What happened when a detachment was sent to another front, or sent to help another legion, but traveled under it's own vex? Did the shield design get changed, or did they fall in next to the sister unit with a different shield design? Did the legions in first century armies take a standardized design from the army they were with, or the commander, or was each legion, cohort, alae and detachment carrying it's own design?
Quote:What happened when a detachment was sent to another front, or sent to help another legion, but traveled under it's own vex? Did the shield design get changed, or did they fall in next to the sister unit with a different shield design? Did the legions in first century armies take a standardized design from the army they were with, or the commander, or was each legion, cohort, alae and detachment carrying it's own design?
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P[/size]erhaps there was no standard shield designs... perhaps it was just a general outline of what you had to have and YOU decided what was on your shield?
DMV
The legionary had personal choice?
I seldom get that in my own house.
I can't imagine a vexillation not keeping its own shield design. After all, they did maintain their unit idendity.
The more interesting question would about a draft of troops sent from one province to replace troops who had been killed in another province. An example: the 2000 or so legionary troops sent from the Rhine frontier to replace those killed in Britain during the Boudiccan rebellion.
Presumably they would march carrying shields with their original unit emblems. But how long before they either repainted their shields or replaced them in entirety with new shields with their new unit emblem?
It seems pretty clear to me that shield emblems were important identifiers. There is the account in Tacitus' "Histories" from the Battle of Second Cemona, in which two legionaries on the Flavian side took shields from two dead Vitellian legionaries. Using them as their sole means of disguise, they were able to approach and put out of action a Vitellian catapult. In a situation, in which Romans were fighting Romans, shield emblems, therefore, must have been meaningful.
Crests may have meant something as well, but we know virtually nothing about them, other than about centurions' crests, during the Principate.
Something to think about, right?
Marcus Quintius Clavus
aka: Quinton Marcus Johansen