04-26-2005, 07:50 PM
This question often pops up, usually with regard to the passage from Vegetius that the sailors of the British fleet wore blue uniforms the same colour as the sea. (Vegetius, Epit., IV, 37)
What colour does Vegetius mean as the sea in British waters would be a very different colour from that of the Mediterranean. In fact later on in the same passage Vegetius supplies the answer, Venetian Blue i.e the same colour as the Blue circus faction. Therefore any pictures of charioteers wearing blue tunics will give you the correct shade.
Although there are a number of ancient references which connect blue colours with the navy and possibly naval uniforms just to complicate things a tombstone of a marine from Crete was found with traces of red paint on tunic and cloak! I reconstructed both this figure and a British marine in Roman Military Clothing 1 and 2 published by Osprey.
Graham.
What colour does Vegetius mean as the sea in British waters would be a very different colour from that of the Mediterranean. In fact later on in the same passage Vegetius supplies the answer, Venetian Blue i.e the same colour as the Blue circus faction. Therefore any pictures of charioteers wearing blue tunics will give you the correct shade.
Although there are a number of ancient references which connect blue colours with the navy and possibly naval uniforms just to complicate things a tombstone of a marine from Crete was found with traces of red paint on tunic and cloak! I reconstructed both this figure and a British marine in Roman Military Clothing 1 and 2 published by Osprey.
Graham.
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream" Edgar Allan Poe.
"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.
"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.
"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
