This Is The Most Complete Roman Armor Ever Discovered

This is one of the most extraordinary pieces of Roman armour ever found. More than 2,000 years old, these fragments of metal belong to a type of breastplate that has become synonymous with Rome's most iconic soldiers, the legionaries. It's called lorica segmentata, banded segmented armour. Do you have any idea what the story is behind this particular piece? I have been told by the Calcarisa people that somebody died inside. They know that from the chemical traces in the soil. You might immediately associate this with Rome's military power, its martial strength, but context is everything because this, in fact, is a remnant of one of Rome's greatest defeats. For the first time ever, this armour has left Germany to be the showstopper of a brand new exhibition at the British Museum all about the Roman army, Legion. I've received special behind-the-scenes access to learn more about its story. The team have to be incredibly careful when building this armour, attaching each metal plate with pinpoint precision. It's a time-consuming and complex process, but there's no one better to oversee its building than curator Christiane Matz. Christiane, how many times have you assembled this armour before today? One time. One time? Yeah, it's a really new find. It's from 2017 and the conservation work has just finished. So we had it on display in our museum in Calcarisa, the Wachschlacht Museum. And it was shown for the first time from June to November. And now it's the second time on display and it's here in London in the British Museum. It almost feels like this is a very, very delicate puzzle, its result, isn't it? And so many bits of it survived. It's extraordinarily well-preserved, including those details on it. These details show us a lot of the construction of such kind of armour. The first time we have such an armour from the Roman legions, it's so exciting. We knew now a lot more. We have so much information about this special kind of armour. Here it is in all its glory. It's known as lorica segmentata, segmented armour. 30 metal plates survive, roughly three quarters of the complete set, and they are all carefully fitted onto this specially designed frame. To find out more about this incredible piece, I'm meeting the exhibition's curator, Richard Abdey. So I know that this is lorica segmentata. What materials is it made out of? Oh, well, we call it lorica segmentata, but we don't actually know what the Romans called it, so it's kind of a modern term in Latin. But the material that it's made out of is iron, mostly. All the bands, the plates are iron. But there's a lot of fittings, loads of buckles and washers, and these are copper alloy material. Because the details of it is astonishing. So those are buckles right there. Do we know how they were used to kind of create and kind of tighten this body up? Well, we do. This is a particularly good example, because you can see that there's buckles inside and outside. The inside buckles would have held straps that held the whole structure together. And that's something that wasn't very well understood until the first near-complete pieces of segmental armour came to light. People were looking at representations on, for example, Trajan's Column, and not quite fully understanding how it fitted together. But with this, you can see every buckle tells you exactly how the plates were fitted together. On the front, obviously, these buckles would have held the cuirass in place, and it's so well preserved that you can see that some of these buckles are actually open. So it is an amazing piece. I mean, obviously, I'm wearing a belt today, so it does feel really raceable that 2,000 years ago, Romans were using similar types of things to fasten this armour together. Yes, absolutely. There's nothing new under the sun in that respect. 2,000 years ago, at the beginning of the first millennium, Lorica segmentata was a brand new piece of high-tech equipment for the Roman army. Slowly, it replaced chainmail as the body armour of choice for legionaries. The origins of segmentata are unknown, but potentially it emerged from the arenas of Italy and its iconic sportsman, the gladiators. A specialist form of gladiator called a crupularius would have worn this, and there are some surviving examples of it in Roman art. He looks like kind of a tin man with a bucket head and segmental body armour and armoured limbs, so the whole body is completely armoured. The earliest references to a crupularius is in the revolt of Florus and Sacrevier, so early first century, and this is round about a very similar period, so there seems to be a sort of cross-fertilisation between the two forms of combat. And later on, what kind of differences are introduced to this type of armour? Well, this early form of armour, it has some shoulder protection, but it's not very wide or deep. It's more kind of tank-top-ish, if you like. The later armour, for example, the corbridge armour, the famous corbridge find. We have one of half a dozen cuirasses that were discovered there in the exhibition. That shows a much more elaborate form of shoulder protection. Flexible, but protecting the shoulder. And then the final stage after that is for the removal of all these exterior hinges and washers from the front, mainly putting them inside, because these are very vulnerable to battle damage. And I've also got to ask about maintenance of something like this. Let's say you're a Roman soldier, but your armour starts to get a bit dirty or worn down, and you had to maintain it. Do we know much about how they'd be able to disassemble something like this? Well, we know lots about the kind of high-maintenance nature of this stuff from reenactors. They can tell us all about it. Brilliant. So with segmental armour, you've got about 40 pieces. They're all held together with buckles and straps, as you can see from the inside. That has to be completely disassembled, if you like, and then each bit cleaned up, polished up. The alternative might be to wear a chainmail cuirass, but then a chainmail cuirass is something that takes a long time to create. It's a very intricate piece, but it's very low-maintenance. Reenactors have found that you can shine up a chainmail cuirass just by putting it in a bucket of grit and rolling it around, or a barrel of grit, rather. But perhaps the most fascinating part of this armour's story is the devastating Roman defeat that intertwines with it. In 9 AD, a coalition of Germanic tribes ambushed and annihilated three Roman legions east of the River Rhine in the Teutoburg Forest. The ambush occurred over several days, and at the site of Kalkreise in Germany, archaeologists have uncovered a wealth of Roman military objects dating to that exact period, including this segmentata. It has led many to conclude that this was a battlefield of that devastating ambush, which could mean the Roman soldier who once wore this armour was a victim of this crushing defeat. Do you have any idea what the story is behind this particular piece? Well, the soil that this comes from isn't very good at preserving bones, I gather, but I have been told by the Kalkreise people that somebody died inside. They know that from the chemical traces in the soil. So we're looking at a casualty of the battlefield of Kalkreise. Wow, and Kalkreise, of course, is associated with that massive defeat the Romans suffered in Germania, 9 AD, back in the Teutoburg Forest. Amazing to think this could have been one of those unfortunate legionaries who perished in that several-day-long ambush. Absolutely, yes, it's an amazing place. Three whole legions, expeditionary force across the Rhine, perished, absolutely annihilated. It's amazing we can find one today. For all its depictions in movies, games and books today, only a handful of Lorica segmentata fragments have ever been found. There is still so much we don't know about this iconic cuirass. Slowly but surely, however, thanks to extraordinary new discoveries like this, new information is coming to light. For now, this is the earliest and most complete set of this armour ever discovered. For now. It is amazing to see this centre stage in the exhibition, having watched Christiane and the team assembling it down in the lab. And I must say, it is quickly becoming one of my favourite Roman artefacts. It's that great combination of a stunning level of detail surviving, alongside an absolutely alluring story. The story of an unnamed Roman soldier who lived and died, who wore this armour, may well have perished in it more than 2,000 years ago.