Ancient Roman Armor | Early European History And Religion

ARMOR OF THE ANCIENT ROMANS

military mask

The defensive armor of Romans soldiers was a coat of mail for the breast, a brass helmet for the head, greaves for the legs, and a large oblong shield carried upon the left arm. Detailed descriptions and images of armor from the Roman period have survived but actual pieces of armor are very rare. Rigid scale armor was made from metal, bone, wood or cuir bouilli (leather made hard by boiling in wax). An iron mask sheathed in silver and bronze and attached to a helmet was discovered in the Netherlands. It was worn in parades and perhaps in battle. Banners and perhaps a metal dragon with a fabric body were carried on poles.

Greek hoplites — the fully armed infantryman of the Alexander the Great era — wore only a helmet, a cuirass, and greaves. The Romans adopted this armor, with minor changes and variations, but very little Roman armor has come down to our times, since it was almost entirely of iron and has rusted away in the earth where it was buried.

The oldest, most complete legionary’s segmental armour, was found in the Teutoborg forest. Roman soldiers used beautifully-decorated rectangular wooden shields but they were not nearly long enough to cover the lower legs so they wore shinpad-like leg protectors called greaves, often with some fasciae (leg-bindings), which added protection, especially for moving through scrubland. To protect one’s manhood they wore an apron-like thing made of metal-covered leather straps that flapped against the groin when they ran. [Source: Daisy Dunn, The Telegraph, January 21, 2024]

An interesting Roman custom was that of setting up a trophy after a victory; a tree-trunk to which a cross-piece had been fastened was arrayed in armor taken from the battle-field, and remained standing there until destroyed by time or taken by the enemy. A terracotta lamp from Cyprus is decorated with a symbolic device representing Victory holding a trophy at an altar between two Lares militares, the protecting deities of the Roman state. [Source: “The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans”, Helen McClees Ph.D, Gilliss Press, 1924]

Gladiator Armor

Gladiators wore armor on their heads and other parts of the body, scholars believe, because battles in which gladiators were quickly put down with a blow to the head were not be very interesting for spectators to watch. The armor prolonged the battles and made the contest more challenging and sporting.

The armor, often weighing 30 pounds or more, was specially designed for gladiator events. The helmets, with their fearsome-looking face guards, were extremely heavy but well balanced so they didn't put too much strain on the neck. Shields were made of wood because they were lighter than metal ones. They were often lined with felt to absorb the shock of the blows. The leg and arms guards were protected with linen or wool and felt linings were put under the helmets for the same reason.

Peter Conolly, a historian and expert on gladiators, told Discover magazine: “The metal won't protect you from the blow, and this is particularly so with helmets. If someone belts you on the head, the helmet might stop the blow but it will knock you out." The main problem with the lining was it made the armor extremely hot.

Ancient Roman Military Helmets

jeweled Roman ridge helmet (Berkasovo I), dated to the early 4th century AD; Made of iron and sheathed in silver-gilt, and decorated with glass gems; From the "Berkasovo treasure", Museum of Vojvodina, Novi Sad (Serbia)

Cristian Violatti of Listverse wrote: “According to some ancient writers, helmets in the Roman army had other benefits besides their obvious protective function. Polybius (Histories, 6.23) noted that the decorations on top of their helmets had a psychological impact on their enemies because it made the Roman soldiers look taller and more intimidating. “The use of helmet decoration to intimidate enemies was widely practiced by most cultures. But in this case, Polybius was referring specifically to the use of a “circle of feathers” to make the Romans look considerably taller than they actually were. This observation makes sense when we consider that many of their enemies, especially in central Europe (e.g., Gauls and Germans), were much taller and robust than the Romans.” [Source: Cristian Violatti, Listverse, September 4, 2016 ]

In his book “The Armour of Imperial Rome” (1975, classified), H. Russell Robinson divided Roman helmets into broad types based on their forms. These included four main types of helmets for heavy infantry and thirty different types of cheek guards. Helmets used by gladiators were quite different from military versions. The main legionary infantry helmets were: 1) Montefortino helmet (4th century B.C. – 1st century A.D.); 2) Coolus helmet (3rd century B.C. – at least 79 A.D.); 3) Imperial Gallic helmet (late 1st century B.C. – early 2nd century A.D.); 4) Imperial Italic helmet (late 1st B.C. – early 3rd century A.D.); 5) Ridge helmet, first depicted on coins of 4th-century A.D. emperor Constantine I; 6) Galea (helmet). [Source Wikipedia]

A galea was a Roman soldier's helmet. Some gladiators, namely murmillo, wore a bronze version with a face mask and decorations, often a fish on its crest. The form of the helmet varied significantly over time, between differing unit types, and also between individual examples. Some of the helmets used by legionaries had a crest holder. The crests were usually made of plumes or horse hair. While the fur is usually red, the crests possibly occurred in other colors, like yellow, purple and black, and possibly in combinations of these colors such as alternating yellow and black. Gladiators such as the samnis and the hoplomachus also probably wore large feathered crests.

Bling Roman Helmet from England

In 2000, a "bling" Roman helmet, dated to the mid A.D. 1st Century, AD, was found near the village of Hallaton in a Leicestershire. The artefact was lavishly decorated with silver and gold and displays superb craftsmanship. Helen Sharp, curator of archaeology at Leicestershire County Council museums, said: "The Hallaton helmet is extremely important, it is one of a handful of silver-plated helmets ever found in Europe. "It is extremely high status; it would have been worn by an extremely high-status officer, and it just shows how well connected the Leicester area was at the time.[Source: Greig Watson, BBC, Sat, March 30, 2024]

According to the BBC: The main helmet 'bowl' was hammered from a single sheet of iron, with a second, silver, helmet fixed over the top, which was in turn highlighted using gold leaf. The silver was decorated with designs carefully hammered into the metal. These feature a powerful female figure, a cavalryman, a weeping woman, and two newly discovered griffins, likely symbolising protection for the wearer. The site at Hallaton where the helmet was found also yielded more than 5,000 coins, silver ingots and large amounts of animal bone — mostly pig but some dogs — presumably left as ritual offerings. The helmet was discovered in hundreds of corroded fragments, alongside seven cheekpieces. It was reconstructed by the British Museum.

Archaeologists said the helmet resembled a “rusty bucket” when it was found. According to the Miami Herald: The cheekpieces portray a Roman emperor riding on a horse in front of the Roman goddess Victory, the equivalent of the Greek goddess Nike. Beneath the horse is a “cowering figure,” potentially representing a native of Britain. The browguard, which would cover the wearer’s forehead, is emblazoned with a female figure, likely a Roman goddess, and possibly multiple lions. [Source: Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, March 26, 2024]

Ancient Roman Shields

legion shield

Roman shields were rectangular and curved around at the sides to protect the wearer’s body. Only the boss and the rim were made of metal. The shield of the Greek soldier bore the device of his state, as the Koppa of Corinth, which was painted on the shields of her citizen-warriors; and the Roman soldier carried the sign of his legion in the same fashion. Interesting devices, frequently animals’ heads, were adopted like coats of arms by Greek nobles, and many of these can be seen on vases of the sixth century. An amphora shows shields decorated with the heads of a bull and a boar. [Source: “The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans”, Helen McClees Ph.D, Gilliss Press, 1924]

The scutum was a type of shield used among Italic peoples in antiquity, most notably by the army of ancient Rome starting about the fourth century B.C. The Romans adopted it when they switched from the military formation of the hoplite phalanx of the Greeks to the formation with maniples. In the former, the soldiers carried a round shield, which the Romans called a clipeus. In the latter, they used the scutum, which was larger. Originally, it was oblong and convex, but by the first century BC, it had developed into the rectangular, semi-cylindrical shield. This was not the only kind the Romans used; Roman shields were of varying types depending on the role of the soldier who carried it. Oval, circular and rectangular shapes were used throughout Roman history. [Source Wikipedia]

Polybius described an early second-century scutum B.C. The Roman panoply consists firstly of a shield (scutum), the convex surface of which measures 2.5 ft (76 centimeters) in width and 4 ft (120 centimeters) in length, the thickness at the rim being a palm's breadth. It is made of two planks glued together, the outer surface being then covered first with canvas and then with calfskin. Its upper and lower rims are strengthened by an iron edging that protects it from descending blows and from injury when rested on the ground. It also has an iron shield boss (umbo) fixed to it which turns aside the most formidable blows from stones, spears, swords, and other heavy missiles.

Roman rectangular scutums of later eras were smaller than Republican oval scutums and often varied in length from approximately 94 to 107 centimeters (37 to 42 inches) tall, covering the shoulder to top of knee, and 61 to 84 centimeters (24 to 33 inches wide. By the end of the 3rd century the rectangular scutum seems to have disappeared. Fourth century archaeological finds (especially from the fortress of Dura-Europos) indicate the subsequent use of oval or round shields which were not semi-cylindrical but were either dished (bowl-shaped) or flat.

The scutum weighed 10 kilograms (22 pounds). It was made from three sheets of wood glued together and covered with canvas and leather, usually with a spindle shaped boss along the vertical length of the shield. The best surviving example, from Dura-Europos in Syria, was 105.5 centimeters (41.5 inches) high, 41 centimeters (16 inches) across, and 30 centimeters (12 inches) deep (due to its semicylindrical nature). It is made from strips of wood that are 30 to 80 millimeters (1.2 to 3.1 inches) wide and 1.5 to 2 millimeters (0.059 to 0.079 inches) thick. They are put together in three layers, so that the total thickness of the wood layer is 4.5 to 6 millimeters (0.18 to 0.24 in). It was likely well made and extremely sturdy.

1,800-Year-Old Roman Armor Pieced Together like an 'Ancient Jigsaw Puzzle'

In January 2024, conservators at National Museums Scotland unveiled a reconstructed 1,800-year-old segment of Roman armor that was broken into more than 100 pieces and painstakingly reassembled. Jennifer Nalewicki wrote in Live Science: For several weeks, museum conservators painstakingly pieced together what they're calling an "ancient jigsaw puzzle." The second-century brass armor was shattered into dozens of pieces and discovered in 1906 scattered throughout Trimontium, a former Roman fort site located southeast of Edinburgh, according to a statement from National Museums Scotland. [Source Jennifer Nalewicki, Live Science, January 23, 2024]

The fragments have been in the museum's collection ever since, with the upper portion on display for the past 25 years. "This is an incredibly rare object, and it's great that this exhibition gave us the opportunity to rebuild it," Fraser Hunter, principal curator of prehistoric and Roman archaeology at National Museums Scotland, said in the statement. "The transformation is striking."

Researchers initially thought the artifact was part of a thigh guard used by a cavalryman. However, as conservators worked out the arduous puzzle, they realized it was actually an armguard inspired by similar equipment worn by gladiators. The piece would have stretched from the shoulder to the hand and protected the wearer in battle. "The flexible arm guard is an iconic piece of equipment for Roman gladiators, so it is unusual to see it as a sword-arm protection for Roman soldiers too," Richard Abdy, curator of Roman and Iron Age coins at the British Museum, said in the statement.

"Now that it's been reconstructed, you can picture the legionary who once wore it," Hunter said. "It was both protection and status symbol — brass was expensive and would have gleamed like gold on his sword arm. It offers a vivid connection to this important period when Scotland sat on the Roman Empire's northern frontier."

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated November 2024