Uniformity

[A_Volpe]

In addition to "Dressing the Roman Soldier", you'll also want to consult MC Bishop's monograph "The Distribution of Military Equipment within Roman Forts in the First Century", and "The Logistics of the Roman Army at War", by Johathon Roth, which should be available on Academia.edu. Anything by Bishop is excellent. Also look for "Roman Military Equipment" from Bishop and Coulston (Coulston also is excellent). Also try to find "Roman Military Dress" by Graham Sumner (…excellent), there's a 3-volume series similar to this singular work available through Osprey Publishing (Men At Arms, "Roman Military Clothing I, II, III).

As I'd mentioned earlier, The Romans did seem to have a lot of similarity in their gear, at particular time periods. The Montefortino style helmet is considered the most common helmet used by the Romans (and dates back to the Etruscans) in the Republic period, and several examples are nearly identical to each other, the helmet appears virtually unchanged for some 200 years. But the rest of the gear used by a Punic Wars Legionary or otherwise during the Republic, is very hard to nail down. In the Augustan period and much of the Principate, helmets found seem to sport similar, if nearly identical features, such as brow-guards, decorative bosses, and what are thought to be crest attachment rings on nearly all helmets. Belt plates in the early Empire seem to follow similar patterns, like the "typical" mid-first century square shaped belt plate with concentric circles, that appears to be very common from around Nero until around Hadrian (close to a century). But, there appears to be enough slight variations in found belt parts that seems to indicate some level of "individuality" that each soldier could put on their belt. In the Late Empire, we see nearly identical examples of the so-called "Intercisa" or Berkosovo style helmets, and those seem to be in use for…About 200 years, much like the Montefortino from the old Republic!

So, this is what I mean by "standard" but not "uniform identical" gear. It appears with all of the archaeological evidence that gear tends to follow themes or styles that are "typical" in fashion for a few years, but then slowly change. If you look at Lorica Segmentata (Bishop by the way has an excellent 2-volume series dedicated to it), there seems to be a similar fashion and arrangement of the armor for it's 200-300 year existence, but, styles seem to change over those years. The Corbridge Hoard has what has been determined to be 3-4 slightly different types of the same armor.

The so-called Coolus or Bugenem style helmet all seems to be of the same basic manufacture, of a spun bowl, but no 2 cheek pieces are the same. If the Romans were trying to establish identical uniformity, then why don't we find identical helmets in the archaeological records? So, more questions than answers there.

As I stated earlier, we don't have anything that says the Romans were supposed to have identical gear and to look identical to each other. The shield designs, however, seems to be where identical design is needed, for Unit identity, which posed a problem during the Year of the Four Emperors civil war in 69. The battle of Cremona was the example of this, as according to the story, soldiers from Vespasian (?)'s side picked up dropped shields from Vitellius' side, and were able to walk up to the enemy Romans and destroy a siege-engine crew, as their helmets and armor were so similar to their own as to not be distinguishable.

Later on Vegetius (in the 5th century) writes that soldiers are "supposed to have" gear such as a helmet, body armor, sword, etc. But he does not specify what that looked like or that it followed a particular pattern. He also states that soldiers should write their name and unit on the inside of their shields, so they can identify them if they are dropped, etc. That also supports the idea that shield designs are supposed to be identical for that particular unit.

But again, none of that tells us if they wore a "Bugeneum style" helmet for 30 years and then changed to a "Italic C", which of course are the terminology we assign to those helmets and artifacts today. The Romans just didn't seem to have a tradition of recording things to that level of detail. We do, today. The Romans may not have even cared, so as long as orders and supplies were met.

There is also nothing that survives that tells us the Romans marched in-step to a cadence, etc in robotic precision. That is entirely modern, and has been a tradition for only about 300 years. The Romans, by all accounts, are not Robotic. We don't even know if they had a "salute" hand gesture, which is also a modern concept - They never seemed to have had a tradition of such a thing. It seems as if the Romans were very similar to the Late Medieval/15th century and onwards to 18th century armies that the Romans themselves influenced. With a little bit of regular training and practice, a body of soldiers can maintain intervals and positioning, and maneuver as a cohesive unit, without stepping on each other's feet, and without the need for drums (which is also entirely modern, Romans only ever used trumpets to relay signals)