The breastplate of an armour from Campania in southern Italy around 300 BCE. Originally it would have been mached with a backplate, bronze belt,greaves, and probaably reinforcements for the straps over the shoulders and under the armpits. Leeds, Royal Armouries, Object number II.197 b
Over on his site Bret Devereaux has a good description of a problem in Roman Military Equipment Studies. In book 6 of his histories, Polybius says that most Roman infantry wear a plate of bronze a span broad called a kardiophylax “heart-protector” on their breast, except for the wealthy who wear coats of mail. No such plate survives from a Roman site after 300 BCE, and no sculpture or painting shows it. As Roman rule expands across Italy, locals stop building tombs with detailed paintings full of arms and armour, and body armour tends to be a rare find. By the fifth century BCE, Samnites and Campanians had replaced simple disc breastplates with more complex arrangements of a breastplate, a backplate, a bronze belt and armoured straps over the shoulders and under the arms. We therefore have to assume that Romans either reverted to a style of armour from several hundred years before, or that Polybius’ description just mentions one-part of a seven-part armour. To my knowledge, no other surviving writer says that Romans wore such a breastplate, and there are no carvings or paintings which show Romans wearing them (Varro’s pectorale was made of strips of leather, De Lingua Latina 5.24). Both interpretations match objects from the ancient Mediterrean, and both match later armour from other cultures such as the “good iron for his body” worn by Robert the Bruce’s militia in 13181 and char-aina “four mirrors” armour in the Persianate world. I am doubtful that most Romans could afford not only a helmet, a sword, and and iron-bound shield but most of a bronze breastplate, but Devereaux is more confident. There are a lot of things to think about here, such as why the Roman Republic, a relatively egalitarian society, did not leave much art which showed ordinary soldiers. However, this week I will write down my thoughts about one technical question which I took the time to work through.
A steel chakra (war quoit) from Tibet. These seem to have entered India with the Indo-Aryans. While the Sikhs had colourful auxiliaries with Iron Age weapons and matchlocks, the forces that mattered used the latest muskets and cannons. Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 2003.467
In 1845 the Sikh Empire and the John Company stumbled into war with one another. The causes were petty and nobody can agree who made the first provocation, but the two powers were rising in northern India and the British had been recently weakened by losing an army in Afghanistan. This is not a story that many people outside India know, unless they are Sikhs themselves. But if you take the time to hear it, it gives you some new questions to ask yourself as you think about ancient battles and adventurers.
A long kopis or machaira in a museum in Rimini. Not all Greek swords or cleavers were short. This one is more than nine times as long as the grip, probably around 84 cm in a straight line from pommel to point. Photo Sean Manning, 2018.
Over on corporate social media, I often see people looking at copies of Illyrian and Iberian swords to understand Greek cleavers. Long war knives spread from Anatolia to Iberia before the Roman empire, but each culture had its own interpretation of these knives. The Iberian swords are very charismatic with decorative fullers and inlays and deep bends, but different from the Greek version of this weapon. Modern copies always differ from the originals, and most of them are based on other modern copies not the artifacts themselves. So this month I will talk about where to find photos and drawings of the original artifacts, then about why these images take a bit of work to find. I hope that will interest different parts of my readership and that I have time for a different topic in March.
An oil lamp from ancient Cyprus, fourth century BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Object 74.51.1992 (dug by Sardinian-American Luigi Palma de Cesnola!)
The next major ancient reenactment in Greece will take place at Gialova, New Pylos, and Sphacteria from 19 to 25 April 2027. This will focus on the Athenian and Spartan struggle to control the area during the Peloponnesian War or Archidamian War. More than a hundred members of groups from all over Europe, the USA, and Canada will attend. This part of the Peloponnese is not good for much except light grazing and summer holidays, so it is an unspoiled rural site. There will be excursions to Olympia, Ancient Pylos, and the Mycenaean Palace of Nestor and perhaps other sites.
Detail of an early reproduction of the Darius Mosaic in Pompeii. This is in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. I doubt I will return to Russia anytime soon!
Twice in The Western Way of War (1989, my copy Oxford University Press 1990) Victor Davis Hanson makes similar statements:
In the fifth and fourth centuries, battle broke out in the Greek world nearly two out of every three years, so the chances were good that a man would have to leave his farm, take up his arms, fight in repeated engagements, and fall wounded or die one summer’s day in battle. (p. 31)
For the citizen of the fifth-century Greek city-state who saw battle of some type on an average of two out of three years, the changes were good that he would not die a natural death: in one of those years of his long service he would likely become one of the dead or wounded (p. 89)
A moment’s thought shows that this is incorrect. Even during the Peloponnesian Wars Athens or Sparta only fought a battle every few years, and not all Athenian hoplites or Spartiates fought in every battle. Plato’s Socrates was proud to have fought in one battle, a siege, and an expedition and he was an adult during intensive warfare (Plato, Apology, 28e, Symposium 219-221).1 What could Hanson have meant by the passages above?
An embossed bronze helmet from Crete around 650-600 BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 1989.281.50
Bret Devereaux recently published a strong post in his series on the hoplite wars. This was an especially strong post because it drew on his research focus. His current book creates financial and demographic models of the Roman Republic, Carthage, and the Hellenistic kingdoms and argues that the Romans were able to get citizens and allies to contribute more military service, arms, and armour than their rivals, while some of their rivals had higher incomes in silver. Victor Davis Hanson and Hans van Wees also created detailed models of early Greek farms and how the men with panoplies (hoplites and horsemen) fit into ancient Greek societies: how many of them were there, how wealthy were they, and where did their incomes come from? Even in Athens the sources are not as good as Polybius and Livy on the Roman Republic, but Hans van Wees was able to believe in them because he came from Homeric studies where the evidence is even worse. van Wees has long suspected that there was no hoplite class, but a leisure class who could easily afford a panoply and a group of small farmers and shopkeepers who could afford it at the cost of suffering. This week I will go over some of the ideas in Devereaux’ post from a slightly different perspective and show where they lead me. This post has consumed two days of writing time and is not as polished as I wish it was.
The Bay Center, Victoria BC, December 2025. The building is misnamed because the Hudson’s Bay Company is bankrupt and seems unlikely to return.
While the cares of the world drew me away from my books, I had some time to read whole books in 2025.
Books vary widely in density and word count (and readers vary in how much attention they pay). I suspect that some people who claim to read very large numbers of books mostly skim them, and some definitely read novels and airport books which are designed for easy reading. Someone who reads a few things intensely is not necessarily reading less than someone with a novel-a-day habit. So I will not make a total, just a subtotal of each category. These posts are to help me remember the books of all sorts which I read in 2025, like Zotero helps me remember the academic articles I found.
I have noticed that in ancient world studies or arms and armour I read more chapters and articles, whereas I am more likely to read a whole book in something further from my areas of expertise.
A relief of captured arms and armour from the early Roman empire. Metropolitan Museum of Art, object number 2021.264.1
Over on his blog Bret Devereaux has followed up a chat in the comments with a post on the mechanics of Roman and Iberian combat. About ten years after historians of ancient Greece started to challenge the “rugby scrum” model, Roman Army Scholars started to think hard about what ancient writers said the Roman army and its Iberian opponents did in combat. These descriptions have significant differences from descriptions in earlier Greek writers like Tyrtaeus, Thucydides, and Xenophon (for example, Roman armies can be driven back hundreds of metres before turning the tide, whereas the first time Thucydides’ hoplites turn their backs (tropein) is so important that the other side erects a monument (trope) to it). The blog post is well worth reading. In lieu of a full response I have some comments below.
While I am limiting myself to one blog post per month, over on Bret Devereaux’ blog his fourth essay on the hoplite debates has comments by me and friends-of-the-blog like Richard Taylor, Paul Bardunias, and Heregrim. If you are jonesing for a bookandsword fix, check it out!
