opened the gate so whe could make close-up's 8)
Hi Sutoris, that picture you posted on page 2 of this thread with the Sarmatian riders with aventails is very hard to get online (at least the lower part of them). But I read that originally they had contuses but somehow over time they either weathered away or broke off but I have never been able to check to see. Great pictures by the way. The one I posted was very lo-res and I had to blow it up and sharpen it up a bit. But missed the axe.
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
Hi Eduard, do you think the shields were added for artistic purposes because I don't know if Roxolani carried shields. I also see some dracos.
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
Michael,
I took these pictures at a museum in Rome, lost the name.
They have the Trajan's columns cast-off on display.
Sadly they chased us out before I could capture them all, they closing for lunch :x
Yeah, that's it. Isn't that peculiar? I wonder what the sculptor had seen ...
Michael, about those shields, the base shows the trophies of the Dacians and Sarmatians, so the equipment can come from both peoples. Oval, clipped oval and six-sided shields are shown in Griechische Grabreliefs aus Sudrussland (Berlin 1909, see Alanus' reference thread about the Sarmatians), so they were used in a Sarmatian context, and on the column, suggesting their use in a Dacian context.
Quote:Yeah, that's it. Isn't that peculiar? I wonder what the sculptor had seen
It is unlikely that the sculptor was trying to depict segmented plates. One should keep in mind that a lot of the detail would have been in the paintwork which has completely gone today.
