page_title: Roman military personal equipment
section_title: Sarcina
hierarchical_section_title: Roman military personal equipment / Sarcina
caption_attribution_description: Roman soldiers with marching packs. Detail of sarcina (marching pack). From the cast of Trajan's column in the Victoria and Albert museum, London.
context_page_description: Roman military personal equipment was produced in small numbers to established patterns, and it was used in an established manner. These standard patterns and uses were called the res militaris or disciplina. Its regular practice during the Roman Republic and Roman Empire led to military excellence and victory. The equipment gave the Romans a very distinct advantage over their barbarian enemies, especially so in the case of armour. This does not mean that every Roman soldier had better equipment than the richer men among his opponents. According to Edward Luttwak, Roman equipment was not of a better quality than that used by the majority of Rome's adversaries. Other historians and writers have stated that the Roman army's need for large quantities of "mass produced" equipment after the Marian Reforms and subsequent civil wars led to a decline in the quality of Roman equipment compared to the earlier Republican era:
  "The production of these kings of helmets of Italic tradition decreased in quality because of the demands of equipping huge armies, especially during civil wars...
context_section_description: A military pack carried by legionaries. The pack included a number of items suspended from a furca or carrying pole. Items carried in the pack included:
  Loculus: a leather satchel
  Waterskin: Roman camps would typically be built near water sources, but each soldier would have to carry his water for the day's march in a waterskin.
  Food: each legionary would carry some of his food. Although a Roman army on the move would typically have a baggage train of mules or similar to carry supplies such as food, after the Marian reforms legionaries were required to carry about 15 days worth of basic food supplies with them.
  Cooking equipment: including a patera, cooking pot and skewer. A patera was a broad, shallow dish used for drinking, primarily in ritual contexts such as a libation.
  Entrenching tools: Carried by legionaries to construct fortifications and dig latrines etc. Each legionary would typically carry either a shovel (batillum) or dolabra (mattock) for digging, a turf cutting tool or a wicker basket for hauling earth.
  Sudis: stakes for construction of camps
caption: Marching packs of two soldiers illustrated on Trajan's Column showing loculus, cloak bag, patera, cooking pot and "netted object"
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