Roman Military Equipment Views

General Goods

Roman military personal equipment was produced in large numbers to established patterns and used in an established way. These standard patterns and uses were called the res militaris or disciplina. Its regular practice during the Roman Republic and Roman Empire led to military excellence and victory. The general word for army became exercitus, exercise. Roman equipment (especially armor) gave them a distinct advantage over their barbarian enemies. [1] This did not imply that every Roman soldier had better equipment than the richer men among his opponents. According to Edward Luttwak, Roman equipment was not of a better quality than that used by the majority of its adversaries.[2]

Vegetius, 4th century author of De Re Militari, describes the equipment he believed had been used by heavy and light infantry earlier in the empire. The names of some weapons have been changed from the Latin to the Greek forms and Greek names have been preferred, for unknown reasons, perhaps because the center of Roman military power had shifted from Rome to Constantinople. Vegetius says in translation[3]:

This page contains links to those figures from M.C. Bishop & J.C.N. Coulston, Roman Military Equipment, ed.2 (Oxford 2006) which were originated by MCB and which he is making available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - Share alike license. Some figures in the book are copyrighted by others (who should be approached about their use) and some are already in the public domain, so have not been included here. To access one of the images, simply click on the appropriate thumbnail below. Both the images and the text of the captions are covered by the same license and MCB of course retains the copyright in both cases.

The first Roman Military Equipment Research Seminar was held in the Department of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology (now, sadly, defunct) at the University of Sheffield (GB) in 1983. It has since grown and the Roman Military Equipment Conference (ROMEC), as it has become known, now visits various international venues, but still retains the same goals as that first seminar: to further the study of Roman military equipment with contributions from professional or amateur, academic or re-enactor, archaeologist or historian. It is open to all, the only limitation being one of numbers.