The Draco standard

[daryush]

They made a quite cool draco standard inspired by those from the Trajan Column and Tropaeum Traiani monument at Adamclisi and from literrary sources

Actually Trajan's Column does not only shows 'draco' standards. The 'draco' is a Roman military standard made in to a dragon's head, which was typical for all Roman units. Most Dacian and other (Scythian, Persian) standards which we know were not only dragon's heads, but also wolves and other animals (even fish!). I do not know how these peoples referred to their battle standards, but it's extremely unlikely that they referred to them as 'dracos'.

I'm glad someone else is making this point too! I hope we can extend this nomenclature principle to other military words as well (eg: using the word cataphract / clibinarius with non-Roman / non-Greek cultures)

/digression :mrgreen:

About an exclusively Dacian origin, I must reject that. A draco is essentially a battle standard which also shows the wind conditions, and we find it with all peoples of this period who predominantly use the bow as a weapon. Which includes peoples which had no Dacian connections at all, such as the Persians (we even find it in India). The Dacians, as far as I know, used more infantry tactics that archery, for which reason I see the Dacian use of the draco standard (let's indeed forget about the real name) as derived from other peoples, and not originating with them.

For a source we have Arrian, who describes it clearly as a Scythian standard, and if he really meant Sarmatian makes little difference in this case:

Do you have a reference for the dragon standard in India? I know of no such standards in use in India at this time, at least, nothing conclusive (the standards represented on Gupta coins may well be long cloth banners just as easily as dragon standards)


If you guys haven't seen it yet, it may be worth reading this (perhaps with the help of Google translate): http://kronk.narod.ru/library/sovetova-m...a-2005.htm

I favour a Central Asian origin for the wind-sock banner, although I am not well versed in European (Roman and Dacian) developments.