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Padded Armour
De Rebus Bellicis (anon.), text edited by Robert Ireland, in: BAR International Series 63, part 2.

Not online I'm afraid.
Robert Vermaat
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
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I put on a lorica hamata over my thick and baggy handwoven (wool) tunic I got from Cacaius and found out that it would be almost impossible to add a padded subarmalis to this. There is already so much fabic under the mail! If you wore a thin linen tunic or a narrow woolen one it would go perfectly with a subarmalis but with a wide baggy woolen tunic it really seems impossible to me...

Vale
Jef Pinceel
a.k.a.
Marcvs Mvmmivs Falco

LEG XI CPF vzw
>Q SER FEST
www.LEGIOXI.be
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Quote:I put on a lorica hamata over my thick and baggy handwoven (wool) tunic I got from Cacaius and found out that it would be almost impossible to add a padded subarmalis to this. There is already so much fabic under the mail! If you wore a thin linen tunic or a narrow woolen one it would go perfectly with a subarmalis but with a wide baggy woolen tunic it really seems impossible to me...
Hi Jef

It is an intriguing possibility that a thick wool tunic would have made any padding superfluous. However perhaps you are approaching things the wrong way. Have you started off with a narrow 'T' shaped mail shirt which you are then trying to cram everything into, the tunic, the subarmalis, yourself! The Romans may have taken those things into consideration and supplied wider mail shirts, tunic shaped, we just do not know for certain.

Graham.
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream" Edgar Allan Poe.

"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.

"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
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Hi Graham,

I hadn't thought about tunic sized mailcoats Smile

[Image: icon_michman.jpg]



The problem with a baggy tunic under a lorica hamata is that most of the fabric gathers at the waist where the blousing takes place. If the amount of wool was distributed more evenly over the body it would make for great padding and a subarmalis should be unnecesarry. The way it is however the shoulders and the upper chest get very little padding (mostly only one layer of wool) while all the fabric is bunching up at the waist. I do not think a wider hamata would solve this problem. The one I used wasn't that narrow, it did have small sleeves(10cm). I'll get rid of those as apparently hamatas in the first century AD were sleeveles.

Now I'm thinking that maybe tunics worn under a hamata at least (I have no problem wearing this kind of tunic under a segmentata) were perhaps narrower than the tunic for unarmoured wear.

Or perhaps even a better solution: a tunic that is wide, like the originals but that is short enough to be worn unbelted. This way you can still have the 'sleeve-forming' effect with a sleeveles tunic and you have enough room for leg action BUT you don't have the bulk of the blousing fabric under your mail. What do you think?

Kind regards,
Jef Pinceel
a.k.a.
Marcvs Mvmmivs Falco

LEG XI CPF vzw
>Q SER FEST
www.LEGIOXI.be
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Hi Jef

After spending nearly twenty seasons wearing the same mail shirt I was quite impressed that I could still fit in it but towards the end of that period I know exactly what you mean by the Michelin man effect! :oops: It was all blousing around the waist, honest! However I was not suggesting that your mail shirt needed to be exactly the same width as your tunic but perhaps just squaring off the 'T' shape as you yourself have suggested.

However you raise other interesting points which in all probability will possibly never be answered. Work around archaeologists long enough and your vocabulary picks up lots of possibles, maybes and probables!

The Roman military tunic in the Egyptian papyrus document BGU1564 is even larger I imagine than your tunic supplied by Cacaius. So something we are not quite sure of yet must be going on. Was this size of tunic altered in some way, common sense would suggest it was as does the number of surviving Roman tunics which have been adjusted by means of tucks around the waist testifies. (See the 'Snappy soldier tunic pleat' thread for further discussions and experiments)

I have pointed out elsewhere that Roman soldiers owned more than one tunic with at least an undress tunic (white?)and perhaps a battledress tunic (red?). One could also add a dress tunic as suggested by the dining tunic mentioned in the Vindolanda Tablets perhaps even better quality undyed linen or fine undyed wool than the undress tunic.. Was the battledress tunic different for wearing under armour? Perhaps, we just do not know for certain. Most re-enactors I guess have looked at and interpreted the tunics on Trajan's column and have already arrived at that conclusion, although the balance of archaeological, literary and iconographic evidence suggests wider tunics were far more common than 'T' shaped ones.

One wide tunic from Mons Claudianus is quite short. At first glance this would probably be classed as a child's or young adults tunic as modesty would suggest it is too short for an adult male. However put bracae on and it makes an ideal shape for an Auxiliary tunic worn under hamata and looks just like those on the Column. The Garrison at Mons Claudianus was Cavalry roughly contemporay with the Trajanic period so that seems perfect but is this putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 5? Who knows!

Graham.
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream" Edgar Allan Poe.

"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.

"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
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Jef,

Have you tried this: Pull the tunic out sideways at the waist so it is flat against your stomach and back, and then fold back towards the small of your back, or fold forwards towards your navel. Tie with a chord around your waist (preferably have the chord held in position whilst doing the above). You should then also fold the tunic similarly up onto your shoulders, raising the sleeves up with them. What you should have is the effect of wearing the same coloured cardigan on top of your tunic with the latter folds, or a cardigan that's back to front with the former.

It could neaten the whole thing up for wearing something over it. I remember doing this when experimenting with my big baggy tunic and thinking it looked very neat and tidy, and could be useful for wearing under armour.

Big baggy cardigan tunic.
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
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At the "Road to Byzantium" exhibition now in London of items from the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, I saw this detail on a silver plate. The plate dates from 6th century AD (a bit late for our period) and shows Ajax and Odysseus arguing over Achilles' armour- including this apparent sub armalis...

It appears to show shoulder reinforcements?

Cheers

Caballo
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v221/ ... minor2.jpg
[Image: wip2_r1_c1-1-1.jpg] [Image: Comitatuslogo3.jpg]


aka Paul B, moderator
http://www.romanarmy.net/auxilia.htm
Moderation in all things
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Hi Paul

Quote:I saw this detail on a silver plate. The plate dates from 6th century AD (a bit late for our period) and shows Ajax and Odysseus arguing over Achilles' armour- including this apparent sub armalis...

I reconstructed the same thing in Roman Military Clothing 3, Plate C.3 it was worn in that instance over armour.

The same thing can be seen on a number of other sources notably on silver plates now in the Hermitage showing Imperial guardsmen in this case without any armour. They could represent a throwback to the traditional mail shirt with it's shoulder reinforcement or even the lorica segmentata.

Graham.
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream" Edgar Allan Poe.

"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.

"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
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Or even one more of those floppy (leather?) muscled cuirasses... :?

Aitor
It\'s all an accident, an accident of hands. Mine, others, all without mind, from one extreme to another, but neither works nor will ever.

Rolf Steiner
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Quote:Or even one more of those floppy (leather?) muscled cuirasses... :?

Hee hee hee hee :lol:

[Image: 98_2.JPG]

Oh boy, I'm gonna get such a kicking when it's done. :?
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
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No pun was intended, Jim! :wink:
If Ancients depicted some cuirasses 'floppy', maybe they were really floppy, after all! :roll:

Aitor
It\'s all an accident, an accident of hands. Mine, others, all without mind, from one extreme to another, but neither works nor will ever.

Rolf Steiner
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Quote:No pun was intended, Jim! Wink
If Ancients depicted some cuirasses 'floppy', maybe they were really floppy, after all! Rolling Eyes
There's also the tomb of Publius Gessus' family, from the Republican period.

The armour isn't floppy, but I imagine he would have a rather difficult job of raising his arms, somehow.

[url:1lcgm6al]http://www.perseus.org/cgi-bin/image?lookup=1997.03.3661[/url]

All depends on your interpretation of the sculptor's ability I suppose.
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
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Those 'integral shoulders' reappear esporadically until they become common on later Eastern depictions. This is the oldest example I've ever seen of that 'blunder'.
And again that pleated garment protruding from the neck opening... Maybe they did it right at Ben-Hur :? roll: )

Aitor
It\'s all an accident, an accident of hands. Mine, others, all without mind, from one extreme to another, but neither works nor will ever.

Rolf Steiner
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Quote:This is the oldest example I've ever seen of that 'blunder'.
Aitor, you're positive it's a "blunder"?
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
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Has anyone seen this before? Its from a building inscription of the 20th legion from Bremenium (High Rochester) north of the Wall. It depicts Mars. Looks like a subarmalis to me!

[Image: hadrans-armour2.jpg]
~ Paul Elliott

The Last Legionary
This book details the lives of Late Roman legionaries garrisoned in Britain in 400AD. It covers everything from battle to rations, camp duties to clothing.
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