{"id":5814,"date":"2025-07-06T06:58:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T05:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toshareproject.it\/artmakerblog\/?p=5814"},"modified":"2025-07-07T05:41:47","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T04:41:47","slug":"a-video-costume-play-demo-of-an-ancient-roman-multitool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toshareproject.it\/artmakerblog\/a-video-costume-play-demo-of-an-ancient-roman-multitool\/","title":{"rendered":"A video costume-play demo of an ancient Roman multitool"},"content":{"rendered":"

*It’s nice to see one of those modern replicas treated in this hands-on fashion. I’ve often wondered if I should own one, just to encourage the trade. The modern replicas cost about as much as a modern Leatherman Arc.<\/p>\n

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Screenshot<\/p><\/div>\n

*As our Youtuber suggests, this gadget might have been a Roman military tool because (a) the “Swiss Army Knife” originated as a military tool and (b) most every man in Roman life was in the military at some time or another.<\/p>\n

*But it’s silver, and it’s dainty, and it just doesn’t look very milspec. They can’t have been common military general-issue devices (because there is only one known in the world). I’m thinking that a lone officer using this fancy gadget in a camp mess would be ridiculed.<\/p>\n

*The wax-stylus theory is interesting. It suggests some kind of travelling aristocrat-bureaucrat. A fine imperial functionary-overseer who is here today, gone tomorrow, but anxious to impress the rubes with his finicky distinctions, his table manners and his personal grooming, while also keeping careful tabs of the grain shipments and the tax receipts.<\/p>\n

*Togas lacked pockets, so I have to wonder how a tool of this kind was carried. It can’t be left in the horse’s saddlebags, so it has to be every-day-carry kept on the user’s person, but how? In some slung fabric pouch together with the wax tablet, maybe.<\/p>\n

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