This volume brings together nine contributions on the subject of the clothing of Roman soldiers, some of which were presented at a conference on military textiles at the Danish Research Foundation's Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen in 2008. It is a subject that, as the introduction points out, is rarely addressed. The reasons are manifold; the most important, perhaps, is the fragmentary and very climate-dependent incidence of textile survival, which has led to a strong reliance on mainly metal — and, as such, far more ubiquitous — militaria, such as belt-buckles, pieces of armour and brooches, to understand the outfit of the Roman soldier. However, much pictorial evidence survives and there are parts of the Roman Empire where sizeable quantities of military textiles have been found. The fact that these have been so under-exploited reflects a certain dismissal hitherto of the significance of textiles in the story of the Roman army. Roman dress as a whole was, until just over a decade ago, woefully neglected by scholars, though many of the contributors to Wearing the Cloak were involved in the DressID EU project initiated by the Curt-Engelhorn-Stiftung at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim, Germany, that formed part of what is now a growing field of Roman dress studies.
The various chapters aim to redress the balance in the field of Roman military studies, and although they are a somewhat eclectic mix of subjects and approaches, each fills a gap in our knowledge of military textiles, demonstrating that a lot can be gained from a closer analysis of Roman soldiers' clothing. There have been other recent attempts to shed light on the subject: one of the contributors to this volume, the illustrator G. Sumner, has published a series of monographs since 2002, the most recent of which was Roman Military Dress (2009), and more links could perhaps have been made to his work; but unlike Sumner's more survey-style studies, Wearing the Cloak collates a handful of discussions on very specific themes.
Apart from a curious lack of affiliations for the individual authors, the only shortcoming is the quality of the formatting and editing: there are large numbers of spelling mistakes, formatting inconsistencies, works misspelt or entirely missing in the bibliography, titles of sections given on one page when the sections themselves begin overleaf (97f.), while in ch. 7, the last part of the text would seem to have disappeared completely (108). The impression this leaves is, however, in no way consistent with the very high scholarly quality of the contributions.
M. Speidel sets the scene in ch. 1 by looking mainly at the literary evidence for different garments and types of dress worn by soldiers, and comes to the very valid conclusion that ‘the Roman soldier's everyday appearance was more varied, more context-related and more capable of expressing symbolic meaning than has so far generally been recognized’ (12). The next two chapters by K. Dross-Krüpe and Jinyu Liu look at the supply of textiles to the Roman army and go some way to addressing the question of the extent to which clothing was centrally — as opposed to privately — acquired and distributed. The evidence they present is convincingly in favour of a much more sophisticated, more long-distance military clothing supply system on the part of the Roman state than it has hitherto been given credit for.
Next, S. Hoss examines the Roman military belt. She collates the evidence for the different types of this symbolically important item of clothing and argues that it was less nuances of class and rank that were expressed in its various forms than personal taste. The surprising homogeneity of belt types across units and regions, however, shows that this personal taste was dependent on wider fashions and conformity by ordinary soldiers to trends set in the higher ranks.
Ch. 5, by M. Gleba, on ‘Linen-clad Etruscan warriors’ seems chronologically somewhat out of context but should be read alongside the next chapter by H. Granger-Taylor on linen fragments from Masada, Israel. Gleba collates the pictorial, literary and archaeological data for the wide use of linen corselets as armour in and of itself (as opposed to a protective garment under armour of other materials) among the Greeks and Etruscans at least until the Hellenistic period. Granger-Taylor then presents some later finds of linen fragments from Masada, which owing to their special weaving technique had the requisite protective qualities for use as armour, suggesting the practice continued into the Roman period.
In ch. 7, A. Paetz gen. Schieck discusses the various elements of the appearance of a Roman officer on a painted shroud found at Deir el-Medineh in Egypt, comparing them with other images as well as textile finds from late Roman Egypt. Based on textile and pictorial evidence from further east, she argues that especially the arrow-shaped clavi on his tunic display links between the soldiers of Egypt and Syria. The Deir el-Medineh image is also the subject of the final chapter (9) by G. Sumner, in which we get an illustrator's insight into the difficulties of reconstructing dress from ancient pictorial evidence. It is somewhat perplexing that this article does not cross-reference the image of the original shroud in ch. 7, and also that these two contributions are separated by another, wholly unrelated contribution by S. Möller-Wiering which summarises the latest interpretations of the textile finds from north German and Scandinavian weapon deposit sites and their relation to contemporary Roman military dress.
Overall, this volume makes a significant contribution to a neglected field, and will be indispensable as a basis for further work. The authors and editors are to be commended for breaking new ground and crossing disciplinary divides to provide us with exciting new avenues of study on the subject of textiles in a Roman military context.
