"Roman tunic colour?" Topic

What colour were the tunics of a Roman legionary, in most illustrations, and as worn by re-enactors such as The Ermine St. Guard red seems to be the accepted opinion, but what evidence is there for it? as I understand it the colour of the fabric before it is dyed is an inoffensive off white,why would they not leave the tunics this colour and just red dye tunics worn by Centurions and Tribunes etc which would help to identify them on the battlefield and also save on both time and expense. My reason for asking this is that I am interested in starting wargaming the period and am unsure whether red is univesal for tunics. Incidentally in Peter Conolly,s Greece and Rome at War there is a Roman Legionary in a blue tunic with a blue shield. Help!! Regards, Ivan.

Even if you take Red as the accepted colour, which it usually is. You can still add some variety by doing the tunics in various shades of red to represent some being older than others and washed out and faded.

I dont believe there is a great deal of evidence to prove legionaries wore red but over time it has become almost accepted as a fact. I tend to go along with Ivans idea and paint the rank and file in natural shades and officers and centurians in red and other bright colours. However I do try to keep a level of uniformity within each unit though.

Check out the Osprey series "Roman Military Clothing". The author compiles all the available evidence.

Ospreys can be hit or miss, but this very specific series is pretty good. Of course I can't find my copy right now, but I recall the author found several examples of 'off white" and a few references to red, plus some other colors and analyzes the possiblilties

Ivan : in a nutshell, the answer to your query is "we don't know for sure, and most likely never will". The color of Roman legionaries' tunics is a subject that's been oft debated : evidence is fragmentary at best and Graham Sumner' "Roman Military Clothing 1 100 BC- AD 200(Osprey) does a good job of compiling existing archeological sources. Sumner tends to lean towards red tunics, but as stated above he also reviews the evidence for other possible colors. For a different take on the subject, try to get hold of Nick Fuentes "The Roman Military Tunic" (published in Dawson (ed), "Roman Military Equipment, The Accoutrement of war", Oxford, 1987). Fuentes argues that off-white was the standard color for military tunics – a conclusion with which Sumner partially disagrees.

That said, there is also the distinct possibility that we might be barking up the wrong tree here : the notion of a military uniform is a decidedly modern one and it is quite conceivable that there never was such a thing as a standardized tunic color. I too paint my Caesarian legionaries in white tunics and my centurions in red, but that is primarily because I find that combination aesthetically pleasing, not because I can prove it's historically accurate.

Red was associated with military in ancient times. Red was the most stable die. However, just like other say there are accounts of many different colors. Paint the figures however you want, there is nothing wrong with your colors This is how I painted mine: link

I myself would never paint them 'salmon pink' like a couple of sources show.

of course these could be red tunics after a long campaign!

IGWARG -I have also read that red was associated with the Mars

Red, white, whatever, we don't really know. I do mine red because it looks nice, sometimes they are white – particularly for Republican legionaries.

I do legions in both. Makes it easier to tell which legion is on which side during a Civil War game.

Red was the most stable dye? Why then were they still having difficulties with red dye into the Napoleonic wars?
For that matter, red dyed clothing is still the most likely to fade in my experience. Put a new red item in the wash with your whites if you want to experiment :D

I paint mine red, and white, and off white, and sometimes gray or blues. As has been stated above, there is no real hard evidence one way or the other.

According to my oldest sourcebook "Asterix verses the Romans", they wore green tunics.

"…we don't really know."

"…there is no real hard evidence one way or the other."

There are some things we *do* know, and there *is* evidence, well summed up in Sumner's Ospreys. No, you can't establish a hard and fast rule, but that doesn't mean you can dismiss the evidence willy-nilly.

Allen

"…there is no real hard evidence one way or the other."

The problem rather is that there's evidence pointing many ways !

We know that after Gracchus'reforms soldiers were issued clothing at public expense (with deductions made from their pay to help cover the costs), but that the material used to make tunics and cloaks were generally obtained locally. Legions being stationed in various corners of the empire may not have all received clothing of a uniform color. There's also reliable evidence that legionaries commonly wore privately purchased items of clothing – though it's not entirely clear whether they did so on- or off-duty.

Here's how I did it:

RR (both late and early): white tunics (looks good with Lorica Hamata)

EIR and MIR: Red tunics (because red looks better with Lorica Segmentata)

LIR: White with purple trim (cause it looks different from the above).

To make a long story short, I chose my colors based on what looks best for me…

Damon.

"that doesn't mean you can dismiss the evidence willy-nilly"

I wasn't suggesting that we did, but OTOH I couldn't be bothered to write a long post either about something which has been discussed to death.

Perhaps I'm getting old and crotchety? Did I even spell that right? Now, where did I put my pipe and slippers…

I just got some Baccus Romans.. I had the same debate.."what colour should I paint them?" internally.

Red is common, and mentioned alot by experts. But I have painted a good many British Redcoats before and didnt fancy painting 72 man units of more guys in Red. I plumped for white/ off white tunics and blue shields, my auxilleries have yellow shields and my cavalry have red shields and white tunics.

I think the most common are red, blue and green. Yellow and Purple can also be used. Aslong as everyon in the same unit is the same I think its your call.. no combination of these colours can be proven wrong, from what Ive read and the people here have written…. (unless its tartan or something crazy!!)

Personally, I think the Blue looks best.

Passing along the following from John Walsh:

The information is in the British Archaeological Reports, International Series, No 336, 1987, Roman Military Equipment, The Accoutrements of War. It contains an article THE ROMAN MILITARY TUNIC by N. Fuentes, pages 41-76. The article includes research into the colour of tunics from the 3rd Century BC to the 3rd Century AD and includes the Roman Navy. The result of the study suggests that Roman tunics were more likely to be white or off-white. And auxiliary units are even more interesting, since some of them may have been black. It makes for some very interesting reading.

Fuentes did a good job of compiling the available evidence, although his article is now some 25 years old. Sumner's work is more recent, but I find him to be somewhat selective in his discussion of the evidence, which seems to be designed to at least partially refute Fuentes.

A very good recent summary of the Roman tunic color debate, with bibliography, may be found on the Legio XX reinactment group site: larp.com/legioxx/tcolor.html

Cheers,
Scott

Lime bleaching cloth was common all accross the mediteanean at that time so I would consider that as the most common colour for a tunic, of cours in a campaign it would swiftly become off white. I would not consider purple as the dye was very expensive to purchase at that time, also it would be more like crimson as true purple did not come into being until more modern chemical dyes were manufactured.
For an Imperial legion red is a safe bet, but if I were to crave a degree of accuracy I would look to duller and faded colours for the ordinary soldiers,and newer "brighter" tunics for the better off centurions and higher rankes who could afford to replace their clothes at their own expense.

IMHO both red and white is correct. My legions are mostly red, but I have whie tunics on the others. Mike Adams

I've been pondering this for a while – what color to paint my romans – and I've settled on white for most of them for a reason that may help others.

Back when I was working the local renfest, I used to have both a green and a red tunic, in wool. They were both dyed those colors and I had to wash them seperately from anything that would take on those colors as they bled out, but more importantly, over the course of about 2 years – estimate about 30 weekends, in weather that could be cold, could be hot and a lot of back and forth, out in the weather, and the color wore from them pretty quickly, so much so that I found that after each season I'd have to re-dye them. I sweat a lot in them, was exposed to the weather a lot as well so the wear and tear was easily explained. Of course I also washed mine after each weekend, but from what I understand we've come a long way from sulfur and urine baths. That was enough to convince me that there's a good chance white was probably pretty common, and that the colored tunics, while nice, and I'm sure existant, were probably more a 'luxury' item of sorts then anything else.
I know, it's not exactly scientific and I'm sure it could be shot full of holes if one tried but I figure if in this day and age the material has a hard time holding the dyes like it did, I can imagine the romans probably had the same sorts of issues.

Ahhhh, Asterix verses the Romans. One of my most treasured reference books. The illustrations are second to none! Osprey could do well to take note.