Roman Armour
Many Episodes
The uniform might look exciting but being a Roman soldier was no joke! They marched hundreds of miles to their battles and often slept under the stars too.
It wasn’t hard to design the uniform for the Roman soldiers as the design of their armour is very well known today. Roman helmets were made of iron or a copper alloy (bronze and brass). They had a ‘bowl’ - a kind of neck guard, cheek pieces (protecting the face), and a brow guard (to stop downward blows to the face).
The Romans used three main types of body armour: mail – like a chain link fence but smaller, scale - like the scales of a fish and segmental – small pieces of metal joined at the corners. Body armour was worn over a padded doublet – a woollen vest/shirt. Roman soldiers carried a shield on their left-hand side. Legionaries, the professional soldiers, had a curved shield but auxiliaries, the irregular troops, had flat ones. They came is a variety of shapes - oval, hexagonal and rectangular.Click the picture to see a larger version - you might want to save it or print it too!