"Painting shields & national costumes in Punic wars" Topic

I love all the fancy shield designs as much as the next guy, but how realistic is that for an army that has been in the field for awhile?
Specifically, the situation when Hannibal started giving his men captured equipment. Would that include shields? Would the men do something to alter them so they didn't look so "Roman?"
How long did the Spanish & Celtic national costumes last – wouldn't they be just wearing whatever they could loot after the first couple of winters?

Goldsworthy says of the Roman army:
"On the Roman side the army presented a fairly uniform appearance, although we must remember that they were citizen soldiers and there is no good reason to believe that they wore tunics of the same color or that shields were painted with unit insignia…"
Later he says the units raised after Cannae had a motley appearance as they were equipped with spoils from earlier wars kept in the temples.

Am wondering if it would be authentic (whatever that means) to just have brown, beat up shields?

As you can't define authentic, and nobody else can,do what you want.

Wargamers love uniformity where it doesn't exist. It makes painting easier.

The only definite thing we can say is that Polybios describes Hannibal's Spanish infantry wearing bright, white tunics edged in purple at Cannae – about two years after they left Spain.

There is _some_ reason, though it is not decisive, to think that Roman soldiers chose to wear red on the day of battle, producing a degree of voluntary uniformity.

Hannibal's men in Roman gear are described as looking just like Romans from a distance, which probably means that they did have Roman shields – these are the most obvious bits of gear from a couple of hundred yards away. We don't know if they redecorated them, but then Roman shields may just have been a plain colour in the first place at this date.

For the fighting in Italy Hannibal's Celts were within easy reach of resuppy from the Celtic lands for much of the time.

I imagine they made use of it.

As you can't define authentic you should make your best assumption based on how you assess what 'evidence' you do have – of course, for most wargamers that will be doing what they want: give or take the fringe, wargaming is inspired by history

Whilst uniformity may be unlikely, just looking at a football crowd shows how large numbers of people standing close together, all sharing a favourite colour can look pretty 'uniform' – and how it can be easy to tell one lot from another …

Phil
Ancients on the Move

I think that with a few tips from the images in Osprey, Connolly and the like you can't go far wrong. Even a quick google image search will give most everything you'll need to know. Just remember that free people of classic antiquity tended to like bright colours – grunge was what slaves wore.

For the Romans, I went for uniformity of shield colour, without insignia, within each 'triplex acies set' but with different tunic colours to indicate that they are a 'citizen militia'. It works for me:

For the Spanish, I decided to go for white tunics edged red and bright shield patterns:

Gauls I did in checked tunics and with bright shields:

Havings said that, one of my primary concerns was in getting them painted quickly, as there were rather a lot to do, and it still took 2 years:

olicana – beautiful painting! That's a lot of figures in two years.