MILITARY STANDARDS AND BANNERS

Another of Marius’ innovations was the introduction of a single silver eagle (aquila), mounted on a staff, as a legionary standard. It is difficult to know just what significance should be attached to this change, because we have no clear information about the military standards which were previously in use. The eagle was a bird sacred to Jupiter. According to one source, there had previously been five legionary standards. Apart from the eagle, these exhibited the forms of wolves, beards, minotaurs and horses, and they were carried severally before the several ranks of the army in battle. But from Marius’ time, they were relegated to subordinate and ceremonial usage.

The legionary eagles were later made of gold and they were embellished with wreaths and other ornaments. In peacetime, they were kept in the state treasury (aerarium) at Rome, the old temple of Saturn. In wartime, they were carried with the legion and had a little sanctuary allotted to them in the camp. They were objects of quasi-religious veneration.

This quasi-religious function of the standards was in conflict with their practical purpose. In so far as the standard was a sacred object symbolizing the corporate existence of a military unit, it qualified for the care and protection of the soldiers whom it represented and could not properly be exposed to danger of capture by the enemy in battle. Its loss was, in fact, regarded as a great disgrace. The standard therefore had to be placed behind the front line and surrounded by troop who would defend it.

Schoolboys are--or used to be--familiar with Caesar anecdote of the standard-bearer who leapt down from his ship as it beached on the Kentish coast, with an exhortation to the hesitant legionaries to follow him if they did not intend the betrayal of their eagle into enemy hands. An earlier example of the same attitude occurs in Plutarch’s account of the battle of Pydna. On this occasion, a captain of one of the Italian contingents seized his unit’s ensign and flung it into the enemy phalanx. Thus blackmailed by the threat of dishonor, his men redoubled their efforts to break the phalanx. For, as Plutarch observes, the Italians in particular regarded as ignominious to desert their standards.

If, however, the standard was a sacred object which required protection, it could not discharge its practical function--which was to serve as a rallying point. As such, its place was in the forefront of the battle. The legionaries could not be expected to look over their shoulders to discover where they should take their stand. The very of the standards in Latin, signa, suggests that they were in fact signals, and as tactics became increasingly mobile and less uniform, the need for them increased. Incidentally, the Greeks of the fifth century BCE had made no corresponding use of military standards in their compact phalanx battles.

A study of ancient references to the position of the standards on the battlefield suggests that they may have been located immediately behind the front line. They were thus protected, and yet at the same time sufficiently far advanced to serve as marking signals for the greater part of the army. On the other hand, the whole point of Marius’ innovation may have been to confer a single standard on the legion which would serve its emotional needs, at the same time leaving the standards of the smaller unites free to be used, without sentimental inhibitions, for practical purposes. By contrast with legionary standards, the old signaling staves of the maniples had embodied no sacred animals. They had exhibited the open palm of a hand on a raised spear, but were later decorated with garlands and other emblems. When maniples were absorbed into cohorts, the cohort took the leading maniple’s standard. Similarly, the cavalry standards (vexilla), consisted of flags suspended from a kind of yard-arm and identifying unites, would lose their more emotional signifigance with the adoption of the uniform legion emblem. By Marius’ time, the Italian cavalry had largely been superseded by overseas cavalry forces (auxilia), who perhaps did not share the Italian veneration for standards and banners. The eagle remained a permanent symbol throughout later centuries of military development. But other form of standard where also imitated from the usage of outlying people son Rome’s frontiers. An interesting example is the draco, which was a windsock of colored silk, with the silver head and gaping jaws of a dragon.

The Italian captain distinguished by his gesture at Pydna had been a Pelignian. Marius came from Arpinum, a town which had enjoyed full Roman citizen rights since the beginning of the second century. Arpinum was not far from the territory of the Peligni, and Marius was perhaps acutely conscious of the importance of military standards and banners in terms of local sentiment. As an eminently practical commander, he must also have been aware of the difficulties which such sentiments created. It is possible to regard the silver and golden eagles as his solution.