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marcpasquin wrote:I think you might need to decided whether you are basically doing an integral roman empire with modern guns or a roman empire that has evolved over the past 2 millenias.
If the former, getting equivalency will be a bit hard. Centurions rose from the troops to have responsabilities and an autonomy of command far beyond what non commision officers would have OTL. It would roughly be like haveing all ranks up to major or so being enlisted ranks and having colonel and above be political apointee.
what's worse is that in this HQ staff, the tribunes were there mostly to observe and only in a few cases command anyone with only the legates actually taking decisions. So 2 ways to see this in term of insignias is that either all ranks up tribunes are treated as a single progression stream (like the chevron and rocker system of US army but extended) or else treat the centurion and those below as having 2 different sets of rank insignias.
As to what they might look like, centurion could wear a fan like design that's a stylized representation of his ceremonial uniform crest with below a number of pips depending on which cohort he comands (and thus his level of seniority). It could also be something incorporating a vine stick which was historically a symbol of his authority.
SFMRAS wrote:
Perhaps the vine staff could function as the number of the cohort? A vine staff for the 1st, two in a 'V' for the 5th, a pair crossed for the 10th, etc.
Helios88 wrote:
P.S. After only 4 years I gained my first star on the first shoulder board! I'm very proud. :D
Miklós Lovász wrote:Helios88 wrote:
P.S. After only 4 years I gained my first star on the first shoulder board! I'm very proud. :D
Complimenti, signore sottotenente:)
Medic_in_Uniform wrote:This is a great one....!
I could have SO much fun with this!!
Medic_in_Uniform wrote:Oh, believe me, when I'm not on-call for a big ICU, I will totally have a go at this...!!
Medic_in_Uniform wrote:Oh, believe me, when I'm not on-call for a big ICU, I will totally have a go at this...!!
Medic_in_Uniform wrote:The all-conquering armies of mighty Rome wearing short leather skirts with studs and feathers on their heads. Could be an interesting look...
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2. The Roman rank structure (and the sub-groups within it) was closely linked to, and highly dependent upon, the Roman social structure and the classes within that.
3. I'm sure we've touched on this before in discussions here but there's an interesting debate to be had regarding the relative equivalencies between Roman and contemporary military ranks. I think we all agree that regarding the various Centurion grades as "NCOs" is over-simplistic and relies too heavily on the distinctions of social class. What is more interesting is how we think they might equate to company and field grade ranks, potentially right up to something approaching the equivalent of a full Colonel staff officer for the Praefectus castrorum.
This fits my view perfectly. Transposed in a ground context, gentlemen should be a sort of "decorations", viable for further study and training, in order to fill the higher posts; maybe senior officers tasked with making strategic decisions.4. While these were undoubtedly professional officers, there are aspects to the structure that make me think more of the Warrant Officers of the Royal Navy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Now, true scholars of both the Royal Navy and of classical Rome and the Roman military of antiquity may well tell me I'm well wide of the mark here but the parallel is that the ship's standing officers, appointed by Warrant, not Commission, were the originally the professionals in their fields (sailing master, carpenter, sailmaker and so on) and stayed with the ship while the "gentleman" commissioned officers came and went. It's a bit of a simplification in order to make a point but the evolution of this was, eventually, that the gentleman officers of the Royal Navy became more and more professional in their training and warrant officers began to be appointed to commissioned ranks, and by the mid-Twentieth Century the role (in its original form) had disappeared as it was merged into the commissioned ranks, admittedly as "second class citizens" initially (with limited rank progression) but eventually they simply became part of the greater whole and promotion from the Rates to commission is an accepted pathway. Subsequently the warrant rank is re-created along Army lines as a true "Senior NCO" in a way that the original Warrant Officers weren't.
Here we go into pure speculation. Therefore I can only describe what I imagined for this Roman Empire, obviously explaining why.Would the uniforms look like contemporary military clothing or could they be completely different? What about formal dress, service dress, working dress (or their broad equivalents)...?
It is an interesting but hard-to-answer-to question. Therefore I pass the answer, at least for now.Where would insignia appear?
On the chest? On the helmet or soft barracks cover? On the sleeve, cuff or shoulder...?
In this, perhaps paradoxically, I have more ideas than for the previous point. Romans were a pragmatic culture, and my hypotesis is that the formal insignia would be an embellished version of the combat dress ones. But these are only my two cent. :)Would the insignia be the same (or embellished versions of the same) across all types of uniform or would, say, formal dress be completely different to working dress?
Medic_in_Uniform wrote:Yeah, that seems reasonable -- and if you think of the way that successive European conflicts like the Wars of Austrian Succession and the Napoleonic Wars played out, that's pretty much what happened.
As a side question, your mentioning of the Mediterranean made me wonder:
how would a Roman navy fit into this? Just another branch of a generic Roman military, or evolution into an entirely separate service from the army...?
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