Anyone for a BIG exhibition of Roman Armor

[caiusbeerquitius]

I guess that more than 70% of all the reconstructed body armors which were not made in bronze, and thus survived, are subject to interpretation. I further assume that there is nobody that can say for certain that his interpretation or reconstruction is the correct one. Further if you can see discrepancies on a 700 dpi internet picture than there is a career for you at the television series CSI.

No problem. e.g. a first century belt with a third century helmet on a single display is easy to recognize. Your guesses are not evidence, mind you.

Silvano Mattesini has been reconstructing Italic, Roman and Greek military equipment for 30 years now, he has written 11 books on the subject and three are in preparation to be published.

Which is no argument about the correctness of these things.

As for the leather segmentata I am not so sure that there never has been one, no one has ever been found but that does not mean they did not exist at one time or that they have been experimented. Have you ever tried to chop down a tree in a lorica segmentata or dig a trench as is depicted on the column of Trajan? And I do not mean to do it in a flimsy Lorica segmentata manufactured in India but in something more realistic of thicker, heavier carbon steel like I have worn when we at Leg XXX did these experiments. After 5 minutes you will be begging for a light and more flexible leather segmentata. Who knows, maybe inside some legions there were crafty leather workers who after a request from a smart legionair with an idea did not start to manufacture some of these leather segmenata. Study some of the images of Trajan’s column and a little doubt will arise if al the segmentata depicted is manufactured from carbon steel.

Again, no evidence, just speculation and personal experience.

Many of the objects are very nice.