Roman Chainmail

Feb 10

Chainmail (and let’s call it that for the sake of convenience, though ring-armor might be a better term), was a common armor for Roman soldiers from at least the time of Polybius (ca. 200 to ca. 118 BC))— and probably earlier, at least for well-to-do Romans, until the end of the empire in the west more than six hundred years later. The Romans called such an armor lorica hamata from “lorica,” which is armor and “hamata” which means hooked. Other armors were used, of course, the most familiar from films and popular books is the armor made of overlapping iron straps called in “modern Latin” the lorica segmentata, which was apparently in use from about the time of Augustus until some time in the third century. We don’t know what the Romans actually called it. Another common armor was made of overlapping scales fixed to a tunic (the lorica squamata). Fabric and leather armors were certainly used as well. Chainmail, however, might be the most widely and longest used metal armor, though scale armor may, I suppose, have been as common as it is quite protective and doubtless easier to make.

How was Roman chainmail made? What was the pattern of the links? How were the rings closed? How was the material for the rings obtained? How was a lorica hamata “tailored,” if that is quite the right word? Some recent scholarly articles answer these questions.

A section of Roman chainmail found in the Danube near the site of a Roman military base near Svishtov, Bulgaria has recently been restored and discussed by Martijn A Wijnhoven in the Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies. The article, found in the sources below, is well worth reading because it discusses many aspects of Roman chainmail, including the preservation and display of archaeological finds and covers a number of topics discussed here, but in greater detail. As Winjhoven explains, Roman chainmail was made in the familiar four-in-one pattern common throughout western history. That is, each ring is linked with four others. The rings are set in alternate rows made up of rings punched from sheet iron, and rings drawn from wire and riveted closed. It was more common for chainmail in mediaeval times to be made up entirely of riveted rings, so it is interesting to see the Romans used this alternate approach. The advantage of this method is that only half of the rings of the armor needed to be closed with rivets, so the time needed to make it was reduced if, as must have been the case, it was faster to punch out closed rings than to close them with rivets.

The rings that were closed and riveted were made of drawn wire. There had been some question about whether the Romans drew wire, but this has been settled as dies for the drawing of wire have been found, and David Sim wrote an excellent, well-illustrated, article on the use of dies for the production of rings used in chainmail. The article contains, among much other interesting information, photographs of draw-plates from Germany used to make the wire for the production of mail. See the reference below.

Now, what about the shape, the tailoring, if any, of Roman chainmail shirts? During the Middle Ages, gussets and rings of different diameters were used in the manufacture of European hauberks so that they fitted the wearer, at least to some degree. Wijnhoven in his article on restoration of chainmail shows that the Roman mail recovered in Bulgaria was not made in this way. Instead, rings of a uniform size were used to make a simple T-shaped mail shirt. Apparently any fitting to the body was accomplished by a belt around the waist.

References

Sim, David, “Roman Chain-Mail: Experiments to Reproduce the Techniques of Manufacture,” Britannia, Vol. 28 (1997), pp. 359-371, http://www.jstor.org/stable/526776

Wijnhoven, M A, 2015 “Filling in the Gaps: Conservation and Reconstruction of Archaeological Mail Armour.” Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, 13(1): 8, pp. 1–15, http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/jcms.1021226

If you have enjoyed this blog entry, consider reading my novel, Quirinius, Britannia’s Last Roman. It’s described on the homepage of this blog and available from Moonshine Cove at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.