Reply #8: the Journal of Roman Military Equipment had an interesting study ... [View All]

[Lisa]

... regarding how heavy and cumbersome the gear from various periods was. (They had modern re-enactors participate in tests such as long-distance route marches.) A chain-mail shirt (a common type of armour from Roman times into the Middle Ages) came out to be about 15-20 lbs. Roman plate armour, e.g. the "lorica segmentata", was a bit more than that. (I own a riveted mailshirt, and one reason they were popular so long might be because they do provide better ventilation than solid plates.) Aside from worries about overheating, though, if plate armour is well-fitted, the weight is well-balanced and you can still move around normally.

In fact, the relative lack of body armour in colonial through modern times (Revolutionary War, Civil War, the World Wars) is somewhat unusual -- even common soldiers in earlier times were often wearing some form of protection (like the troops who were wearing leather or cloth coats reinforced with steel plates, at the Battle of Wisby).