Lorica Segmentata

Lorica segmentata is a modern name. Scholars coined it in the 16th century, and the Roman word for the armour is not known; “lorica lamminata” has been suggested, with no firm evidence. It was a cuirass of overlapping iron plates riveted to leather straps, with brass fittings, and it could be separated into four sections. Wikipedia dates the earliest evidence to around 9 BC at Dangstetten. A cuirass of about thirty plates, found at Kalkriese in 2018, is dated to the Augustan period and is over a century older than the Corbridge examples that had been the best preserved before it.

Archaeology supplies most of what is known. The Corbridge Hoard, excavated in 1964 in Northumberland, held six upper and six lower half-units that could be as few as three whole cuirasses. English Heritage dates the contents to AD 122 to 138 and says the chest was probably stored until an owner who never returned could collect it. Studying it showed how the armour on Trajan’s Column worked. Finds come from 16 western countries and, per Wikipedia, none from the east; Menéndez Argüín, writing in Gladius in 2006, counts one exception. He gives the weight as 6 to 9 kg and says it was cheaper to make than mail, but needed specialist workshops and constant repair of its copper-alloy fittings.

The end is a range. Wikipedia says it fell out of favour around the middle of the 3rd century and puts a depiction on the Arch of Constantine in 315, while noting that the reliefs may be reused from a Marcus Aurelius monument. Its equipment article gives the last recorded use as the last quarter of the 3rd century, at León in Spain. Menéndez Argüín says 3rd-century finds in Britain and on the German frontier show use to at least the 260s, and that a workshop of Legio VII Gemina at León was still active at the end of the century. The army went back to mail. The plates survive as excavated fragments, and museums and re-enactors display reconstructions made from them.