Roman Tunic Color

[Tarbicus]

There actually does seem to be a very practical reason for wearing bright red on the pre-camouflage battlefield, and it has nothing to do with 'hiding blood or rust'.

http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic.php?t=17670

....the Grenadier Guards,....
....It turns out that red is the most difficult colour to count from a distance, and was deliberately worn to try to confuse the enemy as to the numbers of men they had in the field....

You have to ask why red was associated with Mars, why a red tunic was flown as a flag to signify battle was upcoming. I'm not saying no other colour was used, and tend to err towards white for, for instance, the 2nd Punic War based on a painting apparently showing soldiers with white shields and tunics. But I always err towards red for later for some reason.

[Graham Sumner]

Hi

Really Graham? And there was me thinking you wrote the 'Rome: Wars of Empire' for Brassy. Ah well, so much for me knowing everything.

I did and my other two books are ROMAN MILITARY CLOTHING 1 & 2
I only illustrated ROMAN MILITARY CLOTHING 3. So the new book for Tempus will be my fourth although I have also worked on some of the text for another book with Raffaele D'Amato which finally turned into three books as we had produced so much material for it!

Glad you like the illustrations for Ross Cowan's articles in AW, I also illustrated his book FOR THE GLORY OF ROME.



[quote]Why does there have to be a uniform color? What cultural evidence shows that it would be important to them that there were distinct colors? [/quote

There is plenty of evidence that social status both for soldiers and civilians was very important to the Romans and one of the main ways of showing this was through dress and colour. The most obvious being if you could afford silk clothes dyed with true shellfish purple.

Graham.

[Nicholas Gaukroger]

You have to ask why red was associated with Mars,

Appears somewhat red in the sky doesn't it?

[Tarbicus]

You have to ask why red was associated with Mars,

Appears somewhat red in the sky doesn't it?

True, but when it was still red, long before, he wasn't the god of war, but the god of agriculture IIRC ? If so (and I need to check that), it raises the question whether Mars was associated with war after red was already the colour to use in battle (allegedly)?

Chicken or egg?

[Marcus Mummius]

You have to ask why red was associated with Mars,

Appears somewhat red in the sky doesn't it?

True, but when it was still red, long before, he wasn't the god of war, but the god of agriculture IIRC ? If so (and I need to check that), it raises the question whether Mars was associated with war after red was already the colour to use in battle (allegedly)?

Chicken or egg?

From what I remember Mars was never god of agriculture. In early republican days Mars was seen as the protector of agriculture. Quirinus was more of a god of agriculture as he made sure agriculture was succesful. Mars was closely bonded to Quirinus just as as the people of Rome were both farmers and soldiers. Quirinus was also sometimes seen as a peaceful Mars.

The early republican trias of gods was Juppiter-Mars-Quirinus. Quirinus was later replaced by Iuno as a member of the high god trias.

Some people see the early republican trias cristalised in the person of Romulus. Romulus was a goatherd first, then a warrior and finaly a king. Quirinus->Mars->Juppiter.

Vale,

[Tarbicus]

This goes into more detail:
http://www.souledout.org/nightsky/marsa ... lture.html
The author seems to have a keen interest in mythology.

The Wiki page

[url:1vru29gl]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(mythology)[/url] (copy and paste the whole link)

also puts him being later associated with Ares, a very different deity to the Roman god of fertility and vegetation and a protector of cattle, fields and boundaries he originally was.

Who knows, perhaps red became the colour of war, they decided it better to put the red planet with the colour of war, but who knows? Then there's this explanation, which makes sense:

http://www.ancientsites.com/aw/Post/265170
For a time Mars was both an agricultural and military deity, thus symbolizing the duality of the Roman citizen as both farmer and soldier.

[Ceannt]

Based on what evidence???

(Graham sumner quote)


I did not mean to start to prech or to p##s :oops: off anyone and i am sorry if i did.

As for evidence why do schools and all armies of today, make people wear unaforms? to create a group mentalaty.

(they found a letter i dont know were but it says a centurion asking for wite and red tunics)

P.S sorry for the bad spelling

[Ludens]

Just something that popped into my mind while reading this thread.

My professor of sociology once told in class that in many ancient cultures blood has a special meaning. If someone loses a lot of blood, he gets pale, weak or even dies. This could be the origin of blood as symbol of strenght and life. Since blood is so important, it's the next best thing for offering a human life to the gods.

If legionairs would wear red (with a big "IF") it could be it's not to hide blood, but as symbol for blood = strenght and life.

But that just a personal idea, one of many possible antropological hypotheses, I don't claim to be a historical fact :wink:

[Correus]

I just think the color red is cool looking on a legionairy!!!

< Not based on historical evidance > :lol:

[jc02005]

Roman tunic colours depends on what are they like rich people slaves or normal citizen.





Cheers
johnathan

[Marcus Julius]

There actually does seem to be a very practical reason for wearing bright red on the pre-camouflage battlefield, and it has nothing to do with 'hiding blood or rust'.

http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic.php?t=17670

....the Grenadier Guards,....
....It turns out that red is the most difficult colour to count from a distance, and was deliberately worn to try to confuse the enemy as to the numbers of men they had in the field....

There may be other reasons as well. I remember reading a study, where statistically sports teams that wear read have a significantly higher win percentage over teams wearing any other color. Apparently there is a deeper psychological advantage to wearing red.

....besides, I would think that if red tunics were worn to hide blood, then they also would have worn brown and yellow trousers to hide other problems :lol:

P.S. Graham, look forward to the book. Just wish we didn't have to wait a year for it. Darn the publishers anyway.

[Marcus Julius]

As for evidence why do schools and all armies of today, make people wear unaforms? to create a group mentalaty.

I'll chime in and disagree with this statement. training together, eating together, mass punishment, etc. are all ways of creating a group mentality. The reason for uniforms, in both athletics and military, is to make it easier to distinguish between friend and foe. It's also why American Football teams have both color uniforms and white uniforms (to avoid the problem of two teams both wearing the same colors).
When I was in the service, we used to spend hours memorizing the camoflauge patterns (as well as weapons, vehicles and other equipment) worn by various nations, so that we would be able to tell our NATO allies apart from the enemy. I believe that this concept reached it's peak with medieval heraldry.

[Tarbicus]

As for evidence why do schools and all armies of today, make people wear unaforms? to create a group mentalaty.

I'll chime in and disagree with this statement. training together, eating together, mass punishment, etc. are all ways of creating a group mentality. The reason for uniforms, in both athletics and military, is to make it easier to distinguish between friend and foe. It's also why American Football teams have both color uniforms and white uniforms (to avoid the problem of two teams both wearing the same colors).

Not so much group mentality, but group identity.

I'm not convinced there was a uniform colour of tunic within even a smaller unit yet, like some others. At the start of the battle of Cannae the reason for the Romans being confused into thinking the approaching Carthaginian army were Romans was due to the looted Roman equipment they wore. So I think the armour and weapons were more of an holistic identifier. Where Brian mentions the modern military's study of camouflage, etc, there's no reason why the ancients wouldn't discuss the identifying features of other nations, cultures, tribes, simply as part of common conversation and cultural knowledge, which would just be an everyday given and helpful in trade, who to trust and not to trust, etc.

It's also a fairly regular feature of artistic representation where two or more soldiers can be identified it seems quite rare for them all to wear the same colour of tunic, but red and white seem to be the most common.