Bret Devereaux

So working proportions who met the census qualification requiring them to purchase mail shirts or comparable armors?

Complicated problem. Polybius' numbers clearly match what we get for the first class of pedites, but serious issues (Polybian legion set in 216, but census requirements match Livy using sextantal as which only comes around in 211.

There's room for doubt about the 'when' of the Polybian legion. And reconstructing the history of the lower classes of pedites is probably impossible. Did requirements shift? Lower qualifications? As w/ Rich, "Supposed Roman Manpower Shortage (1983)...we don't know.

I ended up running numbers for a range of possible prevalence cases to cope with the uncertainty. Ran figures for a legion if the h. inf. was 1/3 loricatus, 40%, 1/2 and 2/3rds.

In practice, given the (vanishing) evidence for the pectoral, probably those are in chronological sequence as we move through the second century and the lorica hamata slowly replaces all of the other common armors. But no way to reconstruct exact timing.

I'm actually working on an article that addresses some of these issues w/ the lorica hamata esp. Hope to have it into peer review somewhere soonish.

Huge questions all over the place for you! I suspect Polybius is mostly describing the legion of the Aemilian era, from the Third Macedonian to the Third Punic Wars.

But then you've got Dobson (2007) giving new life to Rawson's supposition that Polybius has the comentarii of second punic war military tribunes. Armor situation seems to me to argue for an earlier date. Pectoral just doesn't seem to exist in the mid-second century.