Matthew Amt wrote:
Kurt Scholz wrote:
A place to look for such armour could be North Africa. We have Polybius mention Hannibal's elite African troops exchanging their leather armour for Roman armour...
And I think Polybius has one brief mention about Roman marines wearing leather armour for increased mobility, so look at the classis.


Can you give us a citation for either of these? I've never heard that he actually mentions leather armor, and I'm thinking that would have been mentioned by someone in one of the numerous debates on leather armor over the years! Hannibal did indeed distribute captured Roman gear to his troops, but I honestly don't remember what he says about what they might have been wearing up to that point.


I don't have Polybios or Livy at hand, but I've read the original Greek of the former and the Latin of the latter and I don't remember any specific hints that the Carthaginian forces wore leather before their rearmament with Roman equipment. In fact, neither source really says much about the equipment of Hannibal's African troops (the ones Polybius states as having been rearmed with Roman arms) before the re-equipment.