Reenactment Legion Uniformity vs Variety

[Matthew Amt]

Matthew if you are in charge and your wife can not pick you out then I would suggest that your not wearing the right gear. I.E not flashy enough. Even if officers wore the same colours as their men their clothing material would be more expensive and they would use the more expensive dyes. The same would apply to whatever armour and equipment they were using.

Oh, agreed! Usually, I'm just "head grunt", sometimes I go as an optio. But the problem is that so much of my gear is years old and home-made, cuz that's what I can afford. Then these new recruits all go buying wonderful blingy swords and belts from Holger Ratsdorf and David Hare, and all I can do is get grumpy at them and threaten to confiscate it! Not fair... My stuff isn't *bad*, mind you, it just doesn't stand out from the crowd. Maybe I'll try splattering all the troops with mud before marching out, leaving myself all clean and neat! Yeah, that's it...

I MUST make a new tunic this year, but just don't have much time and money for other new Roman projects.

Really, not all legionaries wore body armor? What did you mean by this?

Some of the legionaries shown on the Arch of Orange and the Mainz column bases do not seem to be wearing armor, and I've also seen at least 2 little figurines that appear to be unarmored legionaries. Caesar states that his men at Dyrrhachium had to make coats of hides and such to protect themselves from Pompey's archers, which shouldn't have been necessary if they were wearing mail. So I don't think body armor was universal. That wouldn't have been a big deal, since MOST men on any ancient battlefield were unarmored--it was the norm, and armor was the exception. I still expect that *most* legionaries were armored, so they still have a massive advantage overall.

Valete,

Matthew