Talino,
Take a look at the Medrom forum.. There you can find all the information about the Roman's. I enclosed a piece of the treat from Gary and Dr.Mike about the clothing.
I hope they find it oke for doing this.
Good Luck Marc
Hello Dave,
You're by no means limited to just blue or red. There's a very good chance that one of the most common colors would have been a kind of yellowish, brownish white. The main reason for this is that there's indications at least some of the cloaks were made from wool with a good amount of the lanolin left on the wool. This would have improved the wool's water repellant characteristics,
Keep in mind, red and blue would have been two of the more expensive dyes, and there are naturally variations of shade and hue in just the reds. I'd think a centurian would have been able to afford madder dyed wool, and the deeper the red, the more expensive it would have been. A very expensive madder red would be something like a dark, reddish-brown color... a reddish brick color, or freshly dried blood being a couple of examples. So far, the best mixes I've come up with use Indian Red, a bit of Cad Red Dark, and a bit of Terra Verte to tone the red down a bit. The red is there, but it's a bit of a muted red.
Gary is quite right in all that he has written above. The wool for cloaks would most likely have been in 'natural' colours. The Romans bred sheep for their wool colours specially, so we have a white and a dark brown and an almost black colour. There was also a colour called fustus, which would have been a rust-red colour.
Officers, such as the centurion, would undoubtedly have been able to afford better quality clothing - even the most junior of centurions was paid 14 times more than a miles! A dull red cloak, dyed with madder as Gary suggests, would have been a real possibility. Cloaks, however, were not made of woven cloth but of felt (as were the 'socks'). With felt, the wool fibres were treated with an alkaline solution (basically, urine) and the fibres were then pressed together under heavy weights. This treatment caused the wool fibres to stick together into a matt, which was also waterproof to a degree because it retained the natural wool oils (lanolin). It is unlikely that this material would have been dyed with indigo for a blue colour. The Romans did not dye the garment, but the yarn/material from which it was made. Under alkaline reducing conditions (which is what dyeing with indigo requires), indigo reverts to a soluble form, which would then wash out of the cloth (it would have to be washed to remove the stink of the treatment process). In fact, I can find no referneces to the wearing of blue cloaks by the Roman soldier, of whatever rank.
The oil colour Terra Verde is something of a tint, with very poor covering power. However, mixed with a red it will certainly dull the latter down to a reddish brown colour. I would suggest, however, that you paint over a coloured undercoat, such as a dull red acrylic, if you want to use this mixture.
