From livinghistory@rocketmail.com Fri Apr  3 11:49:31 1998
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:51:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Timothy Dawson 
Reply-To: BYZANS-L@lists.missouri.edu
To: BYZANS-L@lists.missouri.edu
Subject: Re: Army Uniforms

Jim McDaniel enquired regarding military dress:

Unfortunately there are no worthwhile primary
pictoral sources of such subject matter for the early
Seventh century.  
For the eleventh century you could look at various
crucfixion centurions, the one in the church of Nea
Moni on Chios crops up everywhere, and military
saints.  The large format coffee-table books on
Byzantium, such as by Time-Life and a couple of
others are quite good for such pictures.
Note, however, that such pictures are very stylised
and do not bear much resemblance to what was really
going on; they are just all we have.

Paint them all in red tunics with gold edges and
everyone will think they look right!

At one time a few years ago I was delving into this
subject, and I recall reading a passage from some
military manual which exists in translation wherein
the author recommended that each unit be issued with
a tunic of its own distinctive colour in order to
promote cohesion.  More recently, when I wanted to
cite it, of course, I could not find this quote
again.  If there is anyone else on the list who could
remind me of its location I would be very grateful.

George Dennis wrote a good, illustrated article
called "Byzantine Battle Flags" in Jahrbuche
Osterreichische Byzantinistic (I think that is mostly
how it is spelt.) some years ago.

Tim Dawson

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