Shields?

[/Bean\]

Hehe..

So, the Romani did begin to paint their shields red after Marius? Which is where the legionary as we know him is born in all his forms, colours and all?
Interesting.

Why, then, are the Polybian Principes and Triarrii red? Is this actually inaccurate? Or was it to show a gentle change from Camillan to Marian?

[SwissBarbar]

Hehe..

So, the Romani did begin to paint their shields red after Marius? Which is where the legionary as we know him is born in all his forms, colours and all?
Interesting.

Why, then, are the Polybian Principes and Triarrii red? Is this actually inaccurate? Or was it to show a gentle change from Camillan to Marian?

Well, they surely did paint their shields before, but not uniformly, since the soldiers had to construct (or let construct) their own shields and could colour it in whatever manner they liked to.

Concerning the Polybians.. well, good question. Why are all the Camillan ones brown? Because the EB team only could've given them 1 colour, due to hardcoded clone-army limitations, and decided for the ones they have now. That's why I'm very much looking forward to EB II

[Ibrahim]

actually Romans dissapproved of shield-painting altogether at least until the early principate.

how did you come across that?

[Zaknafien]

the most famous bit of literary evidence perhaps is Scipio's dressing down of a soldier in spain for presenting a 'highly decorated' shield.

[/Bean\]

That's very interesting...have you got a passage?

[Ludens]

ooooohhh......well in that case, i think that the early militia should be non-uniform, but the later army should have uniform equipment and armor.

Didn't Caesar encourage his troops to have highly decorated shields so they would take pride in them? This obsession with uniformity stems from the gunpowder age; I don't think the Romans shared it. They wanted all their soldiers to have about the same equipment, but how they decorated was up to the individuals. It would anyway have added majorly to the cost for arms manufacturers to employ artists for painting designs on every shield (remember, no printing back then).

Off course, nowadays we associated uniformity with professional armies, and since the Roman army was the most professional of its time, people automatically assume they used uniforms as well. Did the other professional armies of the EB era, those of Alexander's successors, insist on an uniform shield design?

So no "Gaius Corvus slept with you mum" enblazing you shield in 3 different languages huh?

[antisocialmunky]

It was probably at the discretion of the local military commanders especially in the post-Marian age when they were paying to equip their men. Probably the rules would also be more lax for highly decorated units and reenlisted veterans. Probably every unit had different shield designs to distinguish from each other. Probably elite units would be painted using more different patterns so they would be recognized when they charged into battle by both your own men and the enemy.

[oudysseos]

A little study and research is always good before trying to criticise the team, eh?

Try;

Coulston, J.C. (ed.). Military Equipment and the Identity of Roman Soldiers: Proceedings of the Fourth Roman Military Equipment Conference.

Driel-Murray, C. van (ed.) Roman Military Equipment: the Sources of Evidence: Proceedings of the Fifth Roman Military Equipment Conference.

Croom, AT. Roman Clothing and Fashion.

Dawson, M. (ed.) Roman Military Equipment: The Accoutrements of War: Proceedings of the Third Roman Military Equipment Research Seminar.

ARMA: Newsletter of the Roman Military Equipment Conference.

Bishop, M.C. (ed.) Roman Military Equipment: Proceedings of a Seminar held in the Department of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Sheffield, 21st March, 1983.

Bishop, M.C. and Coulston, J.C.N. Roman Military Equipment, 2nd ed.

Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies.

You also might wanna try Romanarmytalk.com for exhaustive and well referenced discussions on militaria. Here's a quote on the subject:

As for the question of scuta colours and emblems, there are a number of depictions of the latter in various sculptures, but colour is a complete unknown. The only extant artifacts are from rather later than the classical high-empire period most reenactors choose, so aren't ideal evidence. Several of them, particularly the large curved Dura scutum, quite highly decorated with very detailed paintings. Particular colours, whether they had specific meaning, etc. are details we simply don't know. The literary evidence for identifying colours/figures is dubious at best, and unfortunately, I don't think there are more than single examples of clear emblems that could be from a specific Legion. So there's no proper proof even of those- they could just as easily be personal or even artistic license put in by the tombstone sculptor. However, given no better information, most choose to see them as Legio emblems because it is the best information available.

So actually, there is no positive evidence that there were ever 'uniforms' for the Romans, even in much later periods. This is something that we will never know for sure.

Oh, John, the Latin in your joke? It's wrong. Accusative case.

[/Bean\]

Ooh some sources, goodie.

Who was criticising the team?

Oh, and does that mean that the Romans shouldn't be wearing red? I've written this before searching out your sources, oudysseos, so sorry if it does say in there. I was always under the impression the Romans had the red military tunic after they turned into a proffessional army, even if the shields were not red.

Why is it, then, that Romans are always depicted as red? I presume their must be some strong evidence, for they are even red in EB; whose knowledge I trust. Once again if the answer was in one of your sources, oudysseos, I apologise.

[alatar]

If I rember right, there is not much about the colour, and in EB1 as they had to chose a colour, they just went with red.

[oudysseos]

Oh no Bean, you're grand! No need to apologize. It's John who's a bit rude.

If you're interested in tunic colours, go to romanarmytalk.com and do a search. It's amazing how intense those guys get about this stuff, but there'll be lots of sources. And some familiar names as well.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Ooh some sources, goodie.

Who was criticising the team?

I thought, the OP (original poster) ? ... Nevermind.

Oh, and does that mean that the Romans shouldn't be wearing red? I've written this before searching out your sources, oudysseos, so sorry if it does say in there. I was always under the impression the Romans had the red military tunic after they turned into a proffessional army, even if the shields were not red.

Why is it, then, that Romans are always depicted as red? I presume their must be some strong evidence, for they are even red in EB; whose knowledge I trust. Once again if the answer was in one of your sources, oudysseos, I apologise.

It means nothing whatsoever about colour: it explicitly says that anything about colour is dubious at best but basically a big X. For all that is apparently known the Romans dressed up in Pyjama-style Pink.

[antisocialmunky]

Its not really that there isn't evidence. There's friezes depicting roman soldiers. The problem is that no one knows how exactly to intepret it. http://www.larp.com/legioxx/tcolor.html has some(yes its a site for larpers but it links to pictures of friezes). There's ones depicting, red, blue, yellow, white, etc. No one even knows if there was a required tunic color. If we went back in time and asked someone, they might just say 'we wear the colors we like."

However at the end of the day, whether there was or wasn't a required color for tunics, the real 'uniform' of the later legionaires come from similarity of equipment.

[machinor]

I remember reading that an ancient author writing about the wars of Vespasian against Vitellus told about 2 soldiers taking the shields of fallen enemies to get behind enemy lines and demolish their siege machines. So there seems to have been at least some kind of common "heraldic" elements within a legion. However I do not know the exact source. I'll look that up.

[Prussian to the Iron]

thats very interesting. well this means that there must have been some sort of semi-uniformity at east, with several different selections.

[SwissBarbar]

which, I guess, is exactly what we will see in EB. Same shield-shape, same type, but different colours

[desert]

But red dye was pretty expensive, right?

[/Bean\]

Red is usually the cheapest dye around. Purple, rich blue or green would have been more expensive, hence purple being the more heirachy colour.

[Banzai!]

If you went all historic on the Romans and gave them shield and body variation, this is what they would probably end up looking like [particular emphasis on last panel] (originally posted by Geneva in the TWC):

I'm not sure if this is the desired result of taking historical realism to the max: Romans looking like Gauls.

Aside: lol at the shirtless guy who thinks he's so tough in the third panel, then getting pwned by the first javelin exchange in the fourth panel.

[/Bean\]

I'm not sure if this is the desired result of taking historical realism to the max: Romans looking like Gauls.

Well, why not? Especially if it's the early Republic. They must have been heavily influenced by the Gauls, even at this point, having had many a contact with them.

[SwissBarbar]

And being conquered by them and using similar language and being at least as barbarian ^^

[desert]

Hmmm, it seems like it was (cheap, that is). They made it from blood sometimes. Green and blue weren't that expensive though. Mardians and Persian archers have it.

http://www.cais-soas.com/cais/histor...quip.htm#Spara

This link is interesting.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Red is usually the cheapest dye around. Purple, rich blue or green would have been more expensive, hence purple being the more heirachy colour.

Rich, lasting, color of any kind would've been expensive: the cheap dyes usually fade in sunlight...
Incidentally, rich & lasting red would've been very expensive, similarly expensive as Tyrian purper.

However, weld (yellow), woad (blue), madder (red), lichen (yellow/brown -> red/purple) are all fairly cheap.

[Ibrahim]

the most famous bit of literary evidence perhaps is Scipio's dressing down of a soldier in spain for presenting a 'highly decorated' shield.

I see. thanks!

[Zaknafien]

the anecdote is in Plutarch's sayings btw. And yeah, i could see shield recognition being used during/after the civil wars as a way to identify romans from other romans.

[SonOfTangra]

Was it really Hollywood? Someone would have pointed that out by now, surely. As in life, not in this topic. I mean, was it really a case of Santa turning red because he was sponsered by Coca-Cola? Or were the Romans actually armed with red shields?

I do believe they had the customary red (cheapest dye[?])tunics to designate them as soldiers, but I think that was later, when equipment was provided by the state. Was the same rule followed with shields?

The color "RED" is a simbol of many things as for the romans so as for the ather nations in the ancient times. As I remember well the "RED" was the color of war for the romans.

"A “red-letter day” is one of special importance and good fortune."
"Red is supposedly the first color percieved by Man. Brain-injured persons suffering from temporary color-blindness start to perceive red before they are able to discern any other colors. Neolithic hunter peoples considered red to be the most important color endowed with life-giving powers and thus placed red ochre into graves of their deceased. This explains funds of skeletons embedded in up to 10 kg of red powdered ochre. Neolithic cave painters ascribed magic powers to the color red. The word "magic" ("Zauber" in German) translates to "taufr" in Old Norse and is related to the Anglo-Saxon "teafor" meaning "red ochre". It can be stipulated that they painted animals in red ochre or iron oxide to conjure their fertility.

Protective powers of the color red against evil influence were common belief. Objects, animals and trees were covered in red paint, warriors painted their axes and spear-catapults red to endow the weapons with magic powers. Some of the Australian aborigines abide by this custom up to the present times. Neolithic hunters and germanic warriors used to paint their weapons and even themselves in blood of slain animals. Roman gladiators drank blood of their dying adversaries to take over their strength. In other cultures, the newly born were bathed in blood of particularly strong and good looking animals.Red painted amulettes or red gems, such as ruby or garnet, were used as charms against the "evil eye". Wearing a red ruby was supposed to bring about invincibility. Red bed-clothes were customary in Germany up to the Middle Ages as protection against the "red illnesses", such as fever, rashes or even miscarriages (famous example is the painting Arnolfini Wedding by Jan Van Eyck, dated 1434)."

As for that "were the romans painted their shields in red" is true I don't know but it shure have a racional logic in it cose of their strong faith in the gods and the ancient times where A "superstitious"
times when everything was a omen or sign so give it a one more thought,

[geala]

I think the early Romans differed a lot from the Celts. Because they didn't wear trousers. All other is speculation.

There are findings of tunics with rests of colours f.e. from Roman Egypt. White (undyed wool) and yellow were frequent colours. Still you don't know wether it were some forms of "leisure" tunics or wether your findings were just exceptions (but unlikely). The discussion of Roman tunic colours is a long and never-ending adventure.

I think a good idea would be to give units in the later times similar tunic colours with different shades. And shields with similar emblems on it, perhaps with a similar shield colour. Red, green, yellow-brown and white are good candidates.

[satalexton]

a lot of keltoi didn't wear trousers too, especially the hellenic influenced ones.

[Ibrahim]

the anecdote is in Plutarch's sayings btw. And yeah, i could see shield recognition being used during/after the civil wars as a way to identify romans from other romans.

I see. I will try to check it out.

well, all I know about roman shields is tied to the late empire: namely the Notitia dignitatum. they have some really fancy patterns for the various field army regiments, so I know that at least in the late empire the shields followed regimental lines with each shield referring to a different unit.

[Ludens]

they have some really fancy patterns for the various field army regiments, so I know that at least in the late empire the shields followed regimental lines with each shield referring to a different unit.

A different unit within the regiment, or did the shields differ between regiments?