segmentata

[Matthew Amt]

Whew! I'm not sure I'm following all this, but wanted to respond to a few comments here and there.

I don't think that the Gladius was the defining reason that Segmenta was introduced.

Very much agreed. It seems bizarre to me to think that the Romans designed weapons to fight each other!

In the low middle ages, the sword was the determinant factor of the change of the lorica hamata for the armor of plates,

From what I recall of the intense research done by folks on the Armour Archive and Sword Forum, that isn't quite right. Weapon development was only part of the answer, which of course is more complicated than usually thought. The development of professional soldiers, town militias, technology, and industry all played a part. Remember: Swords were NOT the primary weapon of the middle ages; and MOST men on an ancient or medieval battlefield were NOT ARMORED.

If you study first century daggers and swords closely you will find most have a square tipped point.... excellent to slice/thrust thwough mail...

Any blade that is tapering to a point is going to reach some spot where the thickness equals the width, which means--ta-daa!--a square cross-section! Why make "armor-piercing" points when the vast majority of opponents are unarmored? Why bother trying to go through ANY armor when it you are simply not likely enough to get through to bet your life on it, no matter what you're using? Go AROUND it!! I've seen ONE gladius blade with a clearly reinforced tip, and all I could thing was that this would make it SO much easier to peen the tang over the pommel without bending the darn tip. Thin tips bend no matter what you hit. Thicken them.

Why ever, in human history have new weapons or armour been developed?

It's always in direct response to some type of weapon or armour that has recently defeated the previous model. You know, the arms race?

Hoo, I don't know about that one! Most of the weapons of the Bronze Age developed and grew and mutated long before there was ANY armor, only shields! We don't know much about the shields, except that they were apparently usually wood and/or leather/hide. Roman shields seem to have gone from big and thick in the Republic to smaller and thinner in the Empire--how is that a response to a weapon? Sure, there has to be at least a little influence back and forth, but be careful--I don't think the evidence we have shows that everyone was changing what they carried and used simply because of what the other guys were carrying and using.

As if spending too much time on equipment has ever been an issue for soldiers..

Too true! I've heard that when the modern British army changed the hardware on their belt gear from polished brass to black steel, all the NCOs complained bitterly, because there was LESS FOR THE SOLDIERS TO CLEAN. You know my Personal Universal Theory of Armor? Armor is issued to soldiers for 2 reasons: so that they'll have something heavy to carry, and so they'll have something to CLEAN. Every once in a great while you MIGHT get into a scrap of some sort, and someone MIGHT get a chance to take a feeble prod at you with something pointy, and your armor will probably protect you from that. But that's purely a side effect!

For all we know, the lorica segmentata evolved simply because it looked spiffier with all that shiny surface and polished brass, and it kept the soldiers busier with all the repairs and cleaning. In a peacetime army, that could be important.

Basically guys, I think we need to study what kinds of weapons were in use, who was using them, and what was the Roman grand military strategy at the time that would require the creation of a new type of armour.

Well, it would help if we knew exactly when the lorica came into use, but it really seems to have been just AFTER the conquest of Gaul. So no more threat from those long swords, eh? Only spears and arrows and javelins left.

I would love to test this theory with my armour splicing pugio, gladius, bow an pilvm, and the cutting through mail theory with my real Japanese katana

Aside from the problem of Romans fighting samurai, two-handed weapons of any sort simply were not common in Roman Europe and Asia.

riveted mail is slightly stronger of course

No, it is VASTLY stronger!! Recent testers have had real trouble getting any sword through it, given at least some attempt to have accurate padding under it. Yes, you can sometimes get arrows to go through it, given a very strong bow, a heavy arrow, and a square hit at close range. No one's saying that any armor is invincible! But mail is proving to be much better than we used to think

however to imagine a thrust like that is physically impossible is imho a bit strange and unnattainable if you would have studied martial arts and its physics / scientific power leverage a bit better.....

Which we have no evidence that the Romans or any of their foes ever worried about! They were taught to get in, smash the guy with the shield, and then go for the SOFT parts with the sword or spear! Why super-train with specialty moves just for the off-chance of getting through armor? Go around it!

I really think that if the Roman military had an idea of who they were going up against, or had gone up against, that they would make the appropriate changes prior to or immediately after such an engagement.

But the only time we *think* this might have happened was Trajan's Dacian campaigns. And remember that the cross-braced helmets and laminated manicae are then found all over the Empire, in places where the falx never existed. Why keep using them if the threat wasn't there? Not to mention that the Adamklissi monument shows only hamata and squamata, under the very circumstances that would seem to make the segmented lorica mandatory, by your arguments.

Also, don't forget that Caesar's men had to make protective coats to keep out Pompey's arrows--sounds to me like they had NO body armor, just like we see in some reliefs and statuettes. Clearly there was no pre-planning on this one.

Otherwise, why not just use maille? <--- $64,000 dollar question right there. If Maille was as good at protecting the soldiers as well as some people think, then why the need for a new armour type??

Well, it IS a good question!! I'd love to know. I just think it's not wise to assume it was strictly tactical with the evidence at hand. And in fact, they DID just keep using mail, right through the lorica's entire lifespan. Seems to have always been more hamata around than segmentata. Oh, I'm with you, I DO think plates give at least a little better protection than mail, all other things being equal! There's just something funny going on...

Celtic swords were rubbish

Not all of them, by any means! Polybius specifically says that the Romans copied only the general form of the gladius hispaniensis--they could not match the quality of the steel.

...an armoured plate with a padded backing is more logically resistant than a chainlink, to a high velocity small footprint projectile!

Well, I tend to agree, to a certain extent! But that chainlink is not alone, it's part of a fabric of mail and there is a lot of complex physics going on. Arrowheads were not typically any harder than the iron in the mail, so they aren't going to just "cut right through" the wire links. To get enough force to break just one link, the arrow has to push it to the point where it is essentially unable to move farther, as if resting on a workbench. As that ring moves, it's soaking up a little of the arrow's force. Then 4 other rings start to move, soaking up more force, as does the padding underneath. Then 3 more rings through each of the first 4, and so on.

Next, it's a little misleading to call the arrow "high velocity". You can see it in flight, like a baseball, though I don't think it would be quite as easy to catch! And many cultures were using cane and reed for their arrows, so they're light, not packing a lot of punch, and losing speed through air resistance. We're not talking about bullets, here.

With regard to the Parthians and Arrows, though, it is worth bearing in mind several key factors. First of all, the primary defence against Arrows for Heavy Foot is the Scutum, not Body Armour, which does not in any case cover every point of the body.

Bingo. If arrows were the reason for the invention of the lorica, why come up with a cuirass which covers LESS of the body than the mail did?

but the fact remains that segs appeared sometime between the debacle in Parthia, and the one in Germany!

As far as we know, yes, but so what? Those were hardly the only defeats suffered by the Romans. Antony and other Romans had much better success against the Parthians, apparently using the same equipment as Crassus' men had. Same for Tiberius and Germanicus in Germany.

many pictorial representations of banded armour worn by catephracts are in evidence

Sure, no problem there. There are even fragments of Hellenistic armor which might have been precursors or inspiration for the Roman lorica. Bear in mind, though, that cataphract armor was probably designed for defense against other cataphracts, even if it was good against arrows, too.

Page 117 in "Greece and Rome at War" shows a huge assortment of spear and javelin heads from Celtic armies, and these are dated to the Republic. So the danger of piercing weapons has always been there. It's not difficult to imagine the armourers of the time trying to figure out a better type of armour to defeat such weapons.

But spears and javelins had been used since the Stone Age. Why the sudden frantic concern with them only in the late first century BC?

And yet, the segmentata has VERY specific characteristics about it that make it much better armour versus specific types of weapons, to dismiss it's creation to mere innovation out of thin air.

Agreed to a point, I do think it came from something. ALMOST everything does! But it was not at all a completely unique defense--Parthian and Hellenistic segmented plate defenses have been noted. And plate cuirasses were also known. This is an interesting combination of the two. It could very well have been "Hey, that's clever, that would make great body armor!" I just don't think it was, "Hey, we need something to stop this particular weapon!"

Not to be picking on Magnus or anyone else in particular, here!

Geez, WAY past bedtime. I am not going to be able to keep up with this one... Probably should have left it all to the other Matthew, we seem to be pretty much in agreement.

Valete,

Matthew