Quote Originally Posted by mAIOR
Give me your quotes on this one please. From what I understand, Lorica segmentata was in use till early 3rd century. Also, in trajans column most of the soldiers aree represented in lorica segmentata. and being more susceptible to damage than mail is untrue. The overlaping layers would give tremendous resisence to damage and reduced weight. Maybe for blunt trauma it's true as I can see some logic in it but missile... ummm that just doesn't seem right.

Cheers...
Lorica Segmentata was in use from roughly 9AD to 200AD, compare that to mail, circa 350AD-1500AD or the Greek curiass, 1600BC-500AD+. Greaves, 1600BC-1800AD, or so.

By contrast Lorica Segmentata has a life of 250 years at the absolute outside and rather than being improved it is if anything downgraded.

As far as missile weapons, specifically arrows and javalins, the plates are roughly 1mm thick on the chest and even overlapping the arrow hits one plate at one point. LS give a missile weapon a flat surface to hit, with mail the arrow has to break multiple rings in order to pierce the armour, which it quite often manage, in fairness.

To be fair mail is not much better, worse in some cases. Against blunt trauma Segmentata comes out on top but only because the armour absorbs the blow by deforming and that only works once in one place. Added to which there is a real danger of suffocation if the armour is compressed.


I would dissagree with Urnamma on it's effectiveness, it was effective, and light. Though most modern tests use either high quality iron, which is soft, or mild steel, which flexes. The reality is that Roman metalgury was fairly inconsistant, and often poor, particually in the post-Republican period. Despite it's effectiveness it is less comfortable, more cumbersome, more prone to random failure and generally more inconvenient. It also takes three minutes to put on vs 20 seconds for mail.

We're talking about an armour which could litterally break and become useless just before battle. In hot climate it will litterally rot off your body without a leather jerkin between your tunic and armour, it also suffers from heat transfer problems....

The list goes on, and on.

At the end of the day it's like any hi-tech military kit, great in barracks, horrible in the field.