basic armor

[Tasia]

Salve,

I'm new to the forum, I just joined. I was looking through the pictures here and all your kits look amazing and impressive and I find I've been very far off on my research into Greek/Roman armor. My kit will need some serious readjusting.

I'm mostly participate/fight with another group (SCA) as I haven't found many Roman groups in my area yet (Oregon).

And I'm aware that while women didn't fight in the Roman army - I'm still making an effort fight and do so with as much accuracy as is possible.

My armor is all leather - somewhere I had read that leather was used in early periods. Now I'm thinking that must have been wrong. Most of the armor here is metal.

I'm looking forward to learning more. Just wanted to introduce myself since this is one of the forums I'm likely to be hanging out in.

Tasia

[arklore70]

Salve and welcome.

I think a great place to start is with Legio XX's website. The have a great listing of American Based Roman re enactment groups.

This is their website: http://www.larp.com/legioxx/index.html

I think a lot is up to the Centurion that runs the group nearest to you. I have seen some of the West Coast groups actually have women troopers. I think the only criteria being as long as your kit is straight.

I think there is some historical evidence that suggests that their were a few woman gladiators. Duffy's Book Sands of the Arena is a fictional work, but it does explain some of the fighting styles, etc and does have a fictional female gladiator in it.

I would advise staying away from leather armor. Romans were primarily metal clad for armor. The use of leather armor by them is a "Hollywoodism".

Let me know what I can do to help, and folks here are pretty helpful, so ask away and read away at previous posts through the search engine as well.

Cheers!!

Mike

[Matt Lukes]

Ave Tasia,

Welcome to the RAT Forum. One thing that may help is if you can, post an image or two of what you have and we can give you some advice as to what is good and what isn't quite so accurate- and why. It's certainly possible that those pieces that aren't so correct can be altered.

Mike is of course quite right that there's no evidence for leather ever being used as armor- everything we know of is either copper alloy (brass/ bronze) or iron, so that's something that will definitely have to be changed.

For any furture acquisitions, the LEGIOXX website has a great section on things to avoid too.

Vale!

Matt

[A_Volpe]

welcome to the board.

Leather armor is, as far as I'm concerned, a myth. Looks great for "Ren Faires", and for [SCA] groups that have no ties to historical accuracy, but if you're specifically looking to go more accurate, look for metal. Metal is also shiny...People like shiny. :wink:

Leg. XX is a great place to start.

For legions in your area, check out Leg. IX Hispana and Leg. VI. I know Leg. IX has lots of "Vexillations", chapters located all over the place, and I think there is a chapter in the Northern California area:
http://www.reenactor.net/units/leg_ix_norcal/

As Matt L said, some leather pieces are convertable for some use, such as making a subarmalis/padding for say Maille armor. Leather is good for that. It could also help build up a helmet liner and/or suspension web to make the helmet way more comfortable to wear.

[Tasia]

Salve,

I'd post it but now that I see what it's supposed to look like - it's kind of embarassing. :oops: AND very Hollywood.... and it's SCA regulation so the helm is not even close nor the leg armor.

I guess with that disclaimer I'll post a close up of the main body armor then with me in the whole kit.



And the full kit:



Again, most of what I'm wearing meets min requirements for tourney fighting.

Some of the guys in the SCA make very accurate armor that looks very similar to what you have and make it work for the tournament fighting.

Tasia

[arklore70]

no need to be embarrassed at all with your gear. It works great for SCA events and, I bet with a little work it would make a great subarmalis. The scutum/shield looks pretty good for a auxiliary impression. though I am not sure what you are using around the edges of the shield..is it padding?

There are a ton of good folks here that can help you out. Lord knows I a=have been a work in progress myself

Cheers!!

Mike

[GaiusAquiliusBritannicus]

Salue!

I also play in the sca while trying to pull together a fully authentic kit for reenactment purposes. A person can definately have fun with both. I think there has been a nice shift in the SCA of recent years to truly trying to bring historical accuracy to the limits of our safety standards. A picture of my helmet and other roman helmets can be found here:
http://www.knotwolf.com/mambo/index.php ... &Itemid=28
(mine is the top one in the picture)

Leather armor is a great place to begin, but as you can afford it, definately move to the hamata/segmentata/squamata as outlined on the legio xx website (definitely the gold standard which many of us hope to obtain!). There are also great links to other reenactors sites off of the legio xx site. I personally drool over Florentius' stuff:
http://www.florentius.com/index.htm

Lots of knowledgable people here who are more than willing to help out in trying to pull together a perfect reenactors kit, as well as those of us who try for that AND as period an SCA kit as we can.

Uale!

Britannicus

[Tasia]

Salve,

Thank you for all the responses. The subarmalis may be what I had ran across previously. I'm going to do more checking on that.

Britannicus that helm is brilliant~ I'll have to check and see about getting one made.

Pancuius the outside of the shield is hosing covered with duct tape. Some people use rawhide but I'm not yet adept in working with that yet. I've since covered it with black duct tape to try and make the silver not stand out so much.

Again, my thanks for the links and info. I have a direction to move forward to make things more authentic.

Do the Legio groups fight in wars? Are there Legio events with camping? Any renactment with horses? I have a book by Ann Hyland on the Roman cavalry and am trying to learn as much as I can about Roman horses and the war tactics used with them.

My horse isn't exacty close to Roman in nature - Solon is a draft horse, about 2300 lbs. But what I'd like to be able to do is recreate some fo the drills that the cavalry used to perform for the Emperor's.

Tasia

[Martin Moser]

Hi Tasia,

welcome to RAT! I think you will eventually have to make up your mind which way to go with your equipment (well, you could of course have two sets, one for SCA events and one more on the historical side).

If you want to do a historical recreation of a roman soldier I think the first thing to do is NOT to buy/build something, but rather to read. A lot :-) )

I have the impression that many people when buying/building something copy what they have seen somewhere and looks more or less ok (sometimes less) instead of putting a little effort into research of their own. Just name any piece you want to do, ask for references here and I'm sure there will be someone to name the relevant sources.

[tlclark]

welcome to the board.

Leather armor is, as far as I'm concerned, a myth. Looks great for "Ren Faires", and for [SCA] groups that have no ties to historical accuracy,

(Ahem):roll:

Sorry to pipe in here...



This is a statue of Hadrian (or an Antonine General) from the Bergama Museum in Turkey. It is one example of many of a stylistic type going all the way back to the Hellenistic era. It has all the features of a musculata, has a muscled form, and the harness and decoration is on the exterior, so it is not a subarmalis, yet it is obviously only semi-rigid.

I discuss it in detail here.

http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/lorica ... eather.htm

I have no doubt that at least some of the musculata were leather. Whether they were predominantly leather, is anybody's guess but I make my best argument above.

Travis

[Robert Vermaat]

This is a statue of Hadrian (or an Antonine General) from the Bergama Museum in Turkey. It is one example of many of a stylistic type going all the way back to the Hellenistic era. It has all the features of a musculata, has a muscled form, and the harness and decoration is on the exterior, so it is not a subarmalis, yet it is obviously only semi-rigid.

Good one...

[Tasia]

Salve Travis,

I took a look at the link - excellent page! I was starting to think I had imagined reading about leather as armor and this is similar to what I remember.

And thank you to everyone who has given advice and input. I think ideally I'd need to have two kits. One for SCA and one for Roman re-enactment.

Tasia

[tlclark]

Salve Travis,

I took a look at the link - excellent page! I was starting to think I had imagined reading about leather as armor and this is similar to what I remember.

thanks!

I think that Romans almost certainly used leather armor. Considering its wide range use in medieval contexts and earlier, it would be surprising if they didn't use it earlier.

That being said, with the exception of the musculata (which honestly might be purely ceremonial at this point) I would agree that it was probably non-standard, ad hoc and not typical since we never see it in the artwork.

Even then, it's obvious that the musculata was probably done in bronze as often as it was in leather.

I think that if you removed the disks from your leather armor, it would make a good subarmalis with pteruges. Also, it might pass for a "Libyan hide", something that might have been worn over Roman armor.

BTW - You are very intimidating in your SCA kit. I would not like to face off against you!

That is why I do re-enacting (or at least I will once I get the kit together!) and NOT SCA, since though I lack for nothing in moral courage, I run like a little girl when threatened with violence, but I have a nephew in SCA and he loves it.

These threads should also be of interest to you.

http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic.php?t=6335

http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic. ... men+groups

Ciao!

[Tasia]

Salve!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE to fight. It's amazing. And sometimes it is painful, but bragging about the bruises and welts are a part of the excitement! I have yet to enter my first tourney - hopefully this year.

What I want to do is make as accurate as can, a Roman kit that is SCA legal. There are a lot of people interested in the Roman and Greek era. I say the more Romans the better! 8)

Thank you for the thread links - I will check them out.

I've been reading through past posts on the different sections of the forum. There is a lot of great information and the effort you have put into your kits is phenomenal. It's like looking right into history.

I know I'll learn a lot from the group here.

Tasia

[Matthew Amt]

Avete!

Let me add another Welcome, and also a thanks to everyone else for all the nice plugs!

To add to what Travis said, there IS evidence for leather armor: a piece from Dura Europas (250 AD) of rawhide lamellar, and a literary reference (also late, I think) that leather (or hide?) armor was no good in wet conditions because it gets soggy. But there is virtually nothing else from archeology, in spite of the survival of TONS of shoes, tent parts, shield covers, and other leather items, so any use of leather or rawhide armor seems to have been the rare exception. From what I can tell, this is similar to most other western cultures--there is often some trace or hint for leather armor, but it is far less common than metal or fabric defenses. (Shields are another matter entirely!) Dig around the boards, here, there MUST be at least one long discussion about this!!

There are several other folks here who do both SCA combat and historical reenactment/living history, and they'll agree that you'll essentially need 2 different kits. You'll get plenty of encouragement here!

Enjoy, and Vale,

Matthew/Quintus, Legio XX