While reading Adrian Goldsworthy's book How Rome Fell, I came across a reference to an Ancient Roman document known as the Notitia Dignitatum. It describes all the offices in the military and imperial bureaucracy which existed in the Western and Eastern Roman Empires and provides illustrations of all the shield patterns of the Roman regiments. How does this relate to Marathon? Look at some of these shields:
Well well, looks like Jason & Alex are Roman. ;)
Here's some text from Wikipedia about the Notitia Dignitatum:
"The Notitia Dignitatum is a unique document of the Roman imperial chanceries. One of the very few surviving documents of Roman government, it details the administrative organisation of the eastern and western empires, listing several thousand offices from the imperial court down to the provincial level. It is usually considered to be up to date for the Western empire in the 420s, and for the Eastern empire in 400s. However, no absolute date can be given, and there are omissions and problems.
There are several extant fifteenth and sixteenth-century copies (plus a color-illuminated 1542 version). All the known and extant copies of this late Roman document are derived, either directly or indirectly, from a codex (Codex Spirensis) that is known to have existed in the library of the cathedral chapter at Speyer in 1542 but which was lost before 1672 and cannot now be located. That book contained a collection of documents (of which the Notitia was the last and largest document, occupying 164 pages) that brought together several previous documents of which one was of the 9th century. The heraldry in illuminated manuscripts of Notitiae is thought to copy or imitate no other examples than those from the lost Codex Spirensis. The most important copy of the Codex is that made for Pietro Donato (1436), illuminated by Peronet Lamy."
Cheers,
Perseus
