Roman marines! Help wanted notice -

[ScipioAsina]

Serving as a marine was not particularly glamorous. In fact, there does not seem to have been any distinction between marines and rowers. From my notes:

“For having compelled some marines [classiarios] whom Nero had made regular soldiers to return to their former position as rowers [remigibus], upon their refusing and obstinately demanding an eagle and standards, he not only dispersed them by a cavalry charge, but even decimated them.” (Suetonius, Galb. 12.2)

Rougé, Jean. Ships and Fleets of the Ancient Mediterranean. Translated by Susan Frazer. Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 1975.

“The rowing crew… was made up of those who were called the classiarii, the fleet’s soldiers. When the fleet was not in action out on the sea, these soldiers were billeted in the bases and the stationes, and some of them took care of the maintenance of the ships in the dockyards under the supervision of specialized hands. In the military hierarchy of the Empire, these naval soldiers were lowest in rank, even lower than the soldiers in the non-Roman corps. A longer period of service was required of them than of others—twenty-six years as opposed to twenty-five years for service in the non-Roman corps—and their pay was proportionally lower. Furthermore, fleet service was much harsher than service in the land army; interpretation of information taken from the funerary inscriptions of fleets show that few classiarii reached the age of the honesta missio, the age when they could be honorably discharged. The seamen were beneath the rest of the army in terms of their social situation as well; they were aliens, that is, peoples under the sway of Rome, some of whom had been set free, and even sometimes, but very rarely, slaves. It is likely they received Latin citizenship when they were conscripted, but it was not until they were discharged from service that they were granted Roman citizenship, which is also when each discharged seaman was given an excerpt of the discharge law, cast in a bronze diptych, called a military diploma.” (128-129)

In addition, and especially during the First Punic War, the permanent detachment of marines aboard each vessel was, accordingly to Polybius, frequently augmented by infantry drawn from the legions. As Thiel notes in A History of Roman Sea-power Before the Second Punic War:

"These permanent garrisons could not be drawn from the legions; for, though the legionaries did not object to fighting naval battles, which lasted no more than a single day, they would have strongly objected to serving for long periods in the navy, because in Roman eyes naval service was inferior to legionary service on land."

In any case, I think this is fair evidence that the marines were almost indistinguishable from the infantry of the army in terms of armament and training (marines/sailors organized into legions, infantry from the legions serving aboard ships).

As to the color of their tunics, Plautus mentions that the ferrugineus was the color of the seaman. I posted a thread on this some time ago.