THE REAL ROMAN ARMY vrs. the renactments

[Matthew Amt]

i cant seem to find any good reenacter sites, most of them are blocked, and alll the movies have media player and i only have quicktime

http://www.larp.com/legioxx/

Just for starters! If you can't get into it, you REALLY need to get Net access from somewhere else! It has a huge links page, among other things. The movie I listed should play with Quicktime--that's what I have.

and besides the inaccurate military tactics in gladiator, why isnt the soldier accurate the only makeup they had is mud. and being on campaign for years, and had only ancient methods of cleaning your armor i think that u would look like the ones in gladiator right?

Most campaigns were a matter of weeks, not years. And men would learn very quickly from the veterans how to keep their gear clean. Ancient cleaning methods could be highly effective--I put a mirror shine on a tarnished piece of brass in about 2 minutes using nothing but a damp rag and dust. Ashes from the firepit work great, too, on iron as well as brass. With that and a little oil, it's simply too easy to keep everything rust-free and gleaming nicely.

did romans have different color legions, i mean not just the traditional red, did they use blue green or purple.??

There are several big discussions about this on the board.

are the color of these shields accurate?

That's the same general color scheme that a lot of us use. It is largely guesswork, but we know that red backgrounds and other bright colors were used. The problem with the movie shields is that the colors are kind of muted and dull--they actually seem to show up better in the stills and the DVD than they did on the big screen, as I recall.

But see the shiny brass rim and the nice gleaming boss? THAT is what the rest of their armor should look like!! Even weeks of rust would not turn armor blackish gray, it would be rusty brown with yellow and red spots! I'm never sure if Hollywood is trying to make the armor look like dark leather or dark metal--maybe they aren't sure themselves.

Hey, Travis---I'm bummed out about all the architecture problems!! Guess I just don't know enough of those sorts of details to notice them. But at least they were showing Roman (or Romanesque) buildings, which really are made of white marble even if they were supposed to be painted... (My dad used to work in downtown Washington DC, so white marble is very familiar and comfortable to me!) I did notice that they needed more red tile roofs. We all know too darn much...

Valete,

Matthew