Roman Armor

[Mouzafphaerre]

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It's all Hollywood's fault.

Apparently you've never seen Arabic movies/series depicting 7th C. AD Eastern Roman military clad in LS and red cloaks.
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[Centurion Crastinus]

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Apparently you've never seen Arabic movies/series depicting 7th C. AD Eastern Roman military clad in LS and red cloaks.
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What did 7th century Byzantine soldiers wear anyway? Spearman with swords and a round shield?

[beatoangelico]

afaik in 7th century most ERE army was a mercenary/foederati one, and the few "true" roman foot troops probably had still chainmail, round shields and some kind of spatha or spear. This until the creation of the themes. But I could be completely wrong

[Watchman]

Spatha, spear and oval shield was the norm AFAIK. Maybe some throwing-spears in the mix too, but I understand that'd have been uncommon. Body armour, when worn (and a fair few infantry in particular didn't), was the usual gamut of scale, mail and lamellar - segmentata pretty much went extinct already in the troubled 4th century or so.

The thematic reorganisation AFAIK didn't particularly change the basic armament setup, just the organisation principles and suchlike.

[worlddomination88]

I hear when you see in movies the romans always weiring red was also false becaus of the expense it took for the dye. Some people somewhere on these forums were talking about that.I thought it was interesting how Hollywood really doesn't seam to put any effort into authenticity

[Watchman]

In all fairness, they are in the business of making fantasy rather than documentaries. But I'll give you one often wishes they'd put a little more effort into the homework.

Then again, in good old days you had Spartacus fighting legionaries in leather segmentata...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Actually, they just wear a Greek Spola, I think. In any case they did do their homework, most of the stuff we have now was found after 1970 and those films were in the 50's-60's, the bits they do get right are pretty exacting, such as the Imperial Italic helmets.

[machinor]

AFAIK Red was one of the cheapest dyes if not THE cheapest, so it was quite common. Also, some dug-out rags of Roman clothing found somewhere in Germany (Mainz or Köln most likely) together with imperial time equipment (weapons, belt, imperial gallic style helmet) suggested that Red was a common color for Roman legionaire clothing.