Can you imagine the time it would take to make just the metal plates of the armour for one guy let alone for thousands of them.
They had to be pounded out so this and uniform all by hand. No mill driven hammers back then
Funny enough, one of the suspected advantages of this is that, though it required a skilled specialist to make, it was relatively quick compared to chainmail - lorica segmentata was designed to be mass-produced, essentially. ~20 big plates vs. 25,000 rings for mail.
It’s harder to repair, though. A few links get busted in mail, you just make a few new ones of roughly the same shape and type and forge them in. A teenage apprentice of the local provincial town can bang out the repair. A bit of the lorica segmentata gets busted, and you need another plate of just the right size and curvature to replace it, and the local blacksmith of the ~100 population provincial town probably isn’t going to be able to handle it.
When the Legions moved away from self-sufficient units (wherein specialist legionary blacksmiths handled a large portion of the work), the lorica segmentata, likewise, fell by the wayside.
Can you imagine the time it would take to make just the metal plates of the armour for one guy let alone for thousands of them. They had to be pounded out so this and uniform all by hand. No mill driven hammers back then
Funny enough, one of the suspected advantages of this is that, though it required a skilled specialist to make, it was relatively quick compared to chainmail - lorica segmentata was designed to be mass-produced, essentially. ~20 big plates vs. 25,000 rings for mail.
It’s harder to repair, though. A few links get busted in mail, you just make a few new ones of roughly the same shape and type and forge them in. A teenage apprentice of the local provincial town can bang out the repair. A bit of the lorica segmentata gets busted, and you need another plate of just the right size and curvature to replace it, and the local blacksmith of the ~100 population provincial town probably isn’t going to be able to handle it.
When the Legions moved away from self-sufficient units (wherein specialist legionary blacksmiths handled a large portion of the work), the lorica segmentata, likewise, fell by the wayside.
Thank you. I miss the historical nerds sharing rid bits. Seriously. I love this shit
I was talking to one guy once (few times a while back) and turns out he was an Oxford phd student and specialized in 3-4 ancient languages.
I live to please! 🙏
I’m always in awe of folk with that level of drive and education. Like being a Little Leaguer meeting someone on a baseball card.