Sorry for yet another Deadliest Warrior topic but this one concerns a real historical question. On the show they used butted mail >:[ instead of the segmentata as the centurion's armor. Some on the forum have stated the segmentata was used by centurions while others have said that it is a parade armor only used by the legionary and Praetorians. I know that segmentata finds are located throughout Europe but was the armor used by Centurions at all and if so to what extent? How was it viewed in comparison to the hamata and plumata armors?

Ave!

There is no solid evidence for the use of lorica segmentata by centurions. There are a couple gravestones or reliefs that show a centurion in mail or scale, or possibly in a muscled cuirass--overall only a few depictions, so there isn't a LOT of evidence either way!

Segmentata certainly was not parade armor! (The muscled cuirass is sometimes considered parade armor--could you be thinking of that?) Probably the opposite, since it is shown worn by legionaries, but not by standard bearers, musicians, or officers of any sort. Again, I would never declare that the evidence is so weighty as to flatly rule anything out, but I do tend to stick with what we've got if we can. And since there are no Roman literary references to lorica segmentata, we have no idea how they might have thought about it in terms of comparative defense, cost, social status, etc.

Not a lot of hard answers, sorry! But yeah, the mail should have been alternating rows of solid and riveted rings...

Vale,

Matthew

Nothing on that show should be taken seriously. They don't have the resources or the inclination to get decent equipment, let alone find people who are actually trained to use it. It would not have mattered in the slightest even if they did use riveted mail since it still would have had nothing in common with Roman mail.