Curis' Late Imperial Romans (March 2018: Alan Horseman)

[Curis]

I'm researching and constructing a 28mm Late Imperial Roman army. It's mainly for the thrill of watching a painted collection amass in the display cabinets, though also to serve as an anchor for researching and understanding the period.

The army will be constructed with the classic Foundry range as the basis. These miniatures are Perry classics. Here's one of the best packs from the range.




I want to use the Foundry's house style of painting for my army, but not necessarily the garish colour schemes shown above. That commander second in from the left! Red and blue and purple clothes? All at once?! Blerk! No thanks, sensible muted colours please. This is a historical army after all. I've dug up Late Imperial Roman forts, every archaeological find is brown,

So I dipped into my reference library to find out what shades of brown would have been in vogue circa 400AD, and this colour plate jumps out. Blerk, it's that guy from the Foundry range, resplendent in red tunic with and orbiculi!



This is Graham Sumner's reconstruction of a soldier as depicted in a Syracusian catacomb painting. The colours are taking from the original painting, so they're authentic. I thought it really surprising. And cool, as the miniature has transformed from generic Roman into a real-life soldier with a name and dress sense.



This is Maximianus (hurr hurr, "-anus"), and he's my first test model.

[pocoloco]

Beautiful paint job on your test mini, looks quite like the reference material.

Will be awesome to follow your progress, hopefully you keep us informed of your background findings as well.

[Jeff965]

Lovely painting, but being a collector does that mean they will not be gamed with? 

[killshot]

That is suberb, seeing an army painted to that standard will be a treat.

[dm]

The colours for the Foundry miniatures were chosen to look bright from the orders i was given to paint them in by the owner of the company. I painted them in the late 90's for the Foundry advert.

I have also excavated Roman forts in the UK and sadly no fabrics survived on the ones i worked on.

Nice painting

[Phil Robinson]

The colours for the Foundry miniatures were chosen to look bright from the orders i was given to paint them in by the owner of the company. I painted them in the late 90's for the Foundry advert.

I have also excavated Roman forts in the UK and sadly no fabrics survived on the ones i worked on.

Nice painting

Thats correct they had to be bright and have strong contrast to stand out for the adverts I was told.

[dm]

There was no in house painting style and the people who painted for Foundry at the time were all freelance painters and we were sent briefs on what colours and tones to use. At the time i also painted for many collectors and they would stipulate what they wanted and i would be painting on average 70-80 hours a week and you just had to go with what people wanted.

[Giger]

Nice start Curis, looking forward to seeing the army grow.

[warburton]

Excellent painting on that test mini.

I am no expert by any means, but I always understood that Romans loved garish bright colours. All of their statues and temples, which we now see as plain stone, would have been painted, and probably painted in all sorts of contrasting colours.

Also, I think ancient fabrics were probably a lot brighter than you would think. From documentaries I have seen of reconstructions of dyeing techniques, it seems to be easier to have made a bright yellow fabric than it would have been to make a dull brown.

[Phil Robinson]

Yup, I'm sure I read somewhere that dyeing cloth brown was quite involved, but then again I could be wrong on this.

[Romark]

No input on cloth colours or dyes I'm afraid,just wanted to compliment you on the paint job of that mini,outstanding.

[FramFramson]

Incredible work! Very well-laid!

[Paleskin]

Great pj

[Lt. Hazel]

What a great paintjob.

[Curis]

@dm – Wow!  I didn't know you were the original painter for that Foundry range.  Your stuff's still an inspiration all these years later.  So, was it conincidence this guy ended up in Maximianus' colours then, or was it an intentional part of the brief I wonder.


Back in 2014 I proudly declared I was starting a Late Imperial Roman army, and showed off my first test model.  I adhered to the time-honoured tradition of planning an army, buying an army, telling everyone about my plans… then only painting one figure before quietly packing everything away and never mentioning it again.   But the hiatus is over!  Here is the second finished model – Praeses Lanceas Araneus.

The figure, as with all the Foundry Late Imperial range, is really very small.  I plan for other parts of my army to draw from manufacturers with chunkier proportions and a slightly larger scale – Black Tree, Crusader, Footsore et cetera.  To avoid the subordinates towering over him, I built up his base with bark.  I only decided this after painting him, and ended up repainting his legs and shoes after I'd cut and filed him off his intrinsic metal base.  That was not clever, but I'd regret more having his head only come up to nipple-height in a front rank of spearmen.

Araneus didn't immediately strike me as Late Imperial Roman – his chest armour and his vine staff look much earlier.  I had to check with Foundry he wasn't an exile from their Early Imperial Roman range.  The figure does appear in the John Lambshead Fall of the West – the excellent Warhammer Ancient Battles supplement focussing on the last 126 years of the Roman Empire.

So this Late Imperial Roman figure is dressed as someone from much earlier antiquity.  His hair is curly in the style of statues, and his helmet may even be a Theban/Corinthian design.  He's one of those Romans yearning for a return to earlier times, when Romans were Romans and Emperors ruled wisely and justly.  It was a very Roman trait, mistaking the past for a golden age unspoilt by moral decay and decadence. Livy expressed this sentiment centuries earlier in his preface to The History of Rome.

The subjects to which I would ask each of my readers to devote his earnest attention are these – the life and morals of the community; the men and the qualities by which through domestic policy and foreign war dominion was won and extended. Then as the standard of morality gradually lowers, let him follow the decay of the national character, observing how at first it slowly sinks, then slips downward more and more rapidly, and finally begins to plunge into headlong ruin, until he reaches these days, in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies. 

My Late Imperial Roman army is now two figures – both of them commanders.  I plan to add a ballista next (specifically with games of Saga in mind), and some limitanei that have been lurking around my painting desk for years waiting for a shield design to come into being.

"Wasn't like this in Sulla's day, eh?"