Roman Standards

[Matt Lukes]

Well just like anywhere else, there are all viewpoints in reenactment too- some of us have no trouble with the idea of women portraying legionaries so long as at an event, for example, they're not recognizably female- that would be incorrect since there were no female legionaries, and confusing for 'the public'. Luckily armor, helmet, etc. should do the job or at very least explaining constantly that as a modern-day person you're participating, not that there were women soldiers in the Roman army, etc., etc. (which is probably less fun LOL). And not all reenactors have a bad opinion of the SCA either- personally, I'm well aware that they don't claim to be accurate and authentic in all things, and that it's for enjoyment primarily, it's not supposed to be real history. It would be though I think a bit difficult to meld the two and to either well.

But as for standards, Roman ones weren't like the personal standards of medieval knights- they're unit pieces, whether Centuria, Cohors, Legio or whatever. The Emperor probably had his own, but other than that they were group identifiers. I'm not sure one could classify the gladiator pieces as analogous to the army ones since they I think would have been more like knight's personal standards.