Question for you darkies

[BigMac]

Did the romans ever wear mail under the segmentata?

TTFN

[Bogue]

that's more for the Ancients than us darkies.

cheers
Bogue

[Victorius]

No. They wore maille (lorica hamata) or lorica segmentata, but not both. They had heavy padding on their upper arms in the form of thick leather or layered linen, called "pteryges" (those dangly bits), and sometimes from the waist to the knee. One source shows padding in a vertical and horizontal quilting instead. Then greaves below the knees.

By the Third Century AD, after the main period done by LEGIO II AVGVSTA, they wore a combination of different things. Sometimes they wore scale, and they starred using lamellar out of iron or bronze. They sometimes had maille going down their arms, but it's not known if this was just arm armour, or part of a larger hauberk-type of thing.

They would not have seen the point of maille under plate armour anyway: the plate could stop everything the maille could, PLUS it could stop direct thrusts and arrows better. It would only be any good with plate to supplement it, rather like the under-arm and waist attachments on the blue arming doublet of that famous picture everyone uses from the Fifteenth Century of the knight being kitted up by his squire.