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Roman Military Equipment

From Start to Finish

Project B&C3

Project B&C3

February 27, 2023 MCB

The book

At the end of February 1993, Batsford Books published the first edition of our Roman Military Equipment from the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome (B&C1). This was effectively an expansion of the ideas we put forward in our short booklet, also called Roman Military Equipment, published by Shire Books in 1989 (B&C0). When Batsford divested themselves of their archaeology list, we published our 2nd edition with Oxbow Books in 2006 (B&C2).

Spine of the notes folder for Roman military equipment edition 3
How the 3rd edition of Roman Military Equipment started

We have been considering producing a 3rd edition of Roman Military Equipment (B&C3) for some time. For us, certain conditions had to be met to justify this, not least sufficient new and interesting finds which affect the story we wish to tell. At the same time, we have decided to expand the compass of the book chronologically, by extending the start and end points. We will also add pointers to the equipment of the principal enemies that Rome faced, particularly where this had a bearing on the development of Rome’s own equipment. We also felt that, just as with the transition from B&C1 to B&C2, B&C3 should have revised illustrations. New items will be substituted at various points where they better support the text.

Whenever a new edition of a book is published it is a legitimate concern that it will be the same as the last, plus corrections, and thus not worth the additional purchase (we have all been caught out by this in the past). Rest assured that, just as B&C2 was massively expanded and updated from B&C1, B&C3 with be covering new chronological ground, new areas of study, new discoveries, and have an even more packed bibliography.

The booklet

Not everybody wants and needs the large book, however. To cover more popular interest in military equipment, we will be producing a short (and cheaper) introductory booklet, equivalent to the 1989 Shire booklet (but in full colour and also with revised illustrations), as well as an accompanying educational wall poster. To avoid confusion with its bigger brother (as happened with the original volume), this will be titled An Introduction to Roman Military Equipment.

The source books

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, we wanted to introduce some completely new elements as part of the project: freely accessible source material to back up (or perhaps even allow the reinterpretation of) our text. To this end we will be simultaneously producing three open access source books (with appropriate Creative Commons licences) of literary, representational, and archaeological evidence. We hope that these will be downloadable for free in digital format but will also be available to be purchased as hardcopies, for those who are fans of pulped dead trees.

The website

To support the study of Roman military equipment even further, there will be a categorised bibliography accessible in standard formats such as BibTeX. This will be just one of several new elements we will add to this website. Further additions will include a comprehensive glossary of military equipment terminology and a gallery of artefacts, replicas, and 3D reconstructions of Roman militaria, as well as a list of museums (with contact details) which contain important collections of military equipment and/or relevant iconographic material. There will also be a Roman military equipment bookshop (both popular and more technical volumes), proceeds from which will help fund the costs of this website. Finally, we will provide links to downloadable ebooks on the subject of equipment and this will include searchable PDF versions of B&C0 and B&C1.

Anything else?

We have other ideas (such as a series of podcasts) that we may well include in the project in due course. The current text, notes, and bibliography update file stands at more than 16K words. A proportion of which is substitution, rather than just addition (B&C2 is about 123K words, including index). We have not signed a contract and do not as yet have a publication date, since work on this project is still in progress. When we have more news, we will make it available here.


B&C0, B&C1, B&C2, B&C3, bibliography, booklet, drawings, gallery, glossary, poster, Shire, source books

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Gallery Samples

Curved rectangular shield umbo with a green patina and with a hemispherical boss in the centre for the hand grip.
Curved, rectangular copper-alloy shield boss with six of eight domed shield nails in situ. Image: P. Gross
Shield boss
Soldiers with oval, coloured shields (red, white, and blue) and similarly coloured leggings.
Crossing the Red Sea fresco from the synagogue at Dura-Europos depicting soldiers with multi-coloured shields lined up before standard-bearers with vexilla. Image: Wikimedia Commons
Fresco
Fragmentary ferrous back plate attached to scales, found in the Millennium excavations at Carlisle. The ferrous components are corroded brownish orange and the copper-alloy examples are mid-green.
Ferrous back plate and scales from lorica squamata from Carlisle (GBR). The mostly ferrous scales are interspersed with copper alloy scales. Image: scrappy annie (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Scale armour
A ferrous cavalry helmet with partially surviving bronze sheathing includes horizontal trilobate protrusions above the brow.
Ferrous cavalry helmet with copper-alloy (probably brass) embossed and incised sheathing (most of it missing over the bowl). The cheek piece may not be original (or may be a clumsy repair). A plume tube survives on the left-hand side just above the ear. Image: National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden (CC0 1.0)
Cavalry helmet
Brass-coloured belt plate with four empty rivet holes, one in each corner.
Copper-alloy belt plate from Chichester, hinged for a buckle or suspension frog. Image: MCB
Belt plate
Silvered phalera junction with three strap loops and a trifid pendant.
Three-way strap junction from harness found at Doorwerth. Three junction loops and a trefoil pendant are hinged to loops on the rear face of the phalera. Brass with silver foil soldered on the front face and with niello inlay depicting stylised vine leaves and grapes. Image: National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden (CC0 1.0)
Phalera junction
To the top is a heavily corroded ferrous Antonine dagger blade and tang with part of the handle adhering, whilst below it is the ferrous frame scabbard for the weapon, also corroded.
Dagger and scabbard of the Antonine form from Stillfried (AT). Part of the handle survives on the blade and tang. Image: Wolfgang Sauber
Dagger and scabbard
A ferrous helmet with broad neck guard, cheek pieces, and brow guard.
Ferrous Weisenau (Imperial-Gallic)-type helmet. Image: MCB
Helmet
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