Lorica Segmentata and the Dark Age Roman Armies

[HuangCaesar]

Actually all rivited ring mail didn't come till the 14th century. People previously were using simply rivited-solid rings which where much less likely to fracture along the rivit. Roman mail was still heavier than Medeival mail and had less diameter rings meaning that a stab was more likely to get deflected.

And what the hell is modern mail?

And I think everyone here is forgetting Lorica Squamata and how it is way cheaper than mail.

[JaM]

no, rivets were well known to Romans. their mail was half solid rings and half riveted rings.

Modern Mail in that book is referred to mail made from "modern" steel, not an authentic steel. Authentic steel would be actually even more resistant. For example Romans made rings from wire, which was pulled through a hole, which required high quality metal, as low quality would get broken in the process, so wire would be not possible to make.

[HuangCaesar]

no, rivets were well known to Romans. their mail was half solid rings and half riveted rings.

That's what I said....I said ALL rivited ring mail didn't come till 14th century.

[JaM]

oh, sorry, i see what you wanted to say, and you are right of course.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

I'd rep you again JaM but I can't. Awesome posts.

[wulfgar610]

Actually all rivited ring mail didn't come till the 14th century. People previously were using simply rivited-solid rings which where much less likely to fracture along the rivit. Roman mail was still heavier than Medeival mail and had less diameter rings meaning that a stab was more likely to get deflected.

Roman infantry maile was light, the "wire" about a millimeter thick. Find yourself 1 mm wire and see how thin that is. But that including additional shoulder protection got a weight close to 9 kg. You want heavier rings, then the payment is in increasing weight. !2 kg, 16 kg, all of which was out of question for the legionnaire in standard strategy. Heavy maile is okay for a knight who has a horse to carry him and take the weight, but the legionnaire was a mobile fighter and the weight of armor was restricted.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

The Romans didn't use shoulder doublers in this period.

And having worn 12kg Maile for 8 hours on end, I can assure you weight is not a problem, even for someone who wears maile only about 3-4 times a year. Compare that to someone trained and conditioned to run in it every day.

[HuangCaesar]

The Cuirbouli vs Longbow video on youtube is so misleading. The bowmenn folded the leather in a poor fashion like a piece of paper and properly sewing the leather in 1 piece. The arrow could have easily penetrated and when the leather fold unfolded the arrow moved back. Either way that penetration right there does not look good for armor that thick and bulky. Remember battles took for hours. Just some troops getting pinned or armor disentegating is enough to cause a retreat as proven in Carhae. Its not a simple turkey shoot lasting for minutes.


The bows Longbowbrum used were English Warbows were 92 lb, 102 lbs, 110 lbs with broadheads.

Meanwhile, the SCA member, martial artist, and Viking Historian Thrand fired a 120 lb Compound Bow with modern carbon fiber arrows thinner than any bodkin, at on a Viking era rivitted chain shirt at point blank range and the arrrow bounced clean off.

https://myspace.com/thegn_thrand/vid...full/103709983

Still think Leather is same protection as mail?

[wulfgar610]

now, if you refer to the jack testing, why don't you post full words then?

Because that's precisely what it was. Williams was only interested in testing the last word in medieval armor prior to the adoption of the plate that his book was really about.

Period maile back by and inch thickness of layered linen. This would be incredibly heavy in weight terms, somewhere in the region of 15 kg. Add to that heavy maile and you've doubled the weight to around 30 kg......just for a hauberk! No wonder the medievals gave this combo the bum's rush and looked for something better.

Then you carry on about what were the rules for a 30 kg piece of armor applying to all your favorite armors. It just isn't true, it is intellectual deceit.

The Romans didn't use shoulder doublers in this period.

Roman infantry didn't wear the maile of this period regularly at all, so I guess that part is true. In the period where the Roman infantry did wear maile, they doubled the shoulder protection of what was a light maile.

The distortion of facts is unbelievable. First of Roman mail is heavier and less wide than Medieval mail, just read Dan Howard. Second, 15th century mail was munitions grade and had no solid rings just rivited rings. KnightlyPlate armor and Munitions plate replaced mail at this time so there was no point of having high quality mail armor and with the rise of metallurgy it was more simple just to make rivitted rings rather than alternating solid and rivvited rings.

Exactly where in the text does it said 80 joule halberd defeated the mail and the Linen stopped it? And in no way is any armor going to survive a halberd cut without getting severe blunt trauma.

http://translate.google.com.au/trans...clusioni&hl=en

Blade of 4 cm.
With an impact of 180 J blade 4 cm defeated the wire mesh of the fifteenth century, two broken rings, two open five folded and completely penetrated the padding. In particular, the layers of linen were entered in the following sequence: 100 J (fifth layer), 120 J (ninth), 140 J (sixteenth), 160 J (ventitreesismo), 180 J (passed the twenty-sixth). The iron mesh itself has offered a resistance of 80 J and the padding other approximately 100 J. Adding a little 'power to hurt the target below, we can infer that serve more than 200 J to hurt a man covered by a hauberk of chain mail.
This with a blade of 4 cm, which can simulate the crescent blades of certain halberds, but if we consider that the real impact of a sword may end up affecting 10 or more inches it can be inferred that break through chain mail using the sword it's out of the question.
To penetrate a sheet of Swedish iron of 1.9 mm (170 KJ / m 2, W = 0.55 or 0.6 perhaps due to the high percentage of slag) the blade took more than 190 J.
Other tests: the buff coat (leather, 5 mm thick) was cut with 70 J; the horn (thickness unknown) was broken with 120 J; leather hardened in oil (5 mm thick) was cut with 90 J; the 'typical padding that is worn under the armor plates (16 layers of linen) was cut with J 80.

And as for the arrow test....only 30 joules went right through the buff leather.(your beloved rawhide)

No, Williams didn't say that. What he said was 30 joules penetrated the buff leather, meaning it stopped 30 joules of arrow, meaning at that point no practical effect on the wearer. The keratin took 50 joules but is both denser and heavier than hide.

Going by his figures, the mail would be penetrated at 34 joules. Curi bouilli at about 38 joules.

1 mm plate took 55 joules revealing it to be superior to all the other armors. So the Lorica segmenta protected against arrows and would require the medieval longbow to defeat it.

The fact remains, maile, hide, linen are all much of a muchness.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

I don't think you know much about physics when you say that 55 joules could punch through 1mm steel plate...

F=M*A (Newtons=Kilograms*m/s^2)

W=F*D (Joules=Newtons*Meters)

[wulfgar610]

I don't think you know much about physics when you say that 55 joules could punch through 1mm steel plate...

F=M*A (Newtons=Kilograms*m/s^2)

W=F*D (Joules=Newtons*Meters)

I don't think you know much about anything making a statement like that!

But not me!

http://translate.google.com.au/trans...clusioni&hl=en

between 100 and 200 J, 250 J perhaps even with darts from 5 ounces (140 grams). The arrow simulated began to penetrate a sheet of soft steel of 1 mm with 30 J, and a 1.5-mm 80-J. But if you want to get even 40 mm of penetration, or a "wound decent" as to be able to say that the armor was defeated, the energy increases, respectively, to 55 J and 110 J. Specifically, the necessary energy with increasing thickness does not increase in proportion to the thickness, but with a power of 1.6.
In other words: to double the thickness triples energy.

Note it says an arrow will "begin" to penetrate 1mm steel at a mere 30 joules, but I assume this means a pin hole has made it through the steel and 55 Joules is required for full penetration and damage to the occupant.

Also this is under the most ideal conditions with the plate being hit flat. Another element is how well Williams simulated an arrow, since he used a perpetrator in a drop test. A real arrow can lose energy from flexure in its shaft. Which is why its important to have fire hardened arrow shafts, even they might more easily shatter, it will aid armor penetration.

See you guys rave on about buff "leather" being really weak suffering arrow penetration at 30 joules then all these armors must be "weak" because they don't do much better. You keep on quoiting performance for the "jack" which is an exceptionally thick and heavy piece of armor. That is maile and an inch thickness of layered linen. It was the very thickness that gave it such high protection but at the cost of a terrible amount of weight. The ancient rule of thumb is it took two layers of maile to stop close range good bow fire. However at range when the arrow has lost a lot of energy it can be deflected by the meanest armor.

[JaM]

these are pages from his book, so stop publishing some tripple translated nonsense:

[wulfgar610]

these are pages from his book, so stop publishing some tripple translated nonsense:

And even it is clear. A load of not so bright people see the word "maile" there and being unable to read failed to notice that the high end figures are for maile and the equivalent of an inch thick quilted jack. Why?, because that was the last word in knightly armor before plate consigned maile to the dustbin of history. This was the significance of this small portion of William's work.

As was pointed out in the clarification email. The maile was cut at 80 joules, and the rest was the quilted jack with some allowance for damaging the occupant.

So that's your maile, it turns out to be very average armor.

[JaM]

Mail was never in a dustbin of history... it was still used even in renaissance period, and it was actually more costly and more prized than plate armor.. and if it was so under-performing, how do you want to explain that there are historical documents showing people paying huge sum of money, while waiting for several weeks to have a mail shirts manufactured when they could have much cheaper plate breastplate in single day?

At Iserlohn in the 15th century, a mail haubergeon cost 4.6 gulden while plate armour only cost 4.3 gulden. Kassa's archives (Hungary 1633) record a mail shirt costing six times that of a "double breastplate." These records also indicate the huge difference in labour involved. The mail required 2 months to be completed while the breastplate, only 2 days.

Williams, The Knight and the Blast Furnace. p910


article about mail from Dan Howard:

http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html#mark112

[wulfgar610]

Yep, the European renaissance and early modern times consigned maile to the dustbin of history. What we see then is plate and buff leather as dominant forms of armor in period we do have very good information on! Obviously they had great respect for buff leather as the cheap armor. We still see maile being used in the ME and India until they came to blows with the new western strategies.

The Romans had been rather progressive and ahead of their time in some ways with the Lorica Segmenta, but it disappeared as the Greeco-Roman world began to suffer economic decline.

[Robin de Bodemloze]

Posts deleted. I'm going to close this thread - if anybody is still interested in discussing this without throwing mud feel free to PM me.