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The idea that Roman soldiers went everywhere dressed
simply in tunic and boots (in addition to their personal equipment)
is patently false, yet most Roman re-enactment societies, including
our own, propagate this false idea to the public by displaying in
the expected tunic and boots clothing option whatever the weather.
An inescapable fact however, is that the Roman army was a body (or
a number of bodies) of seasoned professional men, who would not
only have been used to tough conditions and been acclimatised to
them, but would also have been sensible enough to know that dressing
for the weather can be the difference between sickness and health.
The phrase ‘any fool can be cold’ was probably no less
true then than it is now.
What clothing was available then?
The one item of cold weather clothing which most
of us already own is a cloak and for the Romans (like everybody
else) cloaks were probably the most obvious protection from the
cold available. Two sorts of cloaks seem to have been common amongst
the general soldiery, namely the paenula and the sagum. These (especially
saga) could be very big and heavy (and consequently warm) and in
the case of the paenula, could feature hoods. In addition to this,
there are literary references to undercloaks (subpaenulae) and at
least one of the Rhineland stelae seems to show something which
looks like shoulder doubling on the inside of the cloak. It is also
relevant to state that if the cloaks were not subjected to modern
dying processes they would retain much of the natural lanolin in
the wool, which would make them fairly water resistant. Cloaks however,
are not practical to wear all the time so they represent only one
of a number of types of cold weather protection.
Despite their apparent rarity in the sculptural record,
we know that socks (udones) were fairly common. As most people reading
this will already know, socks are in fact mentioned in one of the
Vindolanda letters (which also tells us that soldiers could also
receive clothing as gifts from their families) and are probably
shown on the Cancalleria reliefs. Socks could be made in two ways,
either by being cut from fabric and stitched together or by being
made by the sprang work method, which is reasonably similar to crocheting.
Examples of both types have survived, with the cloth type surviving
not only from Vindolanda but also from a series of waterlogged graves
in Gaul, and the sprang work type is known from examples which have
survived in Egypt (the Egyptian examples were brightly striped and
were designed with a separate toe to accommodate thong type sandals).
The possible socks shown on the Cancalleria reliefs lack toes and
heels and could have been made from a cloth or sprang work tube
with a horizontal slit halfway down which would open around the
heel when the sock was put on.
Next come leg wrappings and leg bindings. The former
are the rectangular pieces of cloth which are wrapped around the
lower leg and tied off with strings made from warp threads which
have been left long and then been twisted together (rather than
ties which have been sewn on). These probably had a Germanic origin
but would almost certainly have been used by Roman soldiers in Britain
who had previously been stationed in Germany. Leg bindings look
very similar to the puttees worn by late 19th and early 20th century
soldiers. These seem to be native to the Italians and are fairly
commonly seen in contemporary depictions. We can be fairly confident
that these were also used by solders to keep out the cold, although
they would also have been used to protect the legs from rough undergrowth
and to support the muscles of the leg (indeed, these rather than
protection from the cold may have been the primary reasons for their
issue, but it would have seemed like common sense to men used to
wearing them to use them as cold weather clothing if they had them).
Both of these items were probably known as 'fascia' and when combined
with socks provide very good cold protection. From experience I
do not recommend wearing them on a hot day! The fascia also demonstrate
that the ancients understood that the coldest level of air is that
which lies within a foot of ground level and thus requires the best
insulation, a fact also recognised by the Gauls, if some of the
socks which have survived are anything to go by. Udones and fascia
may have been standard issue items, as a papyrus from Masada lists
them with other items of clothing along with deductions from the
soldier’s pay for each item
Next, but just as significantly, a favourite Roman
method of keeping out the cold was to wear more than one tunic at
a time. The emperor Augustus supposedly routinely wore no less than
four tunics at a time (in addition to his toga presumably). Soldiers
would certainly have done this. It would not be outside the realms
of possibility that a Roman soldier might have purchased a locally
made long sleeved tunic and worn it under his Roman type tunic (or
tunics).
Next we come to the scarf (focale). As anyone
who lives in a cold climate knows, scarves are very good at keeping
you warm. The few known Roman depictions of scarves show them to
be shaped very like modern scarves (sometimes even with tasselled
ends). Graham Sumner also suggests that the small triangular scarves
used by many re-enactors may not be correct and suggests that scarves
may in fact have been straight and quite large. Depending on how
it is worn, the ends of a scarf can also provide extra insulation
to the chest area.
The next thing to consider is hats. We know that
the Romans had access to hats for sunny weather and it stands to
reason that, given the fact that heat is lost from the head faster
than any other part of the body, they would probably have worn hats
in cold weather. In addition to the hoods of their cloaks, it has
been suggested that soldiers may have worn their helmet linings
as hats, but as some linings appear to have been glued into their
helmets, this cannot have been the case all the time, if it was
at all. It is possible the hats worn in winter may have resembled
the brimmed hats worn in sunny weather. It is even possible that
these hats were one and the same. Depictions of travellers on Greek
vases often show them wearing high boots (or shoes and lower leg
coverings) and virtually always show them wearing a hat and cloak.
Given that this clothing seems designed for use in colder weather
(there being no doorways for the traveller to hide in when the rain
came down), it seems likely that the brimmed hats shown were not
straw hats but felt or perhaps leather hats, which would keep out
cold and rain better. By contrast, some Italian pottery statuettes
of the same period show people wearing yellow brimmed hats which
are almost certainly supposed to represent straw. It is possible
that a straw hat could be worn in hot weather but a felt or leather
version of the same thing worn in cold weather (this could also
help explain the writer Vegetius’ statement that soldiers in
earlier times had worn heavy leather hats). Brimmed hats like those
worn by agricultural workers in some mosaics and statuettes are
normally assumed to be straw but could just as easily have been
made from warmer and more waterproof materials such as felt and
leather. Hats may not have been issued to soldiers but even then
they would probably have been easy of make or purchase.
Finally, we come to trousers. Trousers seem an obvious
solution to us, and obviously they must have seemed obvious to soldiers
of Celtic or Germanic origin, but that thinking may not have applied
to the Roman mindset, which tended to think of trousers as the mark
of the barbarian (a term which included Persians, along with the
other barbarians we would normally think of). This is not to say
that the common soldier necessarily shared all of the views of his
social superiors and there must have been occasions when soldiers
on campaign supplemented their existing clothing with locally obtained
trousers, but many, if not most of them, may have felt little need
to do this. They already had tried and trusted cold weather clothing
in the form of hooded cloaks and lower leg coverings, and (probably)
felt and/or leather hats.
It is also worth remembering that not all cultures
immediately take on the idea of trousers, the Scots being an obvious
example. Whatever the actual origins of the kilt, it is worth noting
that thousands of Scottish soldiers went through the First World
War and a slightly lesser number during the Second World War wearing
kilts and heavy knee length socks. Obviously this was an issued
uniform, but there are enough surviving photographs of Scottish
soldiers in muddy, waterlogged trenches to show that they really
did wear the kilt under campaign conditions (albeit often supplemented
with Wellington boots). Trousers are not necessarily essential to
keeping warm in the cold! We know of course, that Roman legionaries
did eventually wear trousers, but the earliest evidence for this
dates to the period of the Dacian wars, several decades after the
period which our equipment would be typical for and we thus represent.
As a conclusion then, the Roman soldier faced with
cold weather and sensible enough to dress appropriately had a number
of clothing options which he could wear singly or in conjunction
with each other. Thus he had at his disposal socks, lower leg coverings,
extra tunics, a scarf, a cloak and probably a rainproof hat, whilst
the barbarian elements of the army would also naturally gravitate
to trousers as an option.
In the illustration below, the soldier on the
left has supplemented his basic clothing with socks, leg wrappings,
a locally obtained long sleeved tunic worn under his normal tunic
and a sagum. The soldier on the right has opted for enclosed boots,
socks, leg bindings, an extra tunic and a paenula.
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