Leiden - disc chape for gladius?

[Tarbicus]

But to throw out Hellenistic armour and weapons as being worn by officers, can you offer an alternative example of what they would have actually worn? Using a 17th-18th C example of representation of officers is valid, but not proof that the same was happening 1600 years previously. I agree that representational art is dubious in a large scale propaganda piece, but I'm not convinced that every individual's portrait would have the same degree of stylisation. Tombstones of common soldiers are of individuals and offer us a unique view of them which we pretty much accept as accurate, which to a degree could be the same with officers but of higher quality.

Added: Have you seen what Galba once wore? http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic.php?t=15779
Not necessarily a linothorax of hellenistic style, but it certainly does make you wonder.

[drsrob]

I think they wore the same or similar armour as centurions. Either a mail shirt like M. Favonius Facilis or a scale shirt like Q. Sertorius Festus. On the monument at Adamklissi (Metope VI) a senior officer (Traian?) is shown with an armour that looks like a muscle cuirass, but is covered with scales.

Statius, Thebais, VII

• 'Multiplicem teneces iterant thorace catenae'
  'The little chains join the many-folded thorax'

Virgil, Aeneid, III, V. 467.

• 'loricam consertam hamis, auroque trilicem'
  'the three-fold lorica, held together with golden hooks'

Silius Italicus, Punica, V.

• 'Loricam induitur tortos huic nexilis hamos
  Ferro squama rudi, permistoque asperat auro'
  'He puts on the lorica - it looks terrible: scales of plain iron and gold intermixed, being knitted together with twisted hooks'

These quotes either refer to locked scale or to scale attached to a mail shirt. Of the latter an example has been found (See Robinson p. 173)

As I suggested before the hellenistic armour survived in sculpture as a symbol of (equestrian) rank and - after senators formed a seperate order - of senatorial rank as well.

As for Galba's linen cuirass, it could have been a subarmalis or a surcoat as worn by cavalry (see Arrian) and/or Praetorians (Cancelleria relief)