Julius Caesar’s Roman legionary is undoubtedly an iconic type of Roman legionary: the soldiers who conquered Gaul, who fought the civil wars at the end of the Republic. The soldiers who laid the foundations for the Roman Empire.
It is possible to faithfully reconstruct the armament of this Roman soldier thanks to archaeology, written sources, and available visual sources. The appearance of these soldiers, highly distinctive, is often very different from what we imagine.
The bundle we offer gives you the opportunity to reconstruct a Roman legionary of Julius Caesar engaged in the wars in Gaul. If you would like to build a panoply from this period, but with variations, contact info@res-bellica.com for a customized quote.
Helmet, shield, and armor
During this historical period, the Roman soldier wore a very simple helmet: the Coolus-Mannheim helmet. It was a simple skullcap, equipped with a small neck guard.
These helmets arose from the need to mass-produce equipment for Rome’s armies. A need that had existed since the 2nd century BC, leading to the choice of very simple helmets, with minimal or no decoration, as in this case.
The shield is basically the same of the mid-Republican era: a large oval or sub-rectangular convex scutum with a central handle and a metal boss reinforcing the wooden spine.
At the very end of the Caesarian era, at the beginning of the Imperial era, this type of shield was finally replaced by the famous rectangular scutum that we so often associate with legionaries.
The armour of this panoply is the most typical of Roman soldiers of the period: mail armour, with alternating solid rings and riveted rings, today known as lorica hamata. However, this is a neologism: we do not know the precise name by which the Romans called it during this period. In earlier periods, we know that in Latin this armor was called lorica gallica.
Weapons
The primary weapon of Julius Caesar’s legionaries was the pilum, which Caesar himself describes in action numerous times in his works, such as De Bello Gallico.
At his right hip, the soldier carries his gladius. This is not yet the famous short sword of the Imperial period, which was developing precisely in these decades, but the gladius hispaniensis: a decidedly longer weapon, suitable for both cutting and thrusting, so typical of Roman legionaries.
The sword was hung from a cingulum, a must-have piece of equipment for a Roman soldier. We have no precise idea of how it was constructed in Julius Caesar’s time. The cingulum in our bundle is a hypothetical reconstruction, based on available iconographic sources. These show a series of tips, ancestors of the famous pendants typical of the Imperial period.
