Roman armour - how accurate is RTW?

[econ21]

Anyone knowledgeable care to comment about the statistical representation of Roman armour in RTW? It seems from the stats that the Romans have the most powerful units, in large part because they get very high armour values later on in the tech tree. I wonder - how much of an advantage did the Romans have in terms of armour over their enemies and how much did it improve from 270BC to 17AD?

My impression is that the Romans did have a big advantage in terms of armour over "barbarians" like the Gauls - but it is less clear compared to the say Greeks. Roman armour does not seem that impressive per se - the arms and legs seem fairly exposed, although perhaps the large shields offset that to a degree.

I am not sure how much Roman armour improved over time - were the early Imperial legions that much better armoured than the Hastati etc in the Punic Wars? I understand the need for upgrades in terms of gameplay, but it seems less plausible than the chain => plate upgrade modelled in MTW.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

[TinCow]

Adrian Goldsworthy's "The Complete Roman Army" discusses the evolution of Roman arms and armor extensively. Remembering the best I can, I think the game is pretty accurate, though you may be attributing the defense factor in the game too much to the armor itself.

Roman armor changed greatly over time depending on what piece you are talking about. I'll summarize what I can remember.

When thinking about Hastati, you have to remember that the Roman Army was completely different under the Pre-Marian system. Hastati NEVER operated alone, they were always backed up by Principes and Triarii. In addition, there were always skirmishers who had even less armor than the Hastati. To the best of my recollection, the armor represented in-game was about right for these units. These units were essentially armored with as much protection as the individual fighter could afford. It is my understanding that you wouldn't ever find a poor Triarii, though perhaps I am remembering wrong.

Chainmail and Segmented Plate were used variably during the post-Marian period. Chainmail was not abandoned by any means and it seems to have regained prominence by the end of the Empire (4th-5th centuries). Segmented plate was difficult to produce and though it was very good protection, it also lacked in flexibility and was very hot. It is my understanding that the image that we think of as the typical roman soldier with segmented plate, the imperial helmet, and the curved rectangular scutum only was common for about 100 years in the post-Augustus period. After that it returned to the more typical chainmail and sword weilding infantryman that is really pretty close in appearance to a medieval man-at-arms.

The Roman shields seem to have taken a very strange and circuitous route of development. The rectangular curved scutum was not actually very common. Most shields were ovular, though many were curved slightly (not as much as the ones we usually think of. They were more in the style of an oval hoplon than the ubiquitous RTW style shield. All Roman shields were made of wood by the way. Other than for cavalry shields, most seem to be designed based on convenience of local materials and labor rather than a centralized standard.

Hemlets are a completely different creature. These show a systematic evolution over time, each version improving on the last. Most started as a basic skull-cap style helmet. They slowly evolved cheek-guards, and a brim and rear neck-guards to stop blades sliding off the top and onto vulnerable lower bits. Reinforcing pieces were added to commonly stuck bits on the top, brim and back to keep them from breaking under the force of a blow. Many Imperial helmets had spikes for mounting horse-hair arrangements, though most historians believe these were removed before battle and served a ceremonial purpose only. Eventually the cheek-guards grew over the mouth and nose and joined the neck guard to form the close-helm that became common in the Middle Ages.

This armor was certainly the equivalent of all of Rome's enemies in the pre-Marian period and it was far superior to any of the 'barbarian' enemies during the height of Roman power. Most of this equipment required significant skill in craftsmanship, materials and maintinance and such things were simply not possible for most 'barbarian' peoples. It is true that most of those people simply fought in nothing but their skivvies. They considered it a sign of bravery to wear as little as possible into battle. Refer to Viking Berserkers to see where this evolution went. By the decline of the Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries, the Romans no longer had a technological advantage in arms and armor over their enemies. The rest of the world had caught up. The full-plate muscled cuirass was likely only a ceremonial piece used by centurians and senior legion officials. It was probably not used in battle a great deal and it was certainly never used by entire units as is shown in RTW by the Praetorian and Urban cohorts.

As for arm and leg guards, these were used depending on the soldier's purpose and means. Cavalry always wore shin guards on their non-shielded side and often on both. Infantrymen were often equipped with a guard on their sword-arm. Some evidence seems to show that these may have been privately bought pieces and may not have been given to everyone.

However, despite all of this, keep in mind the one thing that really distinguished the Roman soldier from any of his contemporaries: discipline and training. The best defense the Romans had was each other. Organization, formation and knowledge of proper tactics is what made the real difference. The legions kept their cool during battle and every man knew his place in line and did his duty. This added far more protection to each soldier than any piece of armor could have accomplished. Essentially, what made the Roman Army so special was that it was a 'modern' army in terms of training and organization in an era (post-Punic) where most of their enemies were simply disorganized and untrained mobs of recruits with whatever weapons they could get their hands on.

In re: the Greeks in specific, keep in mind the Hoplite did not wear much in terms of body armor. The hoplon was used as the main defense with leg and arm guards provided as defense for the extremities. Combine this with the inability to use the spear at close range and you can see why the hoplite got torn apart if swordsmen were able to get past the spearwall. Hard and spikey on the outside, but soft and chewy in the middle. ~;) The average legionary on the other hand still had good armor and protection even behind his scutum and his gladius was ideal for close-combat.

If you are really interesting in this, I would very highly recommend getting The Complete Roman Army. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0500051240/qid=1097594025/sr=8-3/ref=pd_ka_3/102-0613119-7235303?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[Lemur]

Wonderful post, great info, fantastic book that I'll now have to buy and read. Thanks a million, man.

[metatron]

It is a rather indepth book, I picked it up last month. Bit lacking in the East though.

[Watchman]

I know "Eastern" cataphracts, Parthians and other "Persians" in other words, also tended to use laminated ("banded") body armor similar to the Romans' lorica segmentata. Who picked the idea from which one I don't know, but I'd actually put my money on the Easterners having used it first - after Hellenic times the area usually referred to as Persia was pretty much the armoury of the Middle East.

It of course helped they actually had easy access to plentiful iron, something the southern parts lacked.

Anyway, pre-Marian legionaires mostly used mail shirts, bronze plates or any combination thereof according to their finances. Post-Marian state-equipped troopers as a rule wore mail shirts very much like the Celts', save the Romans were better able to mass-produce the stuff and always made it "riveted" - that is to say, each ring is riveted firmly shut. The Celts often dispensed with this time-consuming (and therefore price-raising) process and just wound the rings (this type of mail is termed "butted" in them books), which was quite fine against slashing swords but sort of sucked against arrows, spears and stabbing swords which had a comparatively easy time forcing the links open.

Given that only very prosperous "barbarians" could afford such armor, the Romans naturally tended to have a notable advantage over them in this area.

As for the Greeks (and other Hellenic folks) their standby armor was a scale cuirass made of triangular, square or hexagonal bronze (later on probably iron was likely used) scales attached to a base of thick clotch or leather (sometimes hardened). Solid-plate bronze "muscle cuirasses" were also used , but those were so heavy and cumbersome phalangites (which are the standard Hellenic line infantry in the game) normally didn't touch them. For example Alexander's phalangites were markedly lighter armoured than the Greek hoplites they fought early on - their defense relied mostly on the nigh-impenetrable wall of pikes.

Dunno 'bout the Successor kingdoms though - they apparently experimented with all manner of military weirdness, like super-long pikes and downright ridiculous siege engines ("...product of the classic Greek engineering ingenuity mated with imperial grandstanding and unlimited budgets", as one source described it)...

[Pellinor]

I know "Eastern" cataphracts, Parthians and other "Persians" in other words, also tended to use laminated ("banded") body armor similar to the Romans' lorica segmentata.

Are you thinking of lamellar armour? That is made of small plates (a few inches by an inch, or thereabouts) which are laced together with no backing material. It is not very much like segmentata at all, really.


the Romans were better able to mass-produce the stuff and always made it "riveted" - that is to say, each ring is riveted firmly shut. The Celts often dispensed with this time-consuming (and therefore price-raising) process and just wound the rings (this type of mail is termed "butted" in them books)

So far as I am aware there is no evidence that anyone used butted mail in combat before about the 18th or 19th century. There are some Renaissance parade armours with butted rings, and some very late eastern stuff (used by the Mahdi's troops in the Sudan, for example), and that's about it. There was speculation than some very corroded fragments were butted, but it is now generally thought that they were rivetted.

Butted mail is cheaper and quicker to make, but it needs to be very much heavier than rivetted just to stay together, and it is far weaker. If you're going to the effort of making wire (pretty tricky in 300 BC) then it's not much more of a step to rivet the rings.

Incidentally, there is some evidence that the Romans punched a large proportion of their rings from sheet iron, which reduces the work considerably.

Cheers,

Pell.R.

[Watchman]

No, I know the difference between lamellar and laminate. Lamellar is a very old and popular technique, probably almost as ancient a defense as scale - definite scale armor appears in some very old Egyptian and Mesopotamian wall reliefs, and some of them (which seem to overlap upwards, a characteristic feature of lamellar construction) may actually represent lamellar.

No, by Roman times the Persians used armor constructed of horizontal bands of iron and usually overlapping downwards - very much like the lorica segmentata. Not that the cuirass was the first type of laminated armor the Romans used either - to counter the limb-severing propensity of the Dacian sickle-swords many legionaires fighting there wore a full-arm defense of bronze laminates on their sword arm (the Dacians are sometimes also offered as the reason the Romans started adding the reinforcing horizontal band to the front of their helmets).

Now as for mail, as far as I know the "butted" kind was actually fairly common. AFAIK the rings "stay together" right well butted and have no need to be particularly large or heavy - why would they ? In fact the fine hanging mail protecting the face and the neck in many post-1500s Indo-Persian helmets is specifically unbutted, as AFAIK was the fine-mesh mail Renaissance duelists would occasionally wear under their clotches against rapiers. Given the sheer number and small diameter of the individual rings in such mail, and the extremely "dense" construction which makes it difficult for even pointy things to get through, riveting them would probably have been both impossible and pointless.
But I digress.

Anyway, Celtic Iron Age swordsmanship concentrated almost exclusively on long cutting swords, against which butted mail works just as well as riveted. Spears were important too, of course, so there seems to be a bit of a contradiction, but there may also have been the idea that anyone important enough to be able to afford a mail shirt would not be under serious threat from any warrior who could only afford to use a spear... Be that as it may, mail was also something of a status symbol so it only makes sense the cheaper butted kind would be common - not nearly every aspiring strongman could afford the more expensive riveted kind.

"Punched" or "stamped" rings, however, did not AFAIK appear before the late 12th and early 13th century, when the Egyptian Mamluks started using them in their mail. Like all good ideas it of course got around pretty fast, as did the advances the Egyptians made in the field of hardened leather armor.
But that's way out of the scope of the discussion...

[sharrukin]

Hey Watchman do you know what armour the early Hastati and Principes used in the RTW timeframe. I have read that they had the leather cuirass as standard, or as standard as they got in those days. I have also seen the depictions and they have chainmail. In 270 BC? Around 125 BC +/- 50 years is when I thought they adopted chainmail.

[DemonArchangel]

The Bronze Phylax was used only by poor hastati.

[Watchman]

AFAIK the developement goes about like this:
Once the Romans dropped the Greek-style hoplite system (which is quite different from the Hellenic phalanx), partly because it turned out not to work too well against the Celts, partly because they had to fight the Samnites in terrain such shieldwall tactics were pretty ill-suited for (they learned the maniple system from the Smanites, in fact), and partly because it gave them too few troops to go around with, they moved to the fmiliar hastati-princepes-triarii maniples. The Hastati were on the whole the poorest of the three categories, and most had to make do with just a shield, a helmet and a small bronze plate strapped over the chest for protection (this kind of armor seems to be known as a "pectoral plate"). Not the most impressive defense, certainly, but better than nothing and then again the hastati were the "speed bumps" of the army whose most imprtant job was to absorb and blunt the enemy charge.

The principes were better armed and most would probably have been using mail shirts at the least from the word go, or something equivalent (perhaps Greek-style scale cuirasses; scale armor never fell completely out of use in the Legions), plus likely at least some leg armor.

The triarii would have been armed at least as heavily, and probably added more solid pieces to cover vital areas; I seem to recall the 3D unit profile looked like it was wearing a pectoral plate over mail plus greaves, which sounds credible.

Individual troopers would naturally try to improve their harness to the full extent of their finances (or lucky looting), and over time there would be both an accumulation of older armor plus a general improvement in production capacity (which lowers prices) and the prosperity of the nation, resulting in a slow across-the-board improvement in the grade of equipement used.

[Pellinor]

Watchman, can you point me to some of your sources? They seem to run counter to most of what I've come across before.

I know more about European armour than Persian, but AFAIK segmentata is pretty much the earliest armour routinely made of individual bits of iron larger than a few square inches. The Greeks used bronze and linen cuirasses, though there is a claim for an iron cuirass belonging to Philip of Macedon; the Romans used iron for mail and scale until the segmentata came in, but bronze for pectoral plates and muscle cuirasses - and mail and scale.

AFAIK (based on conversations with researchers on this area) the reason is probably that it is relatively hard to make medium to large iron plates consistently. Small lumps are relatively simple, and can be easily used to make wire and scales, but to make larger lumps requires either more sophisticated bloomeries or else forge welding. This also explains, to an extent, the preference for spears over swords: spearhead sized lumps are fairly common, but at low levels of technology you need to weld them together if you're going to make a sword, which is much more complicated and therefore less common.

Bronze of course is much easier to work with - it melts at a much lower temperature, so can be melted into large lumps for hammering out or casting. Hence sheet bronze armour and cast swords (though the question is still open about whether helmets were cast or forged).

If that is the case, I would be surprised if the Persians were using laminated iron armours before segmentata was introduced, simply as I didn't think their metallurgy was that advanced. My impression was that in classical times they tended more to non-metallic armours, or none at all - hence their problems standing up to the heavy Greek hoplites. Later, I thought they went more for lamellar (similar to the Byzantine klibanion) until Ottoman times, when they went over to mail and plates (in which the plates tend to be of lamellar size, though linked by mail).

You are right about the manicas being used, though there's a lot of dispute about what they were made of and how prevalent they were (they don't show up much in sculpture, for example). The recent Carlisle find will be interesting when the results are more generally available.

So far as mail goes: have you tried making and wearing it, or are you going from theory? The key thing I find about mail is that it is only as strong as the weakest link. Once one link goes, this puts more stress on the surrounding links, which open up and you get sizeable holes. Butted mail links open very easily even just from wearing a hauberk, never mind combat, and to counter this you need to use much thicker wire. Even this doesn't solve the problem completely, especially in armpits and so forth. At the size of ring commonly used in Roman mail (about 7-8mm internal diameter) you're looking at butted rings being two to three times as heavy as riveted ones in order to limit maintenance to minor repairs being needed every few days of wear (simple marching, not combat) - whereas rivetted will need none under normal wear.

Basically, from a purely military point of view butted mail is just not nearly as good in combat: the weight is higher, the maintenance is higher, there is a risk of holes, and the resistance to blows is less. From an economic point of view it is also probably inferior: you save some time in rivetting, but you're paying for two to three times as much iron ore mining, charcoal burning, carting, etc. It's different nowadays when wire is cheap (hence the ubiquity of butted mail in the SCA), but in Roman times the balance of costs was very different.

Further, I am not aware of any finds of mail which could be butted. Admittedly pre-mediaeval mail is very rare and badly corroded, but all which has been tested has been rivetted or solid. This includes the tiny brass stuff (down to 3mm diameter). There is dispute about whether the solid rings used by the Romans were welded or punched from sheets (or strips, rather), but I know someone has reconstructed a very simple punching jig which makes very nice rings very simply, based on Roman finds (unfortunately I don't have access to the source for this at the moment). The only times I know of that butted shows up is when it's in a decorative use - or in a sloppy museum restoration (ie most Victorian and early 20th century work).

Cheers,

Pell.R.

[Watchman]

To my knowledge the Persians went around in pretty light armor for most of the Antiqity - right until the point they got taken over by a certain Macedonian. The Successor Kingdoms were big on heavy armor, and the idea seems to have stuck in the region for good - I've gotten the impression the Persians, or at least their cavalry, kept using heavy armor long after even the Ottomans had ditched theirs (around early 17th century, AFAIK). The Indian Mughals (originally of Turkish and Persian origin) certainly kept wearing it all the way until 19th century.

I'll have to take your word on butted mail, but what I've read of Celtic and Roman mail says the main difference between the two was the latter being riveted and the former, well, not. However, all I've read about how mail functions in combat (at least against sword blows) suggests the protective value of the two against slashing swords would be about the same - or at least I don't really see how the butted mail would present any less smooth, hard surface for the blade to slide off of.

'Course, the Celts might not have been after pure functionalism - by what I know of them they had no shortage of iron and were skilled metalworkers, and if leaving it butted made the prestigious mail shirt affordable to an up-and-coming warrior...

[Simetrical]

I own butted steel mail, so perhaps I can help here. Links do tend to fall out if I'm not careful while putting it on or taking it off, but they don't fall out from just wearing it for a few hours. Also, the links only come out of a few stress points, where the mail is under unusual tension (specifically the neck for me, but I'm sure it varies greatly depending on the design and the procedure for putting it on and taking it off). I suppose it's possible that unriveted iron mail would fall to bits under its own weight, but it seems exceedingly unlikely. If it would happen, it wouldn't be a major issue, since you could just carry along a handful of spare links—it might be difficult to pull the wire, but all you need is a pair of pliers after the links are cut and turned.

As for combat usefulness, I'm not entirely sure why riveted mail would be so much better. Okay, I guess it provides much better protection against piercing attacks. As for slashing, maybe butted mail would tend to fall apart more often once a handful of links were cut? The added stress caused by having to distribute very substantial weight over a smaller area might well be disastrous. I'm really not sure, since I've been a bit reluctant to chop up my mail and test. . . .

-Simetrical

[Pellinor]

Links do tend to fall out if I'm not careful while putting it on or taking it off...

...it's possible that unriveted iron mail would fall to bits under its own weight

There is a connection between these two statements :-) The probable reason for links coming out is that they are getting deformed and stressed, and their weight is not helping that process. By the way, if they are under extra strain around the neck then the shirt probably isn't tailored properly (I make mail shirts).


As for combat usefulness, I'm not entirely sure why riveted mail would be so much better.

As noted above: it's lighter, more flexible, more robust, and provides better protection. The only advantage of butted mail is that it is easier to make *if* you have ready supply of cheap wire to start from (ie 90% of the work has been done for you).

Cheers,

Pell.R.

[Simetrical]

By the way, if they are under extra strain around the neck then the shirt probably isn't tailored properly (I make mail shirts).Well, I didn't expect a masterpiece for $250, but the neck is only under too much stress when I put it on or take it off (which I do none too gently). Otherwise, it holds together fine.

it's lighterWhy? It falls apart if the wire isn't thicker? And doesn't thicker wire provide better protection anyway?

more flexible, more robustIn that it protects better against piercing attacks?

and provides better protection.Why?

-Simetrical

[Pellinor]

Robustness

Mail falls apart when a ring breaks leaving a hole big enough for another ring to become detached. With riveted mail this requires snapping the ring itself or breaking the rivet. Tests have shown that for mail made in a period fashion the rivet tends to be stronger than the ring itself: it's not clear why, but it may be that the extra work done on the overlapped area work-hardens the iron. With butted mail you already have a gap in the ring: all you need to do is widen it slightly.

This means that the force required to cause rings to become unlinked is much greater with riveted mail than with butted: it's a question of snapping wire rather than bending it slightly (not even enough to deform it permanently).

Lightness

As a result of the above, if you make butted mail with the same ratio of wire diameter to ring diameter as you use for riveted mail it will tend to come apart very easily. A typical historic ring would be something like 1mm thick wire in 7-8mm rings (sizes vary enormously, on the same ring never mind between different shirts from different cultures and times). Butted mail out of mild steel wire in this size would be very very weak: I've not come across it, but I think you could deliberately tear it by hand. I've not come across it, by the way, as even the cheap Indian factories don't make it with wire that thin - presumably for that reason.

Mild steel is not wrought iron (the historic material), but is probably better for butted mail as wrought iron is softer - this is good in riveted rings (you don;t care if it bends a bit as long as it doesn't snap), but bad in butted (bending is as bad as snapping).

You therefore need to use thicker wire to have your shirt have a chance of holding together. A typical modern butted shirt uses 1.6mm wire for 8mm rings: by the magic of geometry (ignoring complexities) we find that this makes each ring roughly 2.5 times as heavy. Many people use 1.8mm wire, which is even heavier.

If you have the roughly the same number of rings, then a butted shirt using 1.6mm wire is going to be roughly 2.5 times as heavy as a riveted shirt using 1mm wire.

Note that this is comparing extant examples of historic and modern riveted shirts with common modern butted shirts.

Flexibility

Mail is made of interlinked rings. The thinner the wire used, the flatter it can lie and the more space there is within one ring for its four neighbours to move around inside it. This means that (a) a given number of rings can be stretched to cover a larger area, but also (b) the rings can compress to a smaller area if necessary.

The combination of these two factors means that you have more flexiility in places like armpits: relatively thick wire results in a tendency to have awkward lumps under your arms, for example, as you need more rings there to allow full extension which takes up more space when compressed. Aluminium shirts are the worst for this: I find they take a lot of careful tailoring to compensate for having 2mm thick rings, and even so they're a bit uncomfortable at times.

An incidental effect is that you need fewer thin rings to cover a given area, which lightens riveted shirts even more.

Protection

Mail by itself is not much of a protection, though I understand that some people like to have curtains of heavy inflexible mail to protect against blunt attacks (such as the SCA: a fauld of solid mail slows down between-leg blows from light rattan sticks enough to make groin hits less unbearable).

Where it comes into its own is as a covering for padded armour - a gambeson, subarmalis, or whatever. When stretched reasonably tightly over thick padding, the mail stops a sharp edge or point cutting into the padding but deforms enough into the backing to let the padding absorb the force of the blow. It has to stretch to do this, and stretching is the enemy of butted mail. You may find that butted mail would stop the first blow reasonably well, but this is not very helpful if you now have an area of unlinked rings. After a few blows, the mail may well not be in good enough shape to stop the next one cutting through the padding and on into the wearer. Mail has to protect for a whole battle, not just one or two hits.

This is an area that hasn't been tested enough yet, though I understand that the Armour Research Society is planning to look at it fairly soon. The problem is that no-one really wants to spend £5,000 a time on accurate reproduction shirts and weapons in order to try to destroy them. What is clear at the moment is that riveted mail over padding can withstand a lot of beating, but butted mail is much more fragile. Basically, it's a robustness issue.

The thicker wire has no direct effect: current thinking is that mail is pretty much proof against most weapons it had to face. Lances can cause a problem if they get a good hit, and heavy impact weapons can cause blunt trauma, but basically you don't kill a man in mail by cutting through the metal: you do it by bludgeoning him until he's too tired, sore or distracted to stop you stabbing him in an unarmoured area.


Hope all this helps.

Cheers,

Pell.R.

[Simetrical]

The important part of that, to me, was the assertion that mail generally wasn't broken by weapons of the time. If that's true, it would explain things fairly nicely.

Incidentally, and ever more totally off-topic than this discussion, how do chainmail makers nowadays rivet their mail? Would it be practical for me to rivet my mail at some point in the distant future?

-Simetrical

[Pellinor]

Riveting mail nowdays is done pretty much the same as it always has been, though there are some variations.

Basically:

- coil your wire
- cut into rings, optionally leaving an overlap (ie each ring is one and a bit turns)
- if you didn't leave an overlap, squidge the ring so you now have one
- thump the ring so it goes flat: either just on the overlap, or the whole ring. This is one of the tricky bits: you need to get the overlap so it it two flat bits of iron on top of each other, not two wedges. You must also avoid the dreaded bunny ears.
- pierce the overlap: either with a pair of tongs with a spike in, or with a punch and a hammer
- weave the ring into the mail
- put a rivet in the holes
- peen the rivet, either with carefully shaped tongs or with a carefully-used hammer (or both)
- repeat fifty thousand times, or to taste.

To convert butted mail to riveted would require taking every ring out and starting at phase 3 above. This would give you very very solid rings, and a slightly smaller shirt (the rings will shrink when overlapped). It is a huge effort for a poor result: you would be far better off starting from scratch.

It would probably be worth making a butted shirt first, for practice; you may find that it's easier to do some part-time work in the time you would spend making the mail, and then use the money to buy a ready-made shirt. I tend to feel that for about the last quarter of a shirt, but then the pride of finishing makes up for it and suckers me into making another. ~:)

Try www.arador.com for more details.

Cheers,

Pell.R.

[Simetrical]

I'd've thought somebody'd've come up with a doohickey to do 4, 5, 7, and 8 all at once. Geez, it'd probably save time for me to build one for my own personal use.

-Simetrical