Roman Republican Civil War Legions

[Patrick Waterson]

But I found the interesting thing about the list is nobody was offering body armour

Indeed: they seem to have helped themselves to Roman armour in the early stages of the campaign.  Until then, they may have made do with linen or leather - or just done without.

Your swords is where the true smith skill comes in and so we can assume that is how many decent smiths they have. We know from the work rates that a man could do one a day, so Carthage, a truly major city, had 300 smiths of that level of ability.
Which means that if you took them off swords, in a year they could have produced enough mail for a legion, doing nothing else.

But given this is one of the biggest, richest and most advanced cities in the area at the time I think that shows you how limited production really was

Although we have to remember that in this instance Carthage was cut off from any imports of metal by Roman possession of Spain and the presence of the Roman fleet, so they were having to prioritise with what supplies of metal they had within the city.  Antioch, Alexandria or even Amasia would do at least as well, being open to fresh supplies of metal - and these were just three cities out of several hundred in the running at the time of the civil wars, albeit presumably the best three in the east.  Given Pharnaces' ongoing campaigns at the time, equipping a legion in Pontus would just be business as usual.

And as Nick and Mark point out, a good deal of mail production can be 'subcontracted' to smiths of less than master level, the materials then being assembled into suits.

To put some substance on this latter assertion, does anyone who has Iron For The Eagles by David Sim & Isabel Ridge know how much of the 330 hours is required to join the rings into a mail suit?

[Jim Webster]

given that Greek hoplites were happy to fight with a large shield and no body armour, my guess is that the hastily raised legions made do with a shield and helmet and no armour

I think you're missing the point with Carthage, we're not talking about the amount of iron, we talking about the number of men capable of working it to that standard.
The important thing was to convert the iron into swords etc as quickly as possible, to get the weapons into the hands of the defenders.
The bottle neck wasn't iron, it was skilled iron workers

[Jim Webster]

I would expect mail to be low skill - build the wire, a twist it into rings, assemble the rings to a pattern.
While solid armour seems to require more smithing at a higher level.

remember iron has to be worked into bars and rods of a suitable quality for the wire to be drawn in the first place. Hammering iron into scales or lamellae would be vastly quicker than making mail
You just hammer the iron into strips and cut them rather than hammering into bars and then drawing them and riveting the links etc

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

The bottle neck wasn't iron, it was skilled iron workers

Indeed, and if we give Carthage 300 master smiths, and take this as the norm for a major city/capital, then these same 300, plus 4-5 apprentices each, could turn out some 300 suits a week (330 man-hours/5 men = 66 hours per suit, probably an irreducible minimum given the finer points of assembly*).  Twenty weeks on and your entire legion is armoured, with about a thousand suits to spare (assume the extra time/resources are soaked up making flashy suits for the officers).

*This may be unduly pessimistic: see the forum discussion here.  Of particular interest is this bit:

"A friend of mine made a late dark-age/early medieval mail hauberk (covering tops of arms & only hanging slightly below the waist). It took him a bit over 40 hours of continuous work. He had all the links already made & most of the leather fittings pre-cut. He had made 2-3 hauberks previously so was competent but not a professional at it. The longest bit was assembling the basic mail squares, that were then connected together & attached to the leather fastenings into the finished hauberk form. The padded arming jacket beneath the mail was already made & took 15-20 hours from complete scratch, including a bit of embroidery.

He reckoned that a full length mail coat hanging to the knees with full sleeves & coif would take twice as long. Another 3-4 hours if he made all the leather fittings from scratch. The rings would take at least 3 weeks for just the hauberk, from extruding the wire from bars, twisting it into rings & clipping them (this was one bit he wouldn't do), this did not including mining & smelting iron ore into bars.

Realistically he was looking at 2 weeks to make a hauberk & arming jacket, and a solid 3 weeks for a full mail coat. An extra 3-4 weeks to make all the links, and an extra 3-4 weeks to mine & smelt the iron ore into bars – assuming he could even do this & had access to a working mine. Trapping animals, tanning leather, making non-metal components etc would add another week."

It looks as if the 'critical path' component, i.e. the assembly of the metal links, would be in the 40-hour-plus bracket.  Note how the rings are the major time/effort component, so if apprentices can do these it leaves the master smith to concentrate on assembly, say one mail suit per week.  300 such smiths would thus be able to turn out 300 mail suits per week, as previously suggested.  A legion needs about 5,000 mail suits to armour everyone, so 17 weeks would see the basic job done.

[Jim Webster]

I'm afraid I don't think the example is particularly useful "The rings would take at least 3 weeks for just the hauberk, from extruding the wire from bars, twisting it into rings & clipping them (this was one bit he wouldn't do),"

So he's just guessing whereas at least the 330 hours figure is based from doing the job

the other problem with your 300 smiths and their imagined four of five apprentices each (sorry but how the hell are they supporting this number of imaginary apprentices in peace time?) is that even if that number of apprentices exist, they're the ones making the spear and dart heads, and producing the metal bits for the shields
And suddenly you've promoted them to being fully qualified metal workers capable of drawing wire, which wasn't a particularly common process and many smiths would spend years without doing it.

And of course, in this period you've ended up with a force of men who might have armour, but alas have neither sword nor spear to actually attack the enemy with

[Erpingham]

A couple of things occur to me are needed to get the overall picture.  Firstly, how was armour normally procured?  Was it collected in batches from all sorts of cities made by jobbing smiths or was there an armour industry with recognised centres, with armourers and big workshops as per medieval practice?

Secondly, who held stocks of armour and how much?  Were there arms dealers who could turn you up 1000 panoplies in a few weeks, for example?  Or city armouries or temple collections which could find a few thousand sets of kit in an emergency?
 

[Nick Harbud]

Regarding the time to make rings versus the rest of manufacture, it does depend a lot upon the type of rings one is making.  The simplest rings simply curled the wire around until the two ends met. 



More sophisticated and better quality mail rivetted the ends together as shown here.



Regarding who could do what, the blacksmith would need to forge the iron billet and draw the wire.  Cuting the wire to length and cold working it into rings can be done by the lowliest apprentice - even I can do this.  Flattening the ends of rings and rivetting would need a team, but would not require reheating the rings and could be done by apprentices.  Note also that half the rings could be completed before being assembled into sheets of mail.

Incidentally, it is somewhat impressive that the legionary gladius has been engineered for rapid production, but is still such a useful weapon.

[Patrick Waterson]

the other problem with your 300 smiths and their imagined four of five apprentices each (sorry but how the hell are they supporting this number of imaginary apprentices in peace time?)

What peace time??  Warfare, foreign or civil, was endemic in the 1st century BC.

A couple of things occur to me are needed to get the overall picture.  Firstly, how was armour normally procured?  Was it collected in batches from all sorts of cities made by jobbing smiths or was there an armour industry with recognised centres, with armourers and big workshops as per medieval practice?

We do not, as far as I know, have details for this period, but the later Roman Empire had fabricae complexes, dedicated workshop centres which produced and stored certain types of weapons and armour, or in a few cases all of them.  It is unlikely that Hellenistic kingdoms (whose resources the Romans would have inherited when they muscled into the East Med) would be less well organised and coordinated.

Secondly, who held stocks of armour and how much?  Were there arms dealers who could turn you up 1000 panoplies in a few weeks, for example?  Or city armouries or temple collections which could find a few thousand sets of kit in an emergency?

I expect this would mostly be a matter for the royal armouries, generally situated at the capital but also at centres of provincial government.  Hellenistic powers usually worked on a soldier/settler (katiokoi/kleruchoi) arrangement which provided soldiers for life, but seem also to have maintained armour-producing facilities.  Alexander famously ordered - and received - new suits of armour for his whole army prior to his invasion of India.
 
Of all the civilised powers which fought for or against Rome around the Mediterranean, the only one for which a serious shortage of armour is explicitly noted is the Judaean rebels during the AD 66-70 Jewish Revolt.  A combination of mass recruitment and restricted access to the extant armouries left them distinctly short of armour.

[Jim Webster]

the other problem with your 300 smiths and their imagined four of five apprentices each (sorry but how the hell are they supporting this number of imaginary apprentices in peace time?)

What peace time??  Warfare, foreign or civil, was endemic in the 1st century BC.

So endemic that areas of the world that had no tradition of making mail had time to develop the techniques for non-paying customers?

[Jim Webster]

We do not, as far as I know, have details for this period, but the later Roman Empire had fabricae complexes, dedicated workshop centres which produced and stored certain types of weapons and armour, or in a few cases all of them.  It is unlikely that Hellenistic kingdoms (whose resources the Romans would have inherited when they muscled into the East Med) would be less well organised and coordinated.

But there is no actual evidence of this, and given that the Hellenistic empires tended to use a lot of troops armed and equipped in 'ethnic' styles I'd say unlikely.
Because so many of them also based their armies on a core of soldier settlers who were supposed to provide their own equipment, the central state wouldn't have needed to go down the fabricae route
Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

Warfare, foreign or civil, was endemic in the 1st century BC.

So endemic that areas of the world that had no tradition of making mail had time to develop the techniques for non-paying customers?

This begs a very important question: imitation legions had been the rage for about a century by the time of Pharsalus and Philippi, so the tradition of making mail would be well established throughout the East Med (perhaps also a certain amount of the West Med, which Rome controlled in any case).  The famous Sidonian soldier may or may not demonstrate that Egypt had adopted imitation legions, but he does demonstrate the wearing of chainmail.

... given that the Hellenistic empires tended to use a lot of troops armed and equipped in 'ethnic' styles I'd say unlikely.
Because so many of them also based their armies on a core of soldier settlers who were supposed to provide their own equipment, the central state wouldn't have needed to go down the fabricae route

Until they started equipping imitation legions.  The Seleucids also had regular pretenders and ongoing civil wars, and hence a high turnover of men and equipment, at least until Pompey turned up and extinguished the Seleucids, but what with the Parthians there was still plenty of warfare around (Crassus equipping seven new legions, for a start).  It is perhaps no coincidence that Lentulus went to Syria to embody and equip the legions he brought to Pharsalus.

The crux of the matter seems to be that Dark Ages-style limitations just do not apply to the classical era.

[Jim Webster]

Warfare, foreign or civil, was endemic in the 1st century BC.

So endemic that areas of the world that had no tradition of making mail had time to develop the techniques for non-paying customers?

This begs a very important question: imitation legions had been the rage for about a century by the time of Pharsalus and Philippi, so the tradition of making mail would be well established throughout the East Med (perhaps also a certain amount of the West Med, which Rome controlled in any case).  The famous Sidonian soldier may or may not demonstrate that Egypt had adopted imitation legions, but he does demonstrate the wearing of chainmail.

It begs an even more important question, how many imitation legionaries wore mail? (Actually how universal was mail amongst the legions of the republic anyway)
There would be a tradition of making mail amongst the Galatians and any tradition may have come from them rather than the Romans. Certainly their presence in Egypt could have brought mail production with them

[Jim Webster]

Until they started equipping imitation legions.  The Seleucids also had regular pretenders and ongoing civil wars, and hence a high turnover of men and equipment, at least until Pompey turned up and extinguished the Seleucids, but what with the Parthians there was still plenty of warfare around (Crassus equipping seven new legions, for a start).  It is perhaps no coincidence that Lentulus went to Syria to embody and equip the legions he brought to Pharsalus.

But there again when you look at the various Seleucid pretenders, they used mercenaries, who would have turned up with their own kit as was traditional in the Greek world, Barbarian auxiliaries who also turned up armed, and those military formations who changed sides who also had their own kit
I'm not aware of any Seleucid pretender who arrived on the scene and raised twenty thousand men from scratch who had never been soldiers and needed arms, equipment and training.

With Crassus it gets interesting but complicated. He'd led eight legions to victory in Italy to end the servile war, and had raised soldiers for Sulla before that.
So he had clients who would be willing to serve, legionaries and the sons of his legionaries.
A good question is how much kit did a legionary take home with him

In Crassus we might see some clue as to how the armies were raised

[Patrick Waterson]

All of which are not bad points, although mercenaries may have been equipped by the pretender rather than coming with their own gear, but ...

1) When Seleucid cavalry upgraded to cataphract status, where did their armour come from?

2) When Seleucid imitation legionaries appeared on the scene, where did their armour come from?

Then again, we have Armenians and Parthians fielding large numbers of armoured cavalry.  When Crassus sets out on his Parthian campaign, Artavasdes joins him with 6,000 guard cavalry and promises an additional 10,000 cataphracts.  The Parthians also feature numerous armoured cavalrymen, as per Cassius Dio's description:

"The Parthians make no use of a shield, but their forces consist of mounted archers [hippotoxotai] and pikesmen [kontophoroi = lancers], mostly in full armour. Their infantry is small, made up of the weaker men; but even these are all archers. They practise from boyhood, and the climate and the land combine to aid both horsemanship and archery." - Cassius Dio XL.15.2

As an aside, Cassius Dio's account of Crassus' defeat at Carrhae (Book 40, chapters 17-27) contains numerous details not present in Plutarch, including this bit about the main action:

"When this had taken place, the Roman infantry did not turn back, but valiantly joined battle with the Parthians to avenge his death. Yet they accomplished nothing worthy of themselves because of the enemy's numbers and tactics, and particularly because Abgarus was plotting against them. 2 For if they decided to lock shields for the purpose of avoiding the arrows by the closeness of their array, the pikemen were upon them with a rush, striking down some, and at least scattering the others; and if they extended their ranks to avoid this, they would be struck with the arrows. 3 Hereupon many died from fright at the very charge of the pikemen, and many perished hemmed in by p439the horsemen. Others were knocked over by the pikes or were carried off transfixed. 4 The missiles falling thick upon them from all sides at once struck down many by a mortal blow, rendered many useless for battle, and caused distress to all. They flew into their eyes and pierced their hands and all the other parts of their body and, penetrating their armour, deprived them of their protection and compelled them to expose themselves to each new missile. 5 Thus, while a man was guarding against arrows or pulling out one that had stuck fast he received more wounds, one after another." - idem XL.22.1-5

Back to legions and armour.

In Crassus we might see some clue as to how the armies were raised

Sadly Plutarch and Dio both skip this aspect of the campaign, though Plutarch goes to great lengths to point out the attention Crassus lavished on increasing his personal finances.  What does emerge is that Crassus seems to have brought his forces ready equipped from Italy (Plutarch, Life of Crassus 17), lost a number of his ships in a storm, presumably with soldiery still on board as they were just out of Brundisium, and then drummed up various auxiliaries in the east, including the Armenians previously mentioned.  His first incursion into Mesopotamia results in his placing 7,000 foot (pezoi) and 1,000 horse in garrisons and withdrawing to Syria to spend the winter, where his son joins him with 1,000 Gallic and German cavalry.

Crassus then takes the field with seven legions, 4,000 light troops (psilous) and about 4,000 cavalry.  Seven is an unusual number of legions (they usually came in pairs), so he presumably left one legion garrisoning the few cities he had collected the previous year.  This would mean he started off with eight legions, the same size force he fielded against Spartacus, which seems logical.  This was at the same time as Caesar filling out his legions in Gaul and Pompey taking an army to Spain.  Now that Rome was recruiting all and sundry (and Crassus' recruits seem to have been more sundry than most) rather than just propertied persons, the armouries of Italy would be getting a lot of practice.  One rather suspects that when the Roman civil wars eventually died down and Augustus reduced the military establishment to 28 legions, he found himself with a lot of surplus equipment on his hands.

[Jim Webster]

All of which are not bad points, although mercenaries may have been equipped by the pretender rather than coming with their own gear, but ...

1) When Seleucid cavalry upgraded to cataphract status, where did their armour come from?

2) When Seleucid imitation legionaries appeared on the scene, where did their armour come from?

The seleucid cavalry upgrade appeared after the campaigns against the Parthians and Bactrians, both of whom had accept Seleucid overlordship
Firstly some armour (and perhaps horses) could have been handed over in peace negotiations, much like the Indians handed over elephants
secondly we're not sure exactly how much armour upgrade there was, and a lot of it could be achieved with captured kit on campaign, and perhaps a cash allowance to men to buy kit between campaigns.The horse armour might have been metallic, scales on a fabric backing, which isn't particularly technical, or there might have been leather involved.

When Seleucid imitation legionaries appeared on the scene, they were already soldiers who already had armour. Why would they throw their armour away and get new armour? As armour wore out more and more men might acquire mail, as opposed to their late father's battered fabric and scale job (or whatever the old man had)


With regard to  Armenians and Parthians fielding large numbers of armoured cavalry, you're looking at a lot of legacy stuff. The French could field large numbers of armoured  cavalry at Crecy and elsewhere without the need for government arsenals and regular issues of new kit.
Military aristocracies accumulate the stuff and pass it on down the family. Also how much of it was metal and how much in the back ranks was a mixture of metal and leather with fabric coverings for horses we don't really know