Lorica Hamata

Origin

The invention of mail is laid at the door of the Celts of central Europe in about the 5th to 4th century BC, and Rome, in touch with the Celts of northern Italy and Gaul, took the same craft into her own army. Polybius in the 2nd century BC, in his Histories, already sets down that there was a man in mail in the Roman line, and the form of the lorica hamata is held to have set firm at the place of the Hannibalic Wars of the late 3rd century BC. The same suit became the core armor of the Roman foot in the late Republic and in Caesar's conquest of Gaul (58-50 BC), and even as the lorica segmentata took its place beside it in the early 1st century AD, the two passed an age together. As the segmentata slowly vanished in the late 3rd century, the hamata took its seat once more, and the same seat ran on into the late Empire and the Byzantine army, and became at last the direct ancestor of the medieval European mail hauberk. So the lorica hamata stands as a rare case of a single armor running across seven centuries of one civilization.

Features

• A weave of 20,000 to 30,000 small iron rings put together as if into cloth
• A structure in which rows of riveted rings and rows of punched solid rings alternate
• A strong seat on the shoulders, doubled over
• About 10 to 15 kilograms in weight, balancing mobility and defense
• A practical piece that could be mended on the spot in camp by replacing a cut ring
• Use running about 700 years, from the 3rd century BC to the 5th century of the Western Empire

Stories

Lorica hamata, as a single piece of armor, reached the Roman foot of nearly every age, from the maniple legion of the Republic to the comitatenses, the field troops, of the late Empire. Within it the man wore a thick cloth tunic, drew the suit of hamata over his head onto the shoulders, and then bound it at the waist with a leather belt, spreading the weight of the armor between shoulder and waist. The same suit held up well against the cutting and slashing edges of the great swords of the Celts and Germans and against the falx of the Gallic and Dacian wars, doing its work in turn. In Caesar's conquest of Gaul (58-50 BC), Trajan's Dacian Wars (106 AD), and on to the crisis of the 3rd century and the barbarian invasions of the late Empire, the same form took the blow at one place. The same armor was worn widely also in the seat of the horseman, and the auxiliary cavalry and the later cataphract both wore the same mail under a light outer layer. In that a single armor touched every seat of one army, the lorica hamata is the thickest single line of Roman military history.

Weakness

The greatest weakness of lorica hamata lay against the thrust and the heavy blow of the bludgeon. The mail, woven as if into cloth, was strong against the cutting edge, but against an awl-like point driven exactly at one place, the rings at that place gathered to one point and opened, and so it was weak against the blow of a haft weapon like the falcata or the Dacian falx, or the strike of a great chain hammer. Furthermore, the mail did not have a single great face that turned the shock to the side, but a weave that gathered the shock at one point, so when the same place was struck again and again, a great bruise or a broken bone was left there, and so a thick cloth garment had always to be worn beneath. The weight reached 10 to 15 kilograms, and the same weight hung wholly on the shoulders, so long marches in the same armor became a great burden on the shoulder and waist of the foot soldier. Above all, a single suit took nearly a month of the work of a single armorer, so the same armor was by no means cheap, and a long time was needed for a whole legion to be set in the same dress.

Cultural Significance

Lorica hamata is a single piece of armor that ran across seven centuries of one civilization, that of Rome, at one seat, and it stands itself as the evidence that a single piece of war gear can walk the longest path of a civilization. On Trajan's Column, set up at Rome to mark Trajan's Dacian Wars (106 AD), the lorica hamata and the lorica segmentata stand together in the same place, and the other seats of the same age, the reliefs of Pompeii, the camp finds of the German frontier, and the suits of rings dug up at the camps of Britain and the Danube, show most clearly that the two armors of the same seat did not displace each other but supplemented each other. Above all, the same mail ran on after Rome fell, in the Byzantine and the Germanic successor kingdoms unchanged, and became the direct ancestor of the medieval European mail, of the cataphract of the 6th-century Byzantium, of the knight of the 8th-century Carolingians, and of the hauberk of the 11th-century Normans. So lorica hamata is a line of a single armor that runs not to the end of one age but on past it into another.

In Popular Culture

Lorica hamata in films, period dramas, and games about Rome has long been hidden behind the lorica segmentata, the period mark, and is slowly winning back its own seat. In the HBO period drama Rome (2005), the same mail is clearly drawn at the seat of the auxiliaries and cavalry, filling the screen alongside the segmentata, and the dark mail that Maximus wears in Gladiator (2000) also stands in the same line. In Ridley Scott's Gladiator II (2024), the BBC period drama Britannia, and the Byzantine seat of Kingdom of Heaven, the same armor often appears. The strategy games Total War: Rome II, Imperator: Rome, and Civilization VI set the auxiliary mail and the elite legion plate apart and show the two lines side by side, and in the action RPG Ryse: Son of Rome and in Assassin's Creed: Origins, in the Roman seats of Cleopatra's Egypt, the same suit of mail appears in many places.

Trivia

• The invention of mail itself is laid at the door of the Celts of central Europe in about the 5th to 4th century BC, and Rome, in touch with the Celts of northern Italy and Gaul, took the same craft into her own army, so the lorica hamata stands as a rare case of a single armor moving from the enemy's hand into one's own and becoming the mark of one's own civilization.
• On Trajan's Column, set up at Rome to mark Trajan's Dacian Wars (106 AD), the lorica hamata and the lorica segmentata stand together in the same place, and it is the clearest single piece of evidence that the two armors passed an age together.
• A single suit of lorica hamata was made of 20,000 to 30,000 small iron rings, and nearly a month of the work of a single armorer was needed to weave one, so to set a whole legion (some 5,000 men) in the same dress took as much time and cost as the whole yearly war budget of a city ruler.