Romans in Modern Film

Use a shower cap

The army they're attempting to portray is an army of the mid-Empire during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. At no point in the Romans' history did they ever wear leather armor, especially not in the pattern of the iron segmentata. These Roman troops would have worn the aforementioned segmentata, along with incidences of the scaled squamata and mail hamata, as depicted in pic.

>using testudo in a non siege scenario
I know that feel, friend

Ikr

Can you name a single show or movie that actually gets historical weapons and armor correct??

I cant think of anything that even treats armor as actual armor, it is impossible to cut through chain mail, let alone plate.

HBO's Rome actually does a pretty decent job

>ROMA VICTOR

Those helmets peeve me, why the fuck aren't they shiny? Imagine a legionnaire let his helmet get so fucking muddy looking. I bet there was some serious punishment for not keeping it nice, clean and shiny.

that extra 2nd on the right is looking at the camera, I hope they remembered to dock his pay

Too bad characters and events are about are really unfaithful to their historical counterparts.

It's good as far as the Romans go, but for some reason the Gauls are dressed like they're straight out of Asterix and Obelix

Yeah, their helmets are all wrong, too. They look more Etruscan than Gallic.

Considering, the Romans took a lot of their shit from the Gauls, the helmets should be relatively the same. Pic related

...

Leather armor is the easiest thing to condone imo, because it's mostly a purely budgetary measure, metal armor is a hideously expensive prop.
It's the easy shit that still gets overlooked that make me mad. Like bad latin or even fucking italian in the dialogue, wrong official clothing (seriously, is it so hard to just look it up?), etc.

Omg I'm using that from now on

Telling historically accurate Romans apart from historically accurate Gauls would be pretty tricky for the untrained eye in an action scene.

Yeah, that shit pisses me off too... ESPECIALLY bad Latin

I remember Mark Anthony saying "che brutta figura" in the first episode of Rome, I was like, why the fuck even. What possesed the authors to add that line.

Well, bear in mind also that only the wealthy in Celtic society would have been able to afford mail and a sword, but with the same helmets and similar shields, it would still be quite difficult.

I might be conflating my Gaels and my Gauls but I think most Gauls who fought were a kind of warrior elite anyway? I could be totally wrong and mixing them with the Irish, though.

That was a thing with mainland celts too. And with the germanics for that matter.

>tfw never get Byzantine or roman late antiquity

Agora and The Last Legion are both set during Late Antiquity yet everyone is still running around in lorica segmentata with big square shields

Also nobody in this thread watch Agora, it goes beyond normal Hollywood bad history and into something worse entirely.

Gaulish warriors typically came from either the nobility or the free class (basically non-serfs such as craftsmen, traders and assorted urbanites). Generally the freemen could all afford some decent equipment, but usually no fancy swords or mail.
I should also point out that there also were professional soldiers amongst the Gauls. They came in the form of mercenaries, retainers and ambacti, men who backed up nobles both militarily and civically in exchange for various things.
With all 3 you could expect some damn good equipment and training.

Fucking kills me

I don't care how they look, but every fucking movie or series now has the Romans be the bad evil Empire and the barbarians as the noble politically forward people who are fighting for muh democracy and rights.

There is something about armour from early middle-ages that is so fashionable. I think it's because mail looks as much of a clothing as it does look like an armour.

>charging
>literally running into your enemies spear points
When will this meme end? I'm guessing it's a mix of Hollywood/total war bs

Late antiquity and early middle ages are really underappreciated

As long as you don't lift your shield sky-high and actively try to get youself impaled, a charge isn't that risky. Hell, when in doubt, slow down before impact.
Also don't underestimate the psychological effect of a charge. If you can rout the enemy before the fight properly started, then you've got a great outcome. This definitely happened during bayonet charges, there are probaby pre-gunpowder examples too.

Romans should have looked more mediterannean

Looking at some of those noses, they have quite a number of Italians in there.

Plenty of english men but they're the main actors. Gotta expect that with an english show.

Out of the main cast I'm pretty sure only Mark Antony, Augustus and Atia are played by English actors

Rome used Cataphracts in the late Empire.

>and no i'm not talking about Bynzatine

British is what I meant. Hinds, Stevenson, McKidd, etc.

My mistake.

>Late Empire Roman
>No I don't mean Byzantine

There is no difference

>mediterranean
What does this even mean? An italian and a spaniard don't look the same, nevermind an italian and a berber or a greek or a syrian.
Mediterranean is such a retarded classification it makes white look scientific by comparison.

Ciarán Hinds is Irish, bruv.

>Romans using Corinthian helmets
>all Romans have red crests
>Romans always fighting as a defensive shield wall
>only Romans tax people,ever
>Gladiators using fantasy armor and following no rules

I imagine bronze armor gets stained very much like bronze buttons and belt-buckles do after much use. They're also in the middle of a battle during a multi-day siege, that was apart of a 8 year campaign (which Vorenus was at-least apart of the entire time) and been through a bunch of other battles. Even after all of that I don't think they would care about their presentation unless they were some elite bodyguard unit for the consuls or senate. They would have to clean and oil their armor everyday when using it to prevent it from rusting or fading, which they didn't have the time or materials to do.

>At no point in the Romans' history did they ever wear leather armor
Didn't they pretty much fight with Greek-inspired weapons and equipment during their early years? If so, a spolas is possible.

Well it's good to see Hamata getting some love.

It's almost always fucking Segmentata all the time.

>Even after all of that I don't think they would care about their presentation unless they were some elite bodyguard unit for the consuls or senate. They would have to clean and oil their armor everyday when using it to prevent it from rusting or fading, which they didn't have the time or materials to do.

that was literally a main part of the Legions' dicipline.

>bronze
Wouldn't iron be a lot more common by that time?

everything in this picture.

Montefortino helmets in use during those times were mostly bronze
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montefortino_helmet

They probably ran out of Brasso after months of muddy, bloody campaigning

Alright, thanks for the info.

that picture causes me physical pain

What annoys me is not the leather armor per se (the spolas was still around by that time, if I remember correctly), but that it is some weird sort of leather segmentata.

Gladiator is one of my favorite movies despite the inaccuracies.

As much as I'd love a movie going balls out on historical accuracy I still take what I can get.

A pilum discharge during the early battle scene would've looked so cool, though.

They're at fucking Alesia. Nobody had time for that shit or cared.

user what if
what if they
what if they held a shield in front of them to keep the spears out?
We should patent this revolutionary new idea.

Not when you're in the middle of trying to construct TWO 11 mile, 12 foot high walls, with trenches, spikes, and towers, while under non-stop cavalry attack,and racing to finish it before a massive fucking army shows up to surround you.

"roman discipline" is massively overrated and misunderstood.

They sure as hell weren't around in roman use at that time.

You shut your mouth you Gual loving slag

A spartan in Rome? Oh my...

...

>"roman discipline" is massively overrated and misunderstood.
Indeed. Shit just happens in the battlefield regardless of how disciplined your guys are.

>"roman discipline" is massively overrated and misunderstood.

>"roman discipline" is massively overrated and misunderstood.
Son, the word decimated rings a bell?

There are primary sources saying the Romans literally did that though.

What makes you think we even know all the details?

>The sum total of surviving Greco-Roman texts up to and including "late antiquity" is equivalent to roughly a gigabyte of uncompressed ASCII text. Latin texts account for about 80 MB of that.

Pic related is the only surviving Roman scutum. Compare that to "accurate" depictions of them in movies/games.

Most of what we know about Roman military equipment actually comes from artistic representations, such as those on pic related Trajan's Column.

Well damn
The hivemind is real

You know how Romans fucked up Boadicea in her final battle? After receiving and ending a Briton Charge, they countercharged in wedges.

Flavius Josephus' account of the siege of jerusalem says that after the Romans broke through Jerusalem, they abandoned all formations and started fighting zealots in small groups in the streets and alleys of Jerusalem. Running around and charging cunts.

If anything, you're the one operating on memes. Hollywood/Total War reinforce the 100% all the time robotic Roman legionary bullshit when the real magic of the legionary is that the cunt is versatile.

People are really set up on modern computing standard. "Uncompressed ASCII text" means that there's no formating etc. etc. Single letter in ASCII code = 8 bits(technically 7 but w/e). 80MB of it means around 80 millions letters.

The Bible takes up 760k words. Average length of English word is 5,1 which for the estimation's sake I'll round up to 6(spaces etc.). You can get 17,5 bibles written on that 80MB's. Then you also have secondary sources which can use of primaries which were destroyed since.

>They wear red.
>They ALL wear red.
Jesus we don't even know what determined tunic colors in the Roman army.

And back in the pre-marian republican armies, they just wore shit from home and topped it off with armor.

The general consensus with historians is that they wore plain off-white tunicae

the worst thing about romans and greeks is brits playing them

>paying a classics grad student who is literally under poverty level $10 an hour to proofread Latin in a script isn't worth it

I can never forgive them for this

>military sandal

Caligulae were technically shoes

You're conflating modern military with ancient military in some weird ways

Bronze is extremely difficult to shine even with modern chemicals. Brass buttons are hard enough, and yet shining them is a distinctly modern military occupation. Even the martinet Victorian British military only shined their brass for important parades or battle (lol). Keeping the uniform clean was more important (all of his depends on how retarded the regimental colonel was ofc)

The Roman soldiery's discipline came from being constantly put to work or drill. They wouldn't have wasted half a day polishing that helmet to pass inspection for the fucking Celts. They would have spent the morning laboriously digging in or training, in uniform, and had a quick bite of stale flatbread before getting ready to fight, after a full night spent working somewhere else.

>Caligulae were technically shoes
Sandals ARE shoes, you should have said they were boots.
Also it's really caligae, you're getting confused with emperor Little Shoe.

>Rome as founded as a republic you know

I rage quit every time

those swastikas

>testudo
why only the roman used?
i mean not even in medieval times was used again

What I mean is in most cases the top of their feet were usually covered

Calling them sandals is misleading imo

And yes I knew that but couldn't remember the non diminutive form, my Latin is shit these days :(

>Gladiator is one of my favorite movies despite the inaccuracies.
ROMA VICTOR!!11!
The first time I heard that I cringed so hard my dad heard it.

You are correct. I was autistically nitpicking at your using "shoe". Sandals are a type of shoe. So are boots. Caligae are a closed type of footwear that cover the foot and the ankle, so they fit the definition of boot, and not that of sandal. But they'd be shoes even if they had been sandals.

Only the romans used shields that allowed for it.
That said the usage of purpose made shields to form pseudo-testudo formations was a thing during sieges, so it's not like people didn't think about it in the middle ages. They just didn't use appropriate shields in actual pitched battles.

Also I'm pretty sure the chinks used it too during the Han.

Relax gents, that's just some deviantart fag's fever dream after playing too much CivIV:BtS.

>17,5 bibles
Pretty neat how you calculated. Makes it more comparable for the normal non computer savy retard like me. But still, 17.5 Bibles isn't much, is it? I'm sitting in a library that contains over 7 million books right now. It seems impossible to get a good picture of 1000 years of roman history, knowledge, culture, through the volume that 17.5 Bibles would occupie. Sure there are other artefacts and secondary sources, but it kinda stings to know that we don't really know shit.

Early Imperial Chinks were more of the pike & crossbow people.

They did have shield bearers wielding bigass chevron shaped shields though.

>shield bearers wielding bigass chevron shaped shields
Yes, I was talking about these guys. I'm totally sure I read about some battle during the three kingdoms period where they formed up like a testudo, but fuck me if I remember which one, if I did I'd go look it up.

Which is why video games or at least game modifications are the best medium through which to experience History.

>the Gauls are dressed like they're straight out of Asterix and Obelix
I know it's brilliant

>Leather armor is the easiest thing to condone imo, because it's mostly a purely budgetary measure, metal armor is a hideously expensive prop.
Not really. Requisitioning hundreds of custom made leather segmentata props or buying a load of metal ones for about £100 from all the suppliers that currently sell them.

>I might be conflating my Gaels and my Gauls but I think most Gauls who fought were a kind of warrior elite anyway? I could be totally wrong and mixing them with the Irish, though.
They were typically but by the time of the Gallic wars the Celts were going through massive changes and starting to do mass recruitment and sending the serf classes in too as well as the free classes. If only the nobles fought they'd have lost in a day.

What about non greco-roman sources about the Romans themselves?