Roman Recycling: Celtic Battle Gear in the Roman Army

I wrote this for a class and so I thought it might be useful in understanding Celtic and Roman armor better:

The Roman army was the world’s first professional army. It was also one of the world’s most successful armies in history. Their success can be attributed to many things, however one of the biggest contributors was their adaption and adoption of military gear from other cultures. None of the cultures that the Romans interacted with did more for their military prowess than the ancient Celts. The adaption of the well-crafted and innovative Celtic battle gear combined with the brilliant simplicity of Roman fighting style made the Roman soldier into an excellent fighting man capable of performing very well in various situations.

To understand just how much of a difference the Celtic gear made, it is necessary to look first at the gear that an early Roman would have carried in battle.  The information about the earliest Roman soldiers comes from warrior burials on the Esquiline Hill (Sekunda, 8). Three Roman breast plates from early Rome (8^th century?) have been found. They are rectangular with sides that curve inward and only protect the front. These breast plates are called pectorals. Two helmets have been found. Both are ‘calotte’ style. Calotte helmets resemble bowler hats, much like the ‘Tommy’ helmets worn by the British during World War I. An ornamental shield has also been found. It is round and may have been made by Etruscans (Sekunda, 8). A long and a short sword have also been found, both made of bronze, and many spear heads have been found as well. In later times, the Romans adopted hoplite styles of fighting from the Etruscans. Diodorus Siculus mentions that the Etruscans teaching the Romans how to fight in a phalanx was what would eventually spell their doom (Sekunda, 13). During the 5^th and 4^th centuries, the Roman army looked very much like a Greek one. (See image on the next page) Greek-style muscle cuirasses would be worn by those who could afford them, as well as the Linothorax (Greek linen cuirass). The Calotte helmets evolved and were replaced sometimes by helmets that more closely resembled Corinthian helmets. Calotte helmets without cheek guards were also used by the Celts in the early 300’s BC (James, 77). Later on in the 300’s cheek guards were added to Celtic helmets, first ones that were very simple, but eventually they evolved into one of the most common Roman helmets in the early republic, the Montefortino helmet. The Montefortino

helmet replaced the Italo-Attic helmet and was adopted along with manipular tactics. The date for this is uncertain (Sekunda, 25)

This early Roman gear was not very affective. The breast plate gave only the minimum amount of protection of the vital organs and the shield did basically the same thing. The spears, although they kept the enemy generally at a safe distance, particularly after the Romans adopted hoplite tactics, however it did not allow for the maximum damage on the enemy. It was a stabbing weapon only, and also only a small portion of it could actually stab. Also, because the early helmets did not have cheek guards many times, they did not give the wearer the same protection as those of Celtic origins such as the Coolus and Montefortino type helmets. 

The Pyrrhic War saw a much wider usage of the Montefortino helmet (Sekunda, 33). The Montefortino helmet resembled earlier Celtic helmets in that it had a conical shape and decent neck protection from downward attacks, but what made the Montefortino helmet different was the cheek guards. Other Celtic helmets from the 300’s BC had cheek guards, however what made the possible Celtic prototype different was that the cheek guards covered more of the face. The other helmets had cheek guards that were made in the three-disc pattern that can be seen on some early Roman pectorals, however the Montefortino cheek guards go down the entire length of the face and are wider at the bottom (James, 77). The Coolus helmet, a later variation on the Montefortino helmet, was not as conical and it also had a bigger neck guard. In the beginning of Augustus’ reign, perhaps even during Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, Roman armorers began to adapt two Celtic helmet types, Port and Agen-types, to be used by Roman legionaries (Cowan, 42). The Port helmet had wide cheek guards and a lower neck guard. It did not, however, have ear holes. It resembled the Coolus helmet much more closely than the Agen helmet did. The Agen helmet (right) was somewhat conical and had a downward bent brim. It had smaller cheek guards, although it did allow for better hearing. Neither the Agen nor Port helmet types had very long neck guards. When the Roman armorers combined these helmets (and made a few changes, as well), they created the Imperial Gallic type helmet. The Imperial Gallic helmet combined the ridges to deflect downward blows at the nape of the neck, the excellent visibility, and the wider cheek guards of the Port helmet with the downward bent neck guard, and the better defense from above of the Agen helmet. It made the neck guard longer, added ear holes with rims to protect the ears from downward blows, and also added decoration. Before now, Roman helmets were just the bare essentials. Now, they added in a very Celtic metal working practice, decoration. The Imperial Gallic helmet was, overall, very high quality. It also was lined with wool to both keep the wearer warm in colder weather and also, if the fit were right, to provide some suspension to absorb blows to the head (Cowan, 42).      

The Roman army also started to use mail around the time of the Pyrrhic War. Mail was invented by the Celts shortly after 300 BC (James, 77). Only the wealthiest of Celtic warriors could afford it, however, because it was very difficult to make. This new armor, known as Lorica Hamata to the Romans, was soon adopted by them. Romans with a property qualification of 10,000 drachmas or more would wear Lorica Hamata in battle (Polybius, 6.23). The rest of the army still wore pectorals. Later on, under the first tribunate of Gaius Graccus (123 BC), legislation was passed issuing arms and armor to all Roman soldiers at government expense. The armor issued was most likely Lorica Hamata (Sekunda, Republican Roman Army, 7). Lorica Hamata came as a long tunic, extending almost to the bottom of the under tunic, and had short sleeves. A leather jerkin would sometimes be worn underneath earlier on, but later the mail would be mounted on top of leather. The original Celtic design had mail around the torso with a small bit of mail resembling a very short cape draped over the

Original Celtic design of Lorica Hamata

shoulders and fastened with a brooch in the front (James, 84). The Roman type originally had this same style (Sekunda, Republican Roman Army, 25), however as time went on the style slowly changed until the Lorica Hamata resembled the Greek Linothorax. The short cape-like shoulder coverings became much more straight-edged and geometric, and were now essentially armored straps to hold up the torso coat.   

The long, oval shaped Roman shield which was also adopted from the Celts would be held by a horizontal grip which attached cross-wise over a hole in the center of the shield. A boss plate covered the hand, which allowed it to double as a punching weapon. When the soldier would be moving, he would carry the shield like a suitcase. There was only one grip, not two like in the Greek Hoplon. For a Celt, who would have wanted to use both his sword and his shield as a weapon, an arm grip as well as hand grip would have been better because control of the shield could be lost very easily if he were only holding his shield by one hand. For a Roman, however, this sort of grip worked much better. One hand would hold the shield in place and the other would stab.  Very little movement was required, and as a result the soldiers would tire slower.        

The Gladius Hispaniensis (Spanish sword) came around this time as well. Poseidonius, who is quoted by Diodorus, talks about how the Celtiberians buried the metal that they would use for swords so that the rust would eat away all the weak metal and leave only the strongest to make the sword out of (Diodorus, 5.33). This sword was both a stabbing and double-sided slashing weapon which made it very useful. Also, because the metal used was much more refined, it could hold a much better edge. The Spanish sword proved to be quite devastating in the hands of the Romans. The Macedonians were terrified when they saw the damage the swords had done to their dead according to Livy (Sekunda, 10). Early versions show the Celtiberian influence particularly on the hilt. Some show a pommel that resembles the Celtic pommel and cross guard which was anthropomorphic to give the bearer special powers. It was not until the later swords that the Roman style of sword that most associate with the Romans came into existence.

One of the most significant pieces of military gear that the Romans adopted from the Celts was horse furniture. Romans did not have good horses native to Italy. The only horses that were native were very small for the big, well fed Romans. As a result, most of their soldiers were infantrymen. The Celts were very good horsemen and they developed excellent technology to help their cavalrymen be even better. They invented a four-pommeled saddle which provided as much stability as stirrups (James, 79), as well as other innovations. The Celts not only supplied the technology, but also supplied the best cavalry units during the late republic and the early empire (James, 79).

Celtic gear worked, in many ways, much better for the Romans than it did for the Celts. The Roman fighting style required close formations which spent much of the battle essentially defending. The only strictly offensive action may have been at the beginning when the soldiers threw their Pila. The rest of the battle the Romans were down behind their shields stabbing upward at their adversaries. Their armor, as a result, would need good shoulder protection, as well as good protection for the top of their head and their neck, and also their shield would have to be big enough to protect the rest of their body. The Lorica Hamata gave the Roman soldiers the shoulder protection they needed, and the Imperial Gallic helmet gave them the back of the neck protection. The long, oval shaped Roman gave them the body protection they needed, as well as blocked swinging sword blows and also doubled as a weapon.

In seeing how many things the Romans adopted from the Celts, one is often inclined to ask why the conquerors were not the conquered. There are several answers to this question. First and foremost, not every Celt had all of the best gear. Few had swords, fewer still had Lorica Hamata. The Celts were also big attention seekers. According to Simon James, the Celts were “almost as much in competition with each other for glory as in conflict with the foe” (James, 83). The Celtic army seriously lacked discipline as a result. Also, Celtic leadership lacked the strategic ability and understanding of logistics often times to employ the excellent gear they did have. Finally, most Celts lacked the tenacity to stick with most battles. The main strategy used by the Celts was to charge the enemy and scare them into retreating with the noise as much as with their ferocity. The Romans quickly learned how to defeat this attack, and as a result taking down the Celts proved much easier because the charge was often times the only play in their playbook (James, 83). The Romans proved much more technically and tactically proficient with Celtic gear, and also their leadership was more educated in their field, and also not as willing to throw men’s lives away if they could avoid it, and as a result the generals’ men would be much more willing to fight for them, whereas the Celtic leadership often times only cared about looking good and would sacrifice as many lives necessary in order to do so. We see a similar attitude with Hannibal at Cannae. He used his Celts as cannon fodder in order to defeat the Romans. It worked, but all his Celts either died or deserted. Overall, the Roman army had much more discipline and tenacity than the Celtic army.

The ancient Romans had one of the most successful armies in history. This success was due in many ways to the ancient Celts’ battle gear. The early Roman army, while tenacious, lacked good military gear to win all the time. They adapted hoplite tactics used by the Etruscans into the more flexible manipular style of fighting, however this style alone was not enough, either. Only when combined with the protective, strong, and well-crafted Celtic armor and weapons did the Roman army start to live up to its potential. Armor and weapons without tactical ability was not enough for the Celts, and the Romans knew this and changed accordingly. It is this adaptability that made the Roman army great.

Works Cited

Cowan, Ross, and Angus McBride. Roman Legionary: 58 BC - AD 69. Oxford: Osprey, 2003. Print.

Diodore, De Sicile, and Charles Henry. Oldfather. Diodorus of Sicily: In Twelve Volumes : [Library of History]. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard UP, 1977. Print.

James, Simon. The World of the Celts. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993. Print.

McBride, Angus, and Nicholas Sekunda. Republican Roman Army: 200 - 104 BC. London: Osprey,

2006. Print.

Sekunda, Nick, and Simon Northwood. Early Roman Armies. London: Osprey Pub., 1995. Print.

Walbank, F. W. Polybius. Berkeley: University of California, 1972. Print.

A Critique of the Film 300

What is wrong with this picture: A scene from the
 film depicting Leonidas fighting the first wave of Persian infantry. 

There are many things historically that are wrong with the film 300. Because the focus of this blog is to critique the dress of the soldiers, I shall only briefly touch on the other historical innaccuracies. To begin, the Athenians, not the Spartans began the Persian Wars and fought a battle which they won about ten years prior to Thermopylae, which is known as the Battle of Marathon. The movie portrays the Spartans as these American Revolutionary-types who constantly talk about freedom, however the Spartans kept an entire tribe known as the Helots as slaves. Every Spartan boy, before he could be considered a man had to kill a Helot without being caught, and only after this could he be a man. The film replaces the Helot with a wolf, perhaps as an allusion to the old Mycenaean tradition of killing an animal bigger than oneself as we see indicated in the scar which Odysseus bears which comes from a boar which he had to kill as a youth. The Spartans talk about “Greeks” frequently, and that notion was completely unheard of in Greece. In fact, some of the Polises sided with the Persians because the Greeks were so divided. Themistocles, an Athenian, was the first one to talk about the Greeks as a whole working together. Finally, the oracle was at Delphi, and it was not some giant rock face which Spartan kings had to climb. Dephi was a nice city with places to relax and  wait for a few days, if not weeks, while the message from Apollo came through. These just scratch the surface of the errors which the movie holds, however I shall now continue on to the main critique, that of the dress of the soldiers starting first with the Spartans and then moving on to the Persians.

We see the Spartan wearing the bell cuirass and the Corinthian helmet. 

A painting from Greek pottery depicting the events. Note the
Persian sword and bow. 

The “Spartan Crimson” which is referenced in the film is accurate. Xenophon talks of Lychurgus, the founder of Sparta as we know it, prescribing this to be worn (Constitution of the Lacedemonians, 11.3). That said, Spartans did not go into battle wearing leather loin cloths, capes, and computer-enhanced abs. They  would have worn a red tunic called a Chiton, which would have been made out of heavy wool in the archaic period when these events took place (Sekunda, 20). While the tunics would have been similar, they would not have been exactly the same, as we see in the film. Mass production had not yet been invented, so as a result not everyone would have worn exactly the same thing. Along with the Chiton, they would have worn a cloak. The Himation cloak was the favored style of cloak at the time of Thermopylae. It was rectangular and was worn wrapped around the body. The film shows the Spartans wearing a cloak which more closely resembles the Clamys style of cloak which was not as widely used until the Classical period (Sekunda, 21). The cloaks would have been thin for the warriors at thermopylae because as adults, they would have worn thin cloaks to show their toughness (Sekunda, 22). The Spartans went barefoot in the summer and wore boots in the winter time. The film portrays the Spartans wearing sandals. This is innacurate because the battle took place in August. Xenophon tells us that men beyond their youth would be allowed to wear their hair long to make themselves look taller and more menacing (Constitution of the Lacedemonians, 11.3). It is likely that those who fought at Thermopylae would have worn long hair, including Leonidas himself, who resembles Pericles more than a Spartan. The Spartans preferred their hair long to show that they were freemen and not slaves (Sekunda, 24). Spartans wore beards like most Greeks, however they shaved their upper lips, one thing which the movie does not show at all. None of the warriors with beards who go with Leonidas (nevermind Leonidas himself) have shaved their upper lips. For weapons, the Spartan would have carried the basic weapons of a hoplite: a spear and a shield. The shape of the Spartan spears in the film is wrong. The spears have a very triangular shape with a spine in the middle. The Spartan spear would actually have been made of iron and leaf-shaped. It also would have had a bronze butt-spike to keep the rot out of it. The shield was the most important part of the hoplite panoply (The word for shield, ‘hoplon’, is where the word ‘hoplite’comes from). According to Plutarch, Spartan mothers would tell their sons “ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς” which means “Return with your shield or on it” (literally ‘with it, or on it’), as opposed to Leonidas’ wife telling him that before he goes off to battle. The hoplon was made by gluing pieces of wood together and then covering the wood with a sheet of bronze. It was held in place by two grips, both of bronze. One went around the forearm and the other was held by hand. The film shows the shields having a lambda on the shield in bronze, however the lambda was painted on the shield, most likely in red (Sekunda, 28). The Spartans did in fact wear a cuirass (breastplate). They did not go into battle with only their abs to protect their torso.  The cuirass they wore is known as a bell cuirass. It gets this name from the bell-shape which it bears. It had some imitation musculature, but not as much as was seen on the muscle cuirass. Spartan helmets did also were different than those in the film. The Spartans wore Corinthian helmets, as did most of the Greeks at the time. The film shows the Corinthian helmets worn by the Spartans to be very angular and sharp, however they were not like that. The Corinthian helmet had had oval-shaped eye-holes and a more round nose guard than those depicted in the movie. They were made of bronze and would have had a crest on it (Sekunda, 36 E). The Spartan swords were short so as to make them more accessible in the phalanx. They were not curved like the swords depicted in the movie which are from later times; rather they were straight and almost resembled modern military knives (Sekunda, 31).

The Persian Standard.

The movie shows the most inaccuracy in regard to the Persians. In terms of general errors, they have many units which probably would not have existed and if they did exist, they would not have brought them to Greece. The bomb throwers seem to be more of a Hellenistic-type unit, as do the elephant riders and the Rhinoceros riders. Overall, the proportions of the creatures and the status of the army is generally overestimated. Historically the Greeks knew that the Persians were limited. The Persians were not able to defeat the Scythians. Out of frustration, the Persians sent a letter to the Scythians telling them to come out and fight and to stop running away all the time (Herodotus, 4). The Persians were a horse culture so it is likely that their primary cavalry would have been horses. For dress critique, I shall begin with the Immortals. The immortals were a division of 10,000 men. They were not called the immortals because of their fighting capabilities as the film suggests, but rather they were called that because they always kept up their unit’s size (Herodotus, 7.83.1). The film makes the Immortals out to be some hard-bitten warrior class who are brutal in everything. We see this especially in the skull standards they carry into battle. The standards of the Persian army were simple. They were a staff with a cross piece and from the cross piece, there would hang a banner which bore the Persian symbol on it. Unlike in the film where the Immortals look like Ninjas with Hannibal Lector masks, the immortals rather would have worn Persian-style dress. They would have carried spears and bows, based upon a relief at Persepolis. The colors of their clothing would be tans and whites, colors which would blend in with the regions in and around what is now Iran and Iraq. They also would have worn purple, a color which was very hard to come by at that time. The Persian king hoarded purple cloth and distributed it to show his great wealth, so it is likely that some soldiers would have gotten this as well. (Sekunda, the Persian Army, 32). The immortals wore robes, as opposed to the black ninja costumes portrayed in the film (particularly strange considering that the Persian Empire only extended as far as western India), however most soldiers wore trousers. Xerxes, and many of the higher-up Persians tend to look less and less accurate. Xerxes, for example, looks Middle Eastern, however he does not look like an ancient Persian. Relief carvings of Xerxes show him having a long, curly beard and wearing long robes. He looks like a Persian king should, unlike in the film. The Persian swords that were carried were of a Bronze Age design. They resemble swords from Mesopotamia rather than the Persian weapons. Persian swords looked much more like Middle Eastern swords of today. The most common weapons, however, were spears and bows. Overall, this movie is very stylized and takes liberties with the story of what actually happened. They change it to make all the characters appear as gods, and stretch things to make it more epic. Personally, I enjoyed the movie as a whole, however only because of its epicness, not because it portrayed Thermopylae well. 
For Further Reading:
Herodotus, and Sélincourt Aubrey De. Herodotus: The Histories;. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1954. Print.
Sekunda, Nick, and Richard Hook. The Spartan Army. Oxford: Osprey Pub., 2004. Print.
Sekunda, Nick. The Persian Army 560-330BC. London: Osprey, 1992. Print.

The Purpose of this Blog

Hello,
My name is Dan and I enjoy  military history. Over the years, I have watched many war movies both modern and "sword and sandal". While watching these movies, I have annoyed many people with my critiques of the historical innaccuracy of primarily the uniforms. On the advice of my father, I have decided to write a blog about this very topic: the critique of the gear and wear of soldiers in movies, primarily ancient. Each week, I will pick a movie and do a critique of it. I hope that this will prove enjoyable.
-Dan