posted 02-14-2001 02:19 PM               

Tomaz, you are quite correct about the Greek bronze thorax being quite heavy. That is why they went to the linen thorax of the Classical Period. This was made of several layers of heavy linen glued together to form a rather rigid and strong thorax that was also light enough to be relatively comfortable. I assume that whatever glue they used was also waterproof, more or less. These laceed up the left side, so that the laces would be protected by the hoplon, and had shoulder doublings that were permanently attached in the back and were pulled over and tied in front. The later Roman Lorica Hamata was clearly patterned on the Greek linen thorax.

An interesting aside here is that htere have been finds of the lorica segmentata in the East, in Syria and in Palestine, leading scholars to revise their opinion that it was used only in the West. Of course, we all know that the Legions were not always kept in one place, but shifted around, as needed, or vexillia from a Legion might be sent if the whole Legion was not. Therefore, it is quite reasonable to expect that troops fromn the Western Legions would have found their way to the East, especially during times of emergency, such as the various Jewish revolts.

Finally, thank you, Gregg, for pointing out what I should have done, that all of these names for Roman loricae are what modern students call them. We have absolutely no idea what the Romans called them.

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh

posted 02-14-2001 03:00 PM               

Thank you for mentioning the Dendra armor, I was wondering when it would arise on this thread. For those who may not be familiar with it, it dates from the 15th c. B.C., and is not in the archeological museum of Nauplion:
It has considerable resemblance to a lorica segmentata, but adds a huge gorget. Obviously it didn't catch on, possibly due to amount of metal and weight, as well s limited mobility.

posted 02-15-2001 09:06 AM               

The difference with the Dendra armour is that the segemnetata with its numerous plates of non hardened metal to absorb the shock more efficiently (a littel bit like american foot ball shoulder pads) that a plate covering the same area. the way the segemtatata is designed as well preserve a lots of mobility (you can bend and twist very easily)
One thing as well is that if you want to wear mail you need a big padding to prevent the mail to hurt you. Mail and proper pading is quite heavy (It still restrict your movements less than the segmentata, but there is not that much difference in my opinion).

However the line of reasoning of the mail being more efficient than segmental plates made me think of the following.

Even if the segmentata is more efficient as a design (soft metal and laminar construction )the romans used graves and/or segmental arms armour (when it was needed falx of the dace)
the mail has the following advantage:

Mail can easilly cover all the part of the boddy (laminar armour could but that would require higher level of engineering).

Mail is easier to fix you usually replace few rings but you do need the exact same plate for a segemental armour, granted they were hammered plate but...)

Mail does not need a lots of maintenance and there is little that can go wrong with it. the Lorica segmentata had lots of bucles and strap and hence more prone to rupture and/or corrosion.

mail was issued tpo auxiliaries troops, only legions were equiped with segmentata.

posted 02-15-2001 09:33 AM               

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh

posted 02-15-2001 11:57 AM               

I am venturing beyond my personal knowledge here, but my understading is that mail is highly vulnerable to corrosion, seeing as it has a huge surface of metal exposed relative to plate of the same weight (or covering the same area), and each link corrodes on all surfaces.

Hopefully someone with more experience can corroborate this.

posted 02-16-2001 05:43 PM               

Roel (aka Thorfast Einarsson)

posted 02-18-2001 10:58 AM               

For some reason, I assume that the vast majority in the time we are thinking of would have been of iron. I tend to assume that only the very finest fraction of these blades would have been free of small inclusions of "impurities." These inclusions would not be obvious in the relatively thick material of a blade, but would tend to show up quite obviously, in sheets rolled or hammered to the thickness [thin-ness?] required for the armor in question.

I could be completely wrong...but maybe not.

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Gundo

Wise Ogre Armory

posted 02-18-2001 04:57 PM               

Roel (aka Thorfast Einarsson)

posted 02-20-2001 09:40 AM               

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh

posted 02-23-2001 11:37 PM               

Hugh –
You’re right about the adoption of greaves by the Roman foot soldiers (as opposed to the centurions), as well as the laminated arm guard (the manica lamminata) during the Dacian wars. However, the arm guard, if not the greaves, seem to have survived the Dacian wars. Only three examples of the manica lamminata have ever been excavated; one (as yet unpublished) example from Sarmizegethusa (the Dacian capital), one from Austria, and a very fragmentary one from Scotland. This suggests that the arm guard continued in use for some time after the Dacian wars. I suppose one explanation for this would be that the Romans were a very practical people, and after the Dacian campaign the equipment would have continued in use until it was no longer serviceable. Greaves are an even more difficult problem to untangle. Only a few examples have been excavated, and satisfactory identification has so far proved nearly impossible (that is, were they a centurion’s greaves, a common foot soldier’s greaves, or part of a cavalry parade armor).

posted 02-24-2001 08:12 PM            

quote:

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"Early mail was not made of wire(wire drawing was not invented until the 14th century) each individual bit of wire was hammered into shape by a smith..."

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Not quite. The water-powered wire-drawing machine was invented ca. 1350 by Rudolf of Nuremberg; before that an iron rod was hammered out of an ingot, tapered and drawn by man- or horse-power through a series of holes of decreasing size in an iron block. This technique, called "swaging", has been known for a lot longer than drawing.

quote:

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"Mail does not need padding..."

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This one definitely needs a lot of proving.

quote:

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"Padding was not used until the introduction of the sword of war...in the 13th century. Against these heavier swords padding was needed..."

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That lack of padding must come as a surprise to the scholars who've been researching Viking and Norman armour; and what came in to counter heavier weapons was plate armour, first in small sections, then whole limbs, and finally full-body harness.

quote:

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"'Hauberks' of scale, lamellar, and banded armour...were worn over the mail."

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According to the terminology I know, the hauberk is the mail, with add-ons referred to by other names (such as "coats-of-plates" etc.)

quote:

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"One never sees padding worn under mail or described as being worn under it before the 13th century..."

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I have seen European artwork from the 11th and 12th century which appears to contradict this.

posted 02-25-2001 06:51 AM               

I have great reservations about mail being invented by the Hallstatt culture in 6th c. BC. As far as I know, there is absolutely no proof of mail that early in central Europe. In fact, the Hallstatt period (750-500 BC, to be exact) was characterized by primitive plate armor and simple cuirasses. Again, I'm not aware of a single piece of evidence that could support your claim.

The Romans were quite quick to copy other people's ideas, but they didn't steal everything from the Celts if that's what you are implying. Roads were certainly not something that the Celts were ever known for. As far as construction is concerned, the Romans were much more heavily influenced by Greeks and Etruscans. The gladius was originally an Iberian design, but heavily modified by the Romans later on.

Mail or any other kind of armor requires plenty of padding to absorb the shock. This is of great importance in case of mail, which is flexible. A sword does not necessarily need to cut through the mail to do damage. The force delivered on impact might be enough to inflict serious blunt trauma. The only way to prevent this to some extent is to wear thick padding underneath.

posted 02-25-2001 08:08 AM            

To make an example of your example: the bodies being stripped are indeed not wearing padding under their hauberks. In fact, most of them are shown as not wearing anything. While I can accept that the looters may already have stolen their spurs, shoes and hose (all items clearly worn by "living people" in the tapestry) there's no indication of what happened to the garment with very visible sleeves also shown as being worn under the armour, which couldn't be removed while the hauberk was still in place. Yet there's no sign of any sleeves on the corpses. It's possible that the dear ladies of the Bayeux Sewing Circle, while being told what to embroider by some veteran of the battle, may have decided to combine the information of "stripping the dead" and "corpses left naked" into one succinct picture. Or it may represent some religious image, courtesy of Bishop Odo, like "in death we leave the world as naked as we enter it". But I greatly doubt it represented fact as seen on the field at Hastings.

My opinion is that some form of padding had to be worn under mail, be it as minimal as a leather tunic or as bulky as a near-arrow-proof aketon or gambeson. Since it's an opinion shared by Standard Authorities like Oakeshott, Edge, Gravett etc.; I'll go with them.

I'm automatically wary of unsupported statements ("this is what I think") which run counter to Standard Authority; you'll find my reasoning over on Archaeology of Weapons, in the Roman through Gunpowder Artillery topic, and as a teacher (I checked your profile... - what subject?) I hope you'll understand why I starting picking those nits. Too many people seem to come here looking for scholastic information for me to feel at ease with observations that contradict the books which are our base reference source.

(What's wrong with libraries, these days? I used to love going to libraries, and still do; bookshops, too. You can't browse on Amazon - but then you can't get chucked out for not buying anything, either. If I had a pound for every bookshop assistant who escorted me off the premises for reading the stock, I'd be, well, I could take Diane out for a pretty lavish dinner... )

posted 02-25-2001 12:56 PM               

Regarding construction, the Romans were considerably more heavily influenced by the Etruscans than the Greeks. Moreover, the Greeks can not compare to the Romans as far as architecture is concerned. They just weren't as inventive.

The gladius was indeed a Celtic weapon, but the Romans changed the basic design greatly to suit their needs. But that's not really important. What matters is that the Romans incorporated this weapon into a highly efficient military system that had no equal for 500 years.

Piercing mail with a spear is quite easy. Yes, you need to get behind the enemy's shield first (that is, if he carries one). But that's not impossible. Mail provides good protection, but not invulnerability. Check any museum of some size for surviving mail. You'll see that most examples are badly torn. I rather wouldn't ask what happened to men wearing them.

As for the seeming absence of padding on the Bayeux tapestry, how can you tell? Given the scale of the figures, such details are wholly impossible to distinguish. And in any case, the tapestry was made by women rather than soldiers, which makes me think about the accuracy of combat scenes.

There are very few good sources dating earlier than 1200. This makes any research of early medieval equipment a very difficult task. However, we do know that padding existed back then. Mail was commonly worn over a gambeson, but never on bare skin. For instance, we have reports of Arab chroniclers clearly stating that the short Turkish bows could not do much harm to the heavily armored crusaders as the arrows stuck in the padding under the mail.

Had arrows been so easy to avoid, archers and crossbowmen wouldn't have been so popular during the Middle Ages. Just how much of your body can you cover with a typical medieval shield? Even in the best case, there will always be a substantial portion of your limbs exposed, which is bad enough. Then what about all those combatants who didn't carry shields? Like spearmen, who formed the mainstay of most European medieval armies? Aside from knights and men-at-arms, armor was a rarity. An average peasant infantryman could afford nothing better than a quilted jacket.

You seem to believe that it was swords that revolutionized warfare and armor. I have a problem with that. Swords were by no means the prevalent medieval weapon. The majority of combatants used polearms, clubs, maces, axes.

The revolution in armor was probably caused by something entirely else - a major change in tactics coupled with new weapons. The demise of mounted knights began during the late 13th and early 14th century. Suddenly, infantry - now armed with polearms, crossbows and later longbows - was no longer as helpless as it used to be. Heavy cavalry became more vulnerable and often took heavy losses in fruitless assaults that worked so well earlier.

It was this great change in tactics that triggered a revolution in armor. Mail hauberks were no longer sufficient to protect the charging cavalry from long polearms. Similarly, massed crossbow/longbow volley fire became a serious threat. Plate armor evolved in response to these new realities of the late medieval battlefield. I've recently found out that Maurice Keen defends a similar thesis in his "Medieval Warfare".

posted 02-25-2001 06:58 PM               

Roel