What happened, how did we go from 3.) to 6.)

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Late roman legionaries look so lacking, I don't know why

>>34184511
>>34184520
>>34184526
>Paying attention to the Eastern """"Roman"""" Empire
Shigged to the highest degree.

I guess this is somewhat related; in Latin class we learned that the Romans in the later stages of empire would often not wear their full armor for training and ceremonies because people eventually thought that it had no purpose to wear the heavy armor all the time. Then it eventually got to the point that they would only wear some of their armor even into battle. Its kinda like the saying good times create week men. I guess the reason they look ""lacking"" is because they wear the lighter chain or scale armor. It was easier to make and much easier to wear for soldiers.

>>34184511
Budget was slashed due to tax cuts.

Between 3 and 4 they experienced the Cataphract.

>>34184511
Because the late Empire's legions were not the battle hardened troops they once were. Auxilia with shit gear made the bulk of the military because they were cheap and most of the fighting was done by barbarian mercenaries.

>>34184511
Swords and spears became the preferred weapons, keeping with the predominantly Germanic army's fighting preferences and styles. The gladius fell out of favor as legionaries used longer cavalry-style spathas that took more room to swing. Long spears instead of pilum to counter Hunnic and Sassanid cavalry. Segmentata was never really that popular and the lorica hamata was always the main armor, due to its ease of maintenance, repair, reliability, and repurposing. Puttees and leather shoes because sandals are for fucking retards.

>>34184808

This. Segmentata was difficult as fuck to repair and put on, which wasn't very good. However it did offer superior defense against most blows, which was why it peaked with anywhere between 25 to 30 percent of the legionnaires wearing it.

Tower shield is both heavy and useless in close quarter.

Iron cuirass is also heavy.

>>34184511
Shit german barbarians ning nong tier

>>34184572
ERE lived for a thousand year more and was the house of Orthodoxy and vikings.

You shut your whore mouth.

>>34184858
the german barbarians were better equipped.

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>>34184808
You don't need more room to swing a spatha - big sweeping cuts are hollywood rubbish.

One thing that must be said is that the late Roman legionaries didn't seem to be any less effective. They were simply more adapted to cavalry warfare and border guarding.

>>34184976
Large shield and small sword is, counterintuitively, VERY aggressive in nature. You don't sit back and hide behind the shield, you use it to get in close and stab the other guy with repeated thrusts until he goes down.

But, once your empire has reached its limits and is doing less conquering and more garrisoning, it makes sense that your gear would adapt to a more defensive posture.

Money played a role, too. As long as the army was out conquering, it was bringing back plenty of booty from pillage. Once those conquered people became tax-paying Roman subjects (or even citizens), the amount of money made available for infantry gear probably declined.

>>34184870
Is this supposed to be a joke?

>>34184835
So the legiones didn't have a standard equipment? Some wore chain mail others plate armour? Did you get to choose which armor to put on? Seems obvious to me that you'd wear the plate armour, even though it's harder to put on! Interesting!

>>34185345
Not surprising perhaps that once the empire degenerated so did it's army and the gear of the army.

>>34185487
Get a plate of steel and walk around with it on your back every day and see what you say then

>>34185345
Speculation on my part, but I think that generals with imperial ambitions promising their troops wealth and lands and spending tax dollars to appease their troops and the Praetorian Guard before getting deposed harmed the economy as much if not more. Debasement of currency to pay debts and obligations resulted in inflation and loss of faith in currency, reducing the efficiency of economic transactions and sources of taxable income.

>>34184520
according to your pic the lorica segmentata was adopted to counter Parthian archers, but it was later abandoned as it was too heavy to effectively fight Germanic cavalry

>>34185510
Dyel? Of course I'd wear the heavier armour if it meant more protection in battle.

>>34184511
>#5
>implying lorica squamata was ever popular

>>34184976

Expect for the point where they weren't as effective and let the WRE fall.

>>34185487
It was like today where you had standard equipment but different equipment for the same standard. If you were a legionarie you got your standard issued gladius, pilum, lorica, etc. Most likely you were gonna issued lorica hamata because it had the balance of being cheaper and easier to make and maintain while still offering good protection and being comfortable to wear for long periods of time. If you wanted your could go out and buy your own lorica segmentata, but your base pay wasn't that high so buying fancy armor was a huge fucking investment. Also, the onus was on you to pay to get it fixed or replaced if it got damaged. Your Legion wasn't going to accept you swapping out your privately bought lorica for one of theirs. Also, if your Legate was wealthy enough and/or the Legion was flush with loot, he could give patronage to buy his cohorts better equipment like lorica segmentata. Often times though the Legates would use their extra cash to hire mercenaries or more baggage trains since that would have a bigger strategic benefit than giving everyone GVCCI GEAR.

The role of the armies changed.

Late Roman Armies were comprised up of field armies and border guards. What typically gets posted is the limitanei frontier troops. These troops were lightly armored for quicker mobility to quickly stop raids into Roman territory as opposed to the field army, comitatenses.

There was also more relying on horseback compared to the early days so you see a shift in equipment being more cavalry focused. Gone are the short swords and typical shields, in are long swords with round shields.

>>34184511
5 and 6 are way cooler though

Lorica Segmentata is a meme armor. it wasn't used everywhere for the brief period it was in use. Most legionaries and auxiliaries used lorica Hamata for most of the Republic and Empire.

you definitely didn't have Segmentata if you were a poorer legionnaire.

>>34184511
that plate armor was shit tb.h. chainmail was way better

>>34187512
>5 and 6 are way cooler though
Absolutely plebian

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>>34184784
>>34184572
>>34184720
>>34184755
>>34184870
History major with a minor in Clasical Civilization here. Some real retardation going on in this thread.

Late legionaries remained the baddest motherfuckers in Europe during and after the fall of the west.

They wore less armor, with pants and shoes because the nature of warfare changed from large setpiece battles of a fuckload of men to smaller skirmishes, where men needed more reach and fought in looser formation. They also needed to be able to travel very long distances as quickly as possible-this was part of the problem.

The roman empire was fucking huge. At this point it had been divided up into halves because everyone knew it was too fucking big to manage.

Then decades of near constant civil war reduced the size of the legions drastically, and huge armies of barbarians spilled into the borders of the west.

So you have a relatively small force of elite troops traversing thousands of miles of land to deal with hundreds of barbarian tribes and rebels, and that's when they're NOT pitted against each other by upstart generals trying to become emperor.

Late legionaries fucking wrecked everyone they were able to fight head-on. But, at least in the west, they had fewer and fewer opportunities to actually meet the enemy. Barbarians like the Huns (vastly overrated btw), would slip through the cracks and sack cities while the Legions were spread too far and too thin to help.

It's really quite tragic. The Legions just couldn't handle all the shit that was dropped in their laps, and their generals came to rely on, and often themselves BE, cowardly, untrustworthy barbarian auxiliaries.

>>34184520
To be fair, the lorica hamata was pretty much always more common than the segmentata

>>34185637
On the contrary, near the end the army was basically the only thing keeping the WRE on its feet, with generals propping up various emperors and expeditions and attempts at reconquest being made. The state of the WRE was simply rotten to its core by that point and no amount of propping up by military strongmen could save it.

>>34187755
Wouldn't Militias have fixed at least some of the sacking and slowed it down enough so a response by the military could have been made?

>>34188441
This actually was a thing to some extent in the border regions, but I don't know the particulars well enough to tell you much. Attempts WERE made around this time to decentralize the military across smaller regions, mostly to make it harder for governors to rebel.

>>34185521
>t man who has never worn 30 pounds of armor and 50+ lbs of other gear for days on end

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>>34185459
What joke?

The average "german barbarian" in 450AD look like this.

>>34187755
If late roman armies are so good, why do they rely on the federati?

>>34190697
That's not "average"

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>>34190711
Except that is average.

I hate how /k/ always shits on the barbarian tribes of old when they rekt the roman empire.

>>34190697
mmmmmm, wasn't mail pretty rare/expensive back then? longer swords too right?

>>34190749
Not in fucking 450AD where the germanic kingdoms were rich from looting and getting tributes from the Roman cucks.

>>34190749
Also, longer swords were a common sight for gaul and germanic armies back then, after all, it's how they fucking fight.

With huge swordsmen charge.

What's lacking is armor.

>>34190743
>rekt
>waited until it was old and decrepit and attacked random towns until the empire just kind of collapsed on it's own
>WE WUZ CONQUERERS AN SHEEEEIT

You people are pathetic.

>>34192035
The empire didn't collapse in a single night, it was a cultivation between small and big raids by barbarian tribes.

Saying they just waited is wrong, considering the various sacks of Rome.

>>34192201
Corruption and internal instability caused the fall, barbarians have never been anything more than an annoyance.

They weren't even the cold that killed the AIDS patient, they were the rash that made dying more uncomfortable.

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>>34192035

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>>34190743
>barbarian tribes
>not muslims

>>34192320
Fucking kek

>>34192216
>Corruption and internal instability caused the fall, barbarians have never been anything more than an annoyance.
An annoyance that looted, raped and destroyed Roman towns and roman armies, yes.

Fucking rome cucks.

>>34192392
Muslims got rekt by european armies much later.

Praise Charles Martel.

inb4 the turks
Also rekt by austrian and poles.

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Is this the Osprey image dump thread?

>>34194662
Are these historically accurate?

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>>34194684
To the best of my knowledge of somebody interested in mesoamerican stuff as a hobby, these are all accurate. A lot of them I know for sure are based directly on stuff surviving aztec books (codices is the technical term) or books made directly after the spainish conquest to re-record stuff from the books that were burned during the conquest.

Incidentally, I heard that the "aztec priest" here isn't accurate, as it's based on a religious official from some other mesoamerican group, I think the Mixatec?

>>34194699
Not talking about these azteka specifically, I'm talking about Osprey depiction of ancient warriors in general.

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>>34194699
For example, the Cuahchic here I know is based just directly on images of the attire of that rank from codice pages that go over aztec military structure and adminstrative/logistical stuff. I'll post that codex page when i'm done dumping the osprey images.

Incidentally, to explain the labels a bit:

"Mexica" is the particular ethnic group that founded Tenochtitlan, which is the aztec captial, and are the people most people think of when you say the word "aztec" even if they don't realize it "Triple alliance" refers to the Aztec triple alliance, which is the alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, which, combined with their territory they controlled as tributaries, is what the "aztec empire" is.

So, basically, everybody in this image is "Aztec". "Aztec" as a term is sort of just fucking stupid and complicates the already confusing amount of terminology and classifications of cultures in the region.

Also, further explanations on aztec military organization is here:
http://thelastdiadoch.tumblr.com/post/121131173130/aztec-education-and-military-training
http://thelastdiadoch.tumblr.com/post/121200787615/cu%C4%81uhoc%C4%93l%C5%8Dtl-part-1-ocelotl-jaguar-warrior
http://thelastdiadoch.tumblr.com/post/121293122010/cu%C4%81uhoc%C4%93l%C5%8Dtl-part-2-cu%C4%81uhtli-eagle-warrior
http://thelastdiadoch.tumblr.com/post/122176185680/aztec-warriors-otomi-and-the-shorn-ones

>>34194721
Ah, I would assume so. I've never really taken a look at the other books but /his/ and /k/ hold them in high regard and the mesoamerican ones as i've explained are all accurate as far as I can tell, I can't see why the other ones wouldn't be when european and asian history has so much more surviving records.

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>>34194735

>>34185487
Especially later on the standards became more like guidelines. If the romans conquered an effective fighting force they would often be absorbed into the legions as is, usually keeping their own equipment and weapons unless absolutely incompatible with roman tactics.

Also the legions were not equipped uniformly. Legions with rich commanders, as other have already said, could be privately recruited and equipped, and would have far superior equipment. A poorer legion, sitting guard duty in some far out province without the opportunity to fund via conquest would bear absolutely no resemblance to a legion with better sponsors and opportunities. They would likely only have shields and weapons, their armour would be far cheaper.

The whole plate vs chain vs scale issue was more a matter of progress than anything else. Plate mail offered the best protection, but was heavy, expensive, and difficult to don. As production of scale and chain became more widespread the plate armour was effectively aged out, any advantages the plate offered were outweighed by the advantages of other types of armour? That, with the shift of types of battle, is why later soldiers appear less heavily armoured.

As for the shield, the wall shield was developed for use with uniquely roman formations, but the oval shield was in use concurrently. Specialized units such as the praetorian guards, afaik, used the oval shield for far longer than regular legions.
As the balance of tactics shifted, the oval shield saw more widespread use as it was better suited than the wall shield.

>>34184520
Because you're ignorant of history

The hamata>segmentica
Spatha>gladius
Late Roman helmets>early Roman helmets

What "happened" was an over reliance on Germanic mercenaries and other auxilia paired with a weak wristed political class.

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>>34194739
"Texocoan" here obviously refers to Texcoco, which, as I explained, was one of the 3 major city states that formed the primary backbone of the Aztec empire.

Tlaxcala, meanwhile, was a confederacy of various city states and kingdoms and other groups that the Aztecs were in the process of slowly whittling down via blockades, sieges, and demanding tribute, and flower wars (look it up) to try to get them to give into surrending when the Spainish showed up. The tlaxcalans BTFO'd the spainish intially but spared them to use against their aztec oppressors and ended up forming the majority of the Spainish led army that won the conquest. They essentially did most of the work.

The spainish actually honored their end of the bargin and let the Tlaxcala keep their land and awarded them a good amount of special rights that actually even got better over time, but it didn't really matter since like 95% of the native Tlaxcalan populative died due to diseases by 1600 anyways.

>>34184720
The lorica segmentica was mass produced garbage armor that fit poorly and limited mobility.

The hamata was as difficult to produce as maille was in the early medieval periods. It was the preferred armor for almost the entire Roman period when available.

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>>34194766
shit I forgot to post this before moving onto non Aztec/Mexica things

>>34194750
>>34194751
hope you guys don't mind chipping in with osprey shit from other regions

fucking germaniggers ruining everything

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>>34194739

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>>34194778
More Tlaxcallans.

The cotton diamond patterned vests you see a lot of these guys wearing are called Ichcahuipilli, and was dipped in mineral rich water and left to dry so the interior crystalized, and it sometimes was also a composite material with alternating layers of other shit, so both of those traits combined made it actually pretty resistant to punctures and lacerations.

Most of the Spainish abadoned their steel breastplates in favor of it since it was actually pretty effective and a lot better suited to the climate.

>>34194787
You joke but if you saw an army of screaming feral dudes in the skins of some jungle hellbeast you'd shit your pants

>>34194786
"germaniggers" refer to everyone else not-roman?

>>34194807
Bullseye Shield

Swan strapped to the head

Pineapple on a hat


What were they thinking?

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>>34194807

>>34194813
>>34192392
Incidentally the Aztecs had a word that was pretty much exactly the same way the romans used Barbarian, just as a general term for non aztecs as a perojative as being uncivilized asshats, but also more specifically refers to unorganized tribes that were occasional pains in their asses: Chichimeca

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichimeca

The aztecs also had a pretty similar legal system in terms of handling stuff like accusations of theft and were pretty similar to the romans in other ways, they handled expansionism and cultural imperalism in similar ways too IIRC

>>34194807
Correct me if I'm wrong but won't most southern American weapons variations on clubs or "swords" that were sticks with obsidian shards?
Wouldn't a steel breastplate be far more effective, even if not well suited to the climate?

>>34194840
How effective were sticks with obsidian shards compared to swords? I imagine the obsidian would actually be sharper

>>34194826
>What were they thinking?
The same as the European soldiers of the 17-19 century in red jackets and wigs.

>>34194861
Bullshit nigger, these yurop soldiers know their shit would be get ruined by gun anyway, so there's no point in dressing in full plate.

These aztecs don't even know.

>>34194858
Obsidian is hard, but fragile. I think these swords quickly broke down.

>>34194863
They could wear something less noticeable and not line up, but they came up with such ideas only by the end of the 19th century.

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>>34194833

>>34194826
All the weird shit strapped to their backs, (the tlaxcallan and mexican captains from prior images had some too) and IIRC, was basically used the same way flags were used in the middle ages and the crests on roman helmets were used, it was for instant identican and coordinating stuff in the middle of battle.

>>34194840
Well, firstly, Mexico isn't in south america, it's either in north america or central america depending on how you want to divy it up. More speffically, the region the Aztecs and related or tangential cultures were in is called "Mesoamerica", which includes the lower half of mexico, guatmala, and etc.

But yeah, most weapons in the region were wood with stone bits attached. though copper and copper alloys for weapons weren't unheard of either. As for what you bring up, that's a bit above what I know, but I know that the first hand spainish accounts say most of them switched due to the climate and the native armor being effective enough.

Presumably, the cotton armor was still actually resistant enough to damage and easier to deal with the heat and humidity in that the tradeoff in durability was worth it, also since it was easier to repair and obviously if you seriously fucked up the steel breastplate that wasn't replacable in the new world at the time wheras you could always manufactere more of the cotton. You also have to consider that the Spanish didn't have like, full plate armor, a lot of their limbs and shit would have just had cloth over it, and the Spainish had a serious disadvantge in terms of numbers and logistics and didn't know the terrain, I imagine the fact it was heavy and didn't also offer full protection when their enemy had superior numbers to overwerhlm them meant that it was less desirable

>>34194858
>>34194865
Obsidian, being glass, is pretty brittle, but it's also much, much sharper then steel, you can get like a .0003 nanometer edge even using traditional techniques.

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>>34194877

To add onto the obsidian weapon stuff: Pretty much every spainish account has them being scared absolutely shittless by Macuahutil (which are the wooden clubs studded with obisdian razors, which were used both as clubs and swords). More then one of the first hand records from the spainish mention them outright just beheading horses in single swings, which if true (and, again, more then one account mentions) would be impressive.

The obsidian would likely break after a few blows to hard surfaces, but even if you break all of the obsidian on one side, you still have a really fucking big wooden club to hit with.

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>>34194888

>>34194869
But that's the point, to be noticeable, this is the time when fucking war drum is meant to signal troops.

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>>34194891
I don't know that much about the Maya, Mixatec, or Zapotec, so i'm not really explaining much about them for that reason.

The Zapotec and Mixatec lived near the southern Pacific coast of mexico, by the Valley of Oaxaca , wheras the Aztecs/Texcocans where by the central valley of mexico, but they were still related cultures.

The Maya lived much more towards the southwest atlantic side, by the Yucatan penussula and into guatamala, and while there was cultural interchange and going way back they had shared roots with the central mexican cultures, were pretty distinct. "Maya" is an entire fucking language tree with like 30 languages in it, so "Maya" is really a much higher sort of taxonomic group then, say "Aztec" is.

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>>34194913
One of the codex pages the Cuahchic from >>34194735 is from

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>>34194919
Also, last thing i'm dumping, a map of the region in 1519, just to get an idea of where everything is

Oh, also, about the Maya: They never unified, they only ever existed as seprate city states, kingdoms, and alliances between them, and even then "Maya", as mentioned, encompassed a lot of different split groups: The lowland maya were culturally pretty different from the highland maya for instance

>>34194888
They were impressed. I don't know if the right word would be 'scared' but they did enjoy telling stories of the feats in battle of people armed with them.

That said.. that was kind of the point. Their battle methods were very tribal, with extremely impressively dressed and armed champions. A few fights between champions would deiced their battles.

The Spanish threw everything into confusion by fighting them when they had really bad colds and the clap, and by shooting these champions. Given that the basic rule was that if your band of fifty guys had their champion killed you got to go home you had battles where the Spanish would win fighting absurd odds.

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>>34194877
>>34194826
>>34194807
I found a page that goes into the stuff on their backs: as I said, it was used for identification and coordination in battle:

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://s30556663155.mirtesen.ru/blog/43326160327/SHtandartyi-i-flagi-voinov-Mesoameriki&usg=ALkJrhgG2BE1BIoJzlBD1FQPw4xvl8jCZg

It in fact directly compares them to roman signum

>>34194968
Nah, the accounts have them fearing it

If you wanna talk impressed, then we'd be talking about their urban devolpment and hydroegneering skills, the spainish were floored by how clean and large Aztec cities were and how their captial and the related areas were all basically build on artificial islands on the lakeside with venice tier canals and aquaducts and shit.