Back at the Helm. As in Helmet.

 

Another special  helmet found at Egadi..'...there have been found 2 very fine Montefortino types... with animal crests - along with 4 plain examples.

The first has a reclining cat-like figure ...

  Now the second is shown ,cleaned a bit.

Foto from Archaeology News Network

It reveals itself to be an ornate Roman type a Montefortino with extra ornamentation. A beautiful gryphon head which may be a holder for another fitting - see the mouth.Somehwat resembling later heavily ornamented cavalry helmets or even some infantry officer helmets. The cavalry and officers, especially in Republican times, had plenty of cash to display their status in their equipment.
There are small feather holdrs on the sides too.

This one shares its knob with the Egadi helm.

 A nice report at Archaeology News Network gives details HERE.

Did it fall overboard as the wearer stumbled under a blow or did it find its way into Davy Jones' Locker still attached to his noble head?

You can read a Master's Thesis about the 6 Montefortino helmetsfrom Egadi  HERE

This season has revealed 2 more bronze rostra and a sword ....
.... see RPMN website slide show HERE

You can see video of the recovery operations if you click on this foto.

Click to see video of recovery at TP24 Cultura via Facebook

 You can read more about Egadi under my previous posts or at the RPMN website HERE.

NOT WELL IMPRESSED

I recently got an interesting edition of Ancient Warfare magazine. VolXII Issue 4. It is a special edition dealing with Successors at Sea, supposedly.

Get it HERE

I reproduce some illustrations from the article in question in the interests of  debate/criticism. The magazine is good value for money and well-produced. Buy it to see the whole thing and much else.

Many things caught my eye while reading it but none more than' THE MACHIMOI, WARRIOR SAILORS OF THE PTOLEMIES'. The title was a neon lighted misunderstanding for a kick-off. Warriors AND sailors. Tribal maritime raiders tend to be both sailors and fighters such as Vikings or Mycenaeans but Ptolemaics doing this.at a time when soldiers, sailors and oarsmen were three different professions.... mm let's see.


Machimoi is Greek for 'warrior' meaning a lower order of personnel than well-trained/professional troops i.e. 'the rest' - the rest in Ptolemaic Egypt were also non-Greek. Not really rated as good material. In Ptolemaic Egypt 'the rest' means the nonethnic -Greek (or part-Greek) citizens. How the author of this piece knows the ethnicity of Ptolemaic 'marines' is not explained.(1)

The main ilustration of the piece is a 'marine machairophoros'. Obscurantist language which is unecessary to entitle a man armed with a machaira if that is what one means. A machaira is a single-edged slashing sword or knife. This man is armed with a gladius. Why the contradiction? Why is he not a gladiophoros ? Or even a kopisophoros or even a xiphophoros ? This is a common trope in Osprey type books where a name must be found for an ancient troop type because soldier or spearman is not considered good enough. An ancient language must be invoked for authenticity.

MACHISMOs ? Not in that dress.Nice bracelet.

 Next, let's see what the latest style is this Spring for our machimos/machairaphoros.

The well-dressed machimos apparently wears padded or quilted armour. This is a sleeveless garment with a high round neck and vertical stitching. The author suggests this is a multi-layer garment made 'thickly padded' with wool or cotton. He uses the terms kasas and bambakos for this garment. Kasas is apparently Egyptian but we get no information as to what it means. Bambakos is a Greek term for padded armour known from the Byzantine period and this word just means 'stuffed' or 'padded'.

Bambakioi a go go. In the Byzntine era.

 Why this man wears this garment is an interesting story.

The author presents two pieces of evidence which are used to support the synthesis of this garment.

First is a fragment of an oil lamp from the British Museum which was found in Egypt. Here this fragment is said to show 'the padded garments of the soldiers'.

Second is a wall fresco from Kom Madi, illustrated from 'archaeologist Guidotti' - no further reference given.(3) This shows a procession of men with near identical equipment to each other. The procession illustrated is purported to show the deification of Alexander the Great.The author has decided the men shown are 'naval soldiers who seem to be wearing completely padded or quilted armour.'

NAVALSOLDIER IN QUILTED ARMOUR

Third, there is reference in the article to 'Roman triumphal monuments' but these are not further discussed or illustrated. Again, they are said to show 'naval soldiers who seem to be wearing completely padded or quilted armour.' (what could incompletely padded mean ?)


 .............space..for illustration of Romans in quilted armour on triumphal monuments.......


Lets have a closer look.

The lamp fragment is dated to 20BC to 20AD and is considered to refer to the Battle of Actium. (4)
It is 6 by 5 cm in size.It may be copied from Italian originals. If we examine it do we see soldiers with padded armour or do we see barely defined figures. One of which has a tunic with folds. All have Attic-type helmets and long shields which may be rectanguler or oval. One is holding a short sword en garde. 

foto Guy Ulrich and B.M.

You have to make your own mind up if this is a special padded garment or simple illustration of the folds of a tunic.  As indicated in many other works.

  In the absence of any supporting evidence I would suggest there is no evidence of a special garment. The author has form for seeing padded garments instead of clothing folds.

GO HERE TO SEE A CLOSELY PARALLEL UNIVERSE

 This type of lamp was mass produced. A negative mould was made in burnt clay or plaster. Raw clay was pressed into the form to impress the decoration, pulled out, and trimmed and fired to make the finished item. The areas for decoration are small. The finished item has to survive the production process unscathed and we must still consider how far it represented reality in its pristine state. The impression can be incomplete or distorted. Time and use can also do their work.

Many items show figures with folded cloth represented like this. Another lamp.......

MON AMOR OR MON ARMOUR ? - armoured matresses must be solid, durable, absorbent?

The wall fresco has no demonstrated connection with 'naval infantry'. The men all have pleated garments. But are they padded armour?

If we look at the figure - he has 7 vertical lines of stitching on his 'quilted armour'. If we look at the fresco the men have 10/11 strips on their torso and 15/16 on the skirt- The skirt reaches the knee and is full. The illustration has a short stiff skirt - as a quilted armour garment must be. The 'quilting' on the fresco run down off the shoulder of the men as if they are loose fabric. The illustration is given an armless garment ' to allow the arms to move more freely'.

 It is difficult to see how the fresco garments have any relation to the synthesised illustration at all.

I make replica jewellery. There is a basic law that a copy will always lose detail. Anything gained is noise. If one does not count repeated ornament elements carefully one cannot make a replica, just a 'similar-ish' thingy. Or, the lowest blow - ' imaginative reconstruction'/ 'artists impression'.               True replication or re-creation is something different from this.  Dare I say it.

Third. Roman triumphal monuments. ?  ...?  ..? Waiting...

The last details of the synthesised figure are his sword and shield.
The sword is taken from an Egyptian find which is as good an example of a 'Spanish' sword or gladius as one could hope to see. Perfect for our 'machairophoros' ? The sword they are shown with on the fresco is actually much more interesting !!!!!! It is like a cross between a rhomphaia and a machaira. Write about that ! It is interesting !  It is Egyptian ......!!!???? Possibly a khepesh?

The shield of the illustration is a round 'leather covered' shield with a simple small boss and a centre grip. No reference for this is given. But for some reason it was not suitable to try and recreate the shield of either the lamp soldiers or the fresco soldiers. Eh?!

Oh , and 'small boots' complete the equipment. Hopefully not too small for his feet ? Ouch.

The boots are important, because they are the only item accurately represented from the fresco.

The text with the illustration again says .. 'the wool/felt/cotton armour, visible on a variety of monuments.' Which ones ? One asks.

 Back to the frescoes. The fresco warriors have what in any other context one would describe as thureos type shields common in the  Hellenistic world. But we have no date for this fresco.....
The fresco warriors also carry what can only be described as machaira if they were in a Hellenistic context. These men can be described as machairophoroi. Contrary to the synthesised illustration. Now, how about changing that word to 'invented' or 'hypothesised'. Certainly not 'reconstructed'.

 

The last detail is quite revealing. The extreme left figure is not armed as far as we can see. It also looks feminine. Possibly a priest or aristocrat or royalty? Anyway, this figure has its clothing depicted in the same way as the 'naval soldiers'. But it is longer. Is this another example of special quilted armour?. So long one could not walk in it? Or is it a figure in a long robe/tunic - meaning the figures all wear loose pleated -folded garments suitable for the Egyptian climate? Or of rich stuff?

Oh yes, imagine being a 'naval soldier' in quilted armour in Egypt. The Crusaders found it ...warm...And if one ended in the drink... lots of absorbent stuff there.... not good. Although the lack of protection for the arms in a fight would mitigate the tendency to sink or cook, maybe.

The rest of the article discusses Ptolemaic sea power. It is brief and debateable. Did the Ptolemaic kingdom spend 80% of its wealth on the military ? Did the Ptolemaic navy undergo a revolution because or to avoid impressment ? That  'the ethnic composition of the marines, officers naval troops(what are they?!) and sailors was typical of the Hellenistic Age' is difficult to dispute. But then the author states that officers were mostly Greeks. .........

The final point is that the author has decided that the men on the fresco are Egyptian rather than Greek.  How he does this is not apparent. The colour of the man in the illustration is much darker than the flesh tone of the fresco.

Way to go signor D'Amato. For it is he.

Left: Imagination -
Right : Pre-Ptolemaic Super-Heavy Egyptian lotusophoros.
Note quilted armour that appears surprisingly light and handy to wear.

1: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/machimoi-e715600
2: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/machaira
3: The reference to Guidotti is as follows - from World Cat
Bresciani, E. (2003). Kom Madi 1977 e 1978: Le pitture murali del cenotafio di Alessandro Magno. Pisa: ETS.
4: Williams, H. 1981 A ship ofActium on a Roman Lamp-. IJNAUE 10.1

Fancy Dress for Roman Marines ? : The answer is dangling in the wind

Halloween approaches. Dressing up is de rigeur. But no ! What is this ? Cultural appropriation by Republican Roman naval soldiery ?
Whatever next ?

Osprey books are a mine of small-scale errors. The format predisposes them to fail on details. It is impossible to cram 'all about X' into a booklet.

Republican Roman Warship is a subject I would like to be as positively disposed toward as I could be. It does grate a little when reading it though.. One asks is it the translation?, or are these really  the words of the author ?

One little sub-theme in the book is the costume of Roman marines. There are not so many depictions of Roman marines and when they do turn up they often look rather like contemporary legionary soldiers. It might be nice, then, to discover some overlooked evidence. But trying too hard sometimes gets the wrong result.

In Roman Republican Warships (Osprey New Vanguard 225) RaffaeleD'Amato suggests that marines in the Republican period - or even all sailors? - wore a distinctive garb. This garb is derived from sculpted Etruscan alabaster cinerary urns of which hundreds have been found in the Volterra area.

Shout! They cannot hear you !

This is illustrated by Giuseppe Rava in several contexts.



The first is an assault on Syracuse where sailors struggle with a monstrous pedalion as their monstrous quinquereme deploys a version of the sambuca against the city walls.



The second is a sea battle where a bow-armed marine dressed as a Spanish sword-and-buckler man supports legionaries advancing over a corvus.

Aie caramba!

Although he does not state it  directly (unless I missed it) D'Amato considers the Volterra urns to show a specific Etruscan costume which somehow relates to republican Roman sailors/marines. Two jumps too many in my opinion.

Firstly, the question of whether the costume on the Volterro urns is a( Etruscan or b) a sailor's/marine's costume.

There are many urns at Volterro. Many examples show stock scenes from mythology and two are recurrent.

The first one is the Rape of Helen.

The men have clothes which are full enough to fall in pleats. Cloaks and cute caps. Paris(?) in the centre and his sidekick to the right have no shoes.

The second is Odysseus and the Sirens.

You may see that there is a common style of dress amongst the crew of the ships in both cases.
Maybe an example of Odysseus' crew with heads on will help also..

'A jock-strap, a jock-strap, my kingdom for a jockstrap...'

The crew have rather gauzey clothing which falls in pleats, cloaks round their shoulders and cute hats with a good firm chin tie. Odysseus, meanwhile, is starkers save for a cloak and cap and no chin-tie necessary for a hero!

What is going on here ? Are these really the clothes of Republican sailors/marines and are they anything of the sort from Etruscan contexts?

First let the Vatican Museum tell us about what these objects are

The rite of cremation, with the resulting funerary custom of placing the ashes of the deceased in urns in sculpted stone or modelled in terra-cotta, is particularly documented in the interior of northern Etruria from the 4th century BC. A great quantity of cinerary urns, with particular artistic and typological characteristics was produced in the main Etruscan cities of this vast area (Volterra, Chiusi and Perugia). The reliefs that decorate the front of the casks are the result of an independent development of the Hellenistic figurative repertoire. Greek myths and, more typically, Etruscan myths co-exist, united by the adoption of the same figurative language, in one of the most characteristic manifestations of Etruscan artistic craftwork. The urns were sculpted from the natural stone of the area which was alabaster for Volterra and Chiusi, and travertine for Perugia, but there were also some less valuable stones. LINK

The art here is not representations of naval themes for a naval audience it is representations of well-known stock themes from mythology and history for a civilian audience.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show WAS 'The Wild West'  Discuss.

The two stories here are of exotic characters from the east acting out specific scenes.

Paris and his cronies are Trojans abducting Helen. They are dressed as exotic asiatics. Their full clothes are a contrast to the usual clothes of Latium and Etruria. We can see the same stereotypical representations used to depict mithras at later dates. Mithras was an eastern god often adopted by soldiers. He is always shown in characteristic eastern dress of the magi.

Mithras from Diocletian's baths

 A dead giveaway are the Phrygian caps. They are constant signifiers of eastern characters in Classical art.

Vatican Æneid manuscript : how to tell the Trojans are from the East?

Also, the extra folds around their midriffs are from long over-tunics bound-up to shorten them for easy movement rather than some padded armour.

The Parisians also have cloaks. No cloaks aboard Amato/Rava's ships.

Any padding or jack-like garment as worn by the Osprey characters would appear to be misinterpretation of the pleated clothes from the cinerary urns.

On to Odysseus.

Odysseus' crew have the same exotic(?) garb. The folded/pleated clothes which are figure -hugging and folded-up as per the Parisians. Cloaks figure again. The ones absent in Osprey.

The hat situation is amusing. Now the story of Odysseus and the Sirens includes a key detail which can involve headwear. The cunning skipper blocked his sailor's ears with wax etc so they could no thear the siren song of the Sirens. Contra the Parisians' headgear, Odysseus' crew have hats and ear bandages to emphasise their auditorily-challenged state. This is also exactly what John William Waterhouse did to depict the situation in his 1891 canvas.

Surely not?

So where do we stand now in relation to Republican Roman marines/sailors in action on the pages of Osprey New Vanguard 225 ? Unless these men are pretending to be asiatics - a hideous cultural appropriation and racial sterotyping we should all abjure - then they are dressed in medieval jacks. An anachronism too far, surely.

No. They are actually cultural stereotypes. As devoid of reality and sense  as those who complain about  cultural appropriation and sterotypes.

And were the officers naked ?

This is overlooking the problem of how an Etruscan style should find its way into the Republican Roman navy.....let's leave that question dangling to the four winds, like Odysseus' manhood.

Take that you Roman (Osprey) navy !

SEE ALSO THE SAME INTERPRETATION APPLIED TO EGYPTIAN TROOPS HERE