Lorica Segementa?

Originally Posted by CirdanDharix

el cheapo ersatz

That's a hilarious term you created. I guess you're German?

Btw Trajan's column isn't very good for evidence because the soldiers depicted on it are made by hellenic artists who had never seen any real legionnaires, iirc.

indeed, column artwork is awful for evidenciary purposes.

The Greek Artist's perception of the Roman army was probably all screwed up by the movie Gladiator.

Trajan's Column... that would be the one with the Sarmatian cataphracts and their horses in skintight scale armour, right ?

Originally Posted by Watchman

Trajan's Column... that would be the one with the Sarmatian cataphracts and their horses in skintight scale armour, right ?

Yes, but I can understand that one from an artist who has never seen it.

"So, these are men on horses and both the man and the horse wear armour made like the scales of a fish?"

"That's right"

So he goes and draws a man, on a horse, then he adds scale afterwards. And then he takes that to the sculptor.

But LS instead of LH? You wouldn't do it if you hadn't seen it. How would you begin to describe it?

he had seen it--in the ceremonial armor worn by parade units within the capital at Rome. Ascribing it to the class of soldier depicted in the column as "legionary" was a generalization though to make it easier for the viewer to know what he was looking at.

Usually, I would agree with the doubts about pictorial evidence. However, in this case we have a piece of very high profile propaganda, which Trajan himself would have paid close attention to. It seems implausible to expect him to allow the artists to portray the legions under anything but their best light. Also, the Praetorian Guards and legionnaires (though not all) wore segmentata, whereas auxiliaries had to make do with hamata. That in itself is quite compelling evidence.