/cgl/ - Cosplay & EGL

>>8416819
It'd take some mining to put down 30 Legions' worth of mail and scale, even at the reduced sizes for Legions of the Empire, and keep them maintained, and that's not even counting the urban cohorts, the Praetorians, the vigiles, the cavalry's horses, and the list goes on and on for things large quantities of iron would be needed for. But you also have to remember that the really important mines were the gold and silver ones, since they had been debasing their coinage since Augustus, and the occupation of certain outlying provinces was actually bleeding the Empire's finances faster than they were making up for the cost expenditure. Mommsen goes into great detail about how around the time of Trajan, the occupations of both Britannia and Mesopotamia were costing Rome more than either were actually worth.

>>8371020
Romans tended to favor heavier armors until the late Empire, where they transitioned back to lighter chain more suited to a heavier cavalry presence. The closest approximation to plate+chain combination armor like the examples given are probably lorica squamata, which was scale armor that offered better overall torso protection than lorica hamata, pure chain armor. But no, I don't think they ever had a mass-produced version of a plate+chain combination armor type, at least none depicted on stoneworks, written about in accounts, or found in digs.