John Maddox Roberts
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After Actium, Augustus found himself with 50-odd legions on his hands. He demobilized and settled about half, a tremendous undertaking. My question: what happened to all their armor? The Mediterranean world must have been awash with the stuff. Did the soldiers keep it? Sell it to scrap iron dealers? Did arms dealers buy it up and sell it off to foreign kings? Did Augustus confiscate it and put it into government arsenals? I would think that there would be no shortage of armor for a long time. Of course, we don't know how much of this armor was hamata. Antony raised many legions in the east, didn't he?<br>
Josephus mentions a Judaic king who was a sort of military hobbyist and amassed a huge collection of armor because he just liked the stuff. I don't think that an armor shortage accounts for the switch, even partial, to the segmentata. I think I know why the Roman soldiers came to prefer it, having been a soldier myself: it was lighter. Give a soldier a choice between a heavy piece of equipment or a lighter one, and he'll pick the lighter. It may never be used for its intended function, but he's going to have to carry it. <p></p><i></i>
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Hi Dan.<br>
Are you suggesting that the lorica segmetata (LS) was made ONLY in the Agri Decumates and Dacia???<br>
The empire was fairly intact until very VERY late. If you think the LS disappeared because the manufacturing regions of the LS fell into barbarian hands then I am forced to conclude you think they were made only in these regions. But then you must also be suggesting that the geographically concentrated know-how was wiped out in some single terrible episode or very short time span.<br>
The regions were vast and important, but, it seems to me, that in both cases they were abbandoned in an organized way and not really overrun drammatically. I would think the know-how was somehow transferred into roman controlled territory. The situation in the Agri Decumates region does slightly fit the picture you are implicitely suggesting as heavy fighting did occur with destruction of cities, towns and forts. But the region was abbandoned after many years and I don't think extensive damage occured all at once overnight. But then maybe the small and concentrated group of specialists (know-how) was indeed wiped out in one single episode! Hmmm... Was the LS concept and method really that specialistic and difficult to reproduce that once the regional specialists were wiped out the know-how would be then gone forever? Hmmm.... even more perplexed. <p></p><i></i>
Jeffery Wyss
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
