of each scale corresponding in position to the large hole in the Newstead scales. Through these larger holes there passed a double thong which bound the scales together, and at the same time prevented the sharp edges from chafing.
Scale armour is not of frequent occurrence on the grave monuments of the German frontier, but on the tombstones of the Sertorii at Verona—one that of a centurion, the other that of a standard-bearer—both figures are represented wearing a tunic of scale armour which covers the shoulders and comes down below the belt. The Carnuntum monument of Calidius (a work of the middle of the first century) shows also a scaled tunic of a centurion. Again, in the collection of marble portrait-busts from the great Gallo-Roman villa of Chiragan near Toulouse, the Emperors Antoninus Pius and Severus both appear wearing corselets of scale armour.[1]
Lorica Hamata
The third variety of body armour, Lorica Hamata, was also represented at Newstead. Among the finds from the pit in the Principia (No. I) were pieces of chain mail, reduced by rust almost to a solid mass. They were composed of rings of iron wire having a diameter of about a quarter of an inch (Plate XXXVIII., Fig. 10). These rings were of two kinds. In one case the ends of the wire forming the ring had been hammered flat and riveted together, in the other they appear to have been welded. The two kinds are arranged in alternate rows, a system which was employed in the chain mail of the Thorsbjerg moss. When the whole is fastened together, each ring is attached to four others. In one small fragment a single ring of brass was noted; perhaps it was employed decoratively, as was done in later Oriental chain mail. Again, from the floor level at the west end of the Storehouse (Block XVI), two fragments of extremely fine chain mail were picked up (Plate XXXVIII., Fig. 8). They were composed of bronze rings of two different sizes, attached together in alternate rows, the larger rings having a diameter of three-sixteenths of an inch, the smaller a diameter of an eighth of an inch. The wire composing the larger rings appeared to have been flattened out at the ends and riveted together. Here and there affixed to the rings were small scales, also of bronze, three-eighths of an inch long by a quarter of an inch wide, resembling in shape the larger armour scales, but without any perforations and ribbed down the centre.
1 Joulin, Les Établissements gallo-romains de la Plaine de Martres Tolosanes, plate xix. 276 B, plate xxiii. 299 B.
161