Dr. Francis McIntosh

And it might be that the officers have either the cuirass, which is like a full body plate or, you know, lorica, but also they'd just be wearing finer clothes.

So it might be finer fabrics in particular, you know, the centurions and others would have specific plumes on their helmets.

There wasn't quite many occasions where you'd wear a toga, but you might wear finer clothes, more brightly coloured, for example, because there is no uniform.

The sort of foot soldiers or the, you know, the equivalent of the squaddies, they'd get the basic tunics and armour, but you could then accessorise it yourself.

You know, when we talk about the soldier's belt and...

Yeah, definitely, you know, a commanding officer lives in a house that is basically a miniature version of a big courtyard house that you'd find in the Mediterranean, you know, and we saw at Chester's, you know, it's got underfloor heating, you know, there's painted wall plasters.

Yeah, and houses.

So it's a standard thing, you know, that you would have.

And so the soldier, sort of the lowly soldier, would probably just...

have the same tunic he wears all the time.

Whereas I imagine the canning officer and his wife, they'd be having much nicer clothes and the soldier would have off-duty clothes compared to, you know, his sort of soldier clothes.

Yes.

And they would be much higher quality, you know, and the women are wearing what we might call like a stola.

So it's, you know,

a long sort of draped equivalent, I suppose, of a dress, you know, and it'd be tied in at the waist.

You might have to have brooches at the shoulders and maybe on the sleeves.

You know, the jewellery as well would, you know, really mark them out.

And for women, it's the hairstyles because you've got to have money and time and probably someone to do your hair into a fancy do.

And so, you know, we start to see lots of hairpins or other sort of dress accessories, you know, that indicates its presence of women rather than just men.

Yeah, so Septimius Severus brings his wife and the two sons, doesn't he?