An Early Roman Army, c. 578–400 BC

Historical research behind the DBA 3.0 Army I/59

Reconstructing an Early Roman army is very different from reconstructing a Roman legion of the late Republic or Imperial period. For the sixth and fifth centuries BC, the evidence is fragmentary, often indirect, and sometimes preserved only through literary traditions written several centuries after the events they describe.

This project therefore does not attempt to reproduce a single, precisely documented Roman army. Its aim is more cautious: to create a historically plausible representation of the military society that developed at Rome between the later regal period and the early Republic, using ancient literary traditions, archaeological evidence, contemporary or near-contemporary Italic and Etruscan imagery, and the framework provided by the DBA 3.0 army list I/59, Tullian Roman.

The resulting model should be understood as a research-based interpretation rather than as an exact reconstruction.

Servius Tullius and the “Tullian” Army

The name used by DBA refers to Servius Tullius, traditionally the sixth king of Rome, whose reign is conventionally placed in the sixth century BC.

Roman historical tradition credited Servius with a profound reorganisation of Roman society. The population was classified according to wealth, and military obligations were linked to the citizen's economic ability to provide his own equipment. The wealthiest citizens could afford horses or substantial defensive armour; progressively less wealthy groups served with increasingly lighter equipment.

Ancient accounts later described this system in considerable detail, with cavalry, five property classes of infantry, centuries and different equipment requirements. The basic principle — military service related to property and individual equipment — is entirely credible in the context of archaic central Italy. The fully developed constitutional system described by later Roman authors, however, should not automatically be projected unchanged back into the sixth century BC. Modern scholarship generally treats at least part of the traditional “Servian constitution” as the result of later development and retrospective systematisation.

For this model army, the Servian tradition is therefore used as a historical framework, not as a literal organisational table.

It suggests an army in transition: a citizen force in which wealth, social position and military equipment were closely connected, and in which heavily equipped spearmen stood beside cavalry, lighter infantry and men unable to afford the full panoply of the wealthier classes.

Servius Tullius or Mastarna?

One of the most fascinating aspects of the project lies behind the identity of Servius himself.

Roman tradition presents Servius Tullius as king of Rome. A different tradition, preserved by the emperor Claudius in his speech to the Roman Senate in AD 48 and recorded on the bronze Tablets of Lyon, associates him with an Etruscan figure called Mastarna.

According to Claudius, Mastarna had been a companion of the Etruscan leader Caelius Vibenna and, after a period of conflict and wandering, eventually established himself at Rome and became king under the name Servius Tullius.

This tradition is particularly remarkable because it finds an apparent visual parallel in the François Tomb at Vulci, painted many centuries after the supposed lifetime of Servius but preserving an Etruscan heroic tradition. One of its scenes names Macstrna and shows him freeing Caile Vipinas — Caelius Vibenna. The relationship between the figures closely echoes the tradition preserved by Claudius.

The François Tomb cannot be treated as a contemporary portrait of sixth-century events. It dates from a much later period and expresses the historical memory and political culture of Etruria. Nevertheless, the convergence between an Etruscan visual tradition and Claudius' account makes the Mastarna tradition much more significant than a simple late Roman legend.

Whether Servius Tullius and Mastarna were literally the same historical individual remains impossible to demonstrate. What the evidence does show is that Rome's archaic history was deeply connected with the neighbouring Etruscan world, and that memories of warriors, aristocratic companions and shifting political loyalties survived in both Roman and Etruscan traditions.

This cultural frontier is precisely the world represented by the Tullian Roman army.

Rome in the Military World of Archaic Italy

The army represented here belongs to a period before the familiar Roman legion had reached its later Republican form.

Central Italy was a highly interconnected environment. Romans, Latins, Etruscans, Sabines and other Italic communities fought one another, traded with one another and shared military technologies and elite cultural practices. Greek influence, transmitted both directly and through the Greek cities of Italy, was also important.

During the seventh and sixth centuries BC, heavy infantry equipment of broadly hoplite character became increasingly widespread in central Italy. Helmets, body armour, greaves, large shields and thrusting spears appear in archaeological and iconographic evidence across the region.

This does not mean that an Early Roman army should simply be represented as a Greek phalanx.

Archaic warfare in Italy probably combined heavily equipped spearmen with warriors of more varied equipment, cavalry and lighter troops. The amount of standardisation visible in later Roman armies should not be expected. Equipment was largely privately acquired, inherited or locally produced, and differences in wealth would have created considerable visual variation.

That principle is central to the reconstruction adopted for this project.

The Wealthiest Citizens: Heavy Spearmen

The most heavily equipped infantry of the model represents citizens able to afford substantial military equipment.

Their visual language draws upon the wider central Italian and Mediterranean hoplite tradition: helmets, large round shields, spears and, for some individuals, additional protection.

Bronze is deliberately dominant.

A polished bronze or bronze-coloured shield requires no speculative painted emblem and remains one of the safest visual choices for warriors of this period. Some shields have restrained coloured edging or simple devices to introduce individual variation without suggesting the later systematic shield patterns of Roman legions.

The figures should therefore not look uniform.

They represent citizens bringing their own equipment to war rather than professional soldiers receiving identical state-issued equipment.

Lower Classes and Lighter Equipment

The Servian tradition associates progressively lighter equipment with decreasing economic resources.

This principle has been retained in the model.

Warriors representing lower economic groups are less heavily protected and visually less elaborate. Shields may appear simpler, darker or more suggestive of leather-covered or wooden construction. Auxiliary and light infantry figures deliberately lack the visual richness of the wealthier spearmen.

The distinction is not intended as a literal reconstruction of every equipment rule attributed by Livy or Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Instead, it translates the underlying social logic of the ancient tradition into miniature form:

wealth determined what a citizen could bring to the battlefield.

The Cavalry

Mounted warriors represent the wealthiest element of the citizen body and the aristocratic military culture of archaic Italy.

Maintaining a horse was itself a major economic commitment. Cavalry therefore carried an inevitable association with status.

For the reconstruction, the mounted figures are visually connected with the better-equipped infantry but are not overloaded with later Roman features. Their equipment remains deliberately archaic and individual.

The intention is to suggest an elite mounted component within a citizen army rather than the organised cavalry formations of later Republican Rome.

Shields, Animals and Decorative Devices

One of the most difficult modelling decisions concerns shield decoration.

Early Italic and Greek imagery demonstrates that geometric patterns, animals and other individual devices were certainly possible. However, evidence directly attributable to Roman soldiers of the Servian period is extremely limited.

For that reason, most shields in this army remain bronze or relatively plain.

A small number of individual devices are used cautiously, drawing inspiration from the visual culture of archaic Italy rather than claiming to reproduce documented Roman unit insignia.

The guiding principle is simple:

possible does not mean proven.

A motif may be archaeologically plausible within the cultural world of central Italy without being securely documented for a Roman soldier of c. 550 BC.

The Chigi Vase

One important comparative source for archaic hoplite equipment is the Chigi Vase, produced in the seventh century BC.

Its famous battle scene shows heavily armed warriors with large shields, spears, helmets and varied shield devices. Although the vase is Greek and cannot be used as direct evidence for the Roman army, it is valuable for understanding the wider Mediterranean military vocabulary from which Italian communities also drew.

In this project, such evidence is used comparatively rather than literally.

The Chigi warriors demonstrate what kinds of equipment and individual visual identities existed within the broader hoplite world. They do not prove that Roman soldiers looked exactly the same.

Colour

The colour palette intentionally avoids the appearance of a later, standardised Roman army.

Bronze, natural leather, linen, wool, muted earth colours, off-whites and restrained reds dominate the force.

Red is used selectively rather than universally.

The command group receives stronger colour accents, while individual warriors show small variations in tunics, helmet crests and equipment. Such diversity is consistent with a force whose equipment was acquired privately and whose members came from different levels of wealth.

The result is intended to look Roman — but archaic Roman, still visually embedded within the broader Italic and Etruscan world.

From Historical Evidence to DBA 3.0

DBA 3.0 army list I/59 Tullian Roman transforms this uncertain historical world into a playable tabletop force.

The game necessarily requires clearly defined troop types. Historical reality was almost certainly less tidy.

The model army therefore uses the DBA structure as its gaming framework while interpreting each element according to the historical research behind the project.

Heavy spear elements represent the principal body of wealthier citizen infantry. Other spear elements suggest citizens with somewhat lighter equipment. Auxiliary and psiloi elements represent men operating with reduced protection and lighter weapons. Cavalry represents the wealthy mounted component, while the general's element provides the visual and symbolic centre of the force.

This should not be read as evidence that Servius Tullius personally deployed an army organised into DBA troop categories.

DBA is the game system.

The reconstruction attempts to provide the historical world behind it.

What We Know — and What We Do Not

For this period, certainty is rare.

We can reasonably speak of an archaic Roman community strongly connected with the military culture of central Italy; of citizens whose military equipment reflected economic resources; of substantial Etruscan interaction; of the growing importance of heavily armed spear infantry; and of cavalry and lighter troops operating alongside them.

We can also recognise an ancient tradition linking Servius Tullius with the Etruscan Mastarna and Caelius Vibenna — a tradition preserved independently in Roman literary memory and Etruscan imagery.

What we cannot securely reconstruct are uniform colours, precise shield devices, exact tactical formations, detailed command insignia or a perfectly documented sixth-century Roman order of battle.

Where evidence ends, this project does not attempt to disguise interpretation as fact.

Instead, every modelling decision follows a hierarchy:

documented evidence where available;
contemporary or near-contemporary comparative evidence where necessary;
historical plausibility where direct evidence is absent;
and restraint where certainty is impossible.

A Small Army, a Larger Historical Question

The Tullian Roman army represents one of the most fascinating moments in Roman history: Rome before the classical legion.

It belongs to a city that was still part of the complex political and cultural world of Latium and Etruria; a society in which warrior, citizen, wealth and political status were closely connected; and a period in which the distinction between Roman, Latin and Etruscan military traditions was far less clear than it would later become.

Even Servius Tullius himself stands at that frontier.

Roman king or Etruscan Mastarna — perhaps both traditions preserving different memories of the same turbulent age — he is an appropriate figure around whom to explore the transformation of early Rome.

This 15 mm army is therefore more than a gaming force.

It is a miniature historical hypothesis: an attempt to turn fragmentary texts, archaeological evidence and ancient images into a coherent visual interpretation while keeping the boundary between evidence and reconstruction clearly visible.

From Historical Research to DBA 3.0

Sources and acknowledgements

This project draws upon the ancient literary traditions preserved by Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the emperor Claudius, particularly the tradition connecting Servius Tullius with the Etruscan Mastarna.

Archaeological and iconographic comparisons include the François Tomb at Vulci, the Chigi Vase and the boar-emblem shield represented in the Giglioli Tomb at Tarquinia. These sources belong to different periods and cultural contexts and are therefore used comparatively rather than as direct evidence for a single Roman army.

The tabletop force follows DBA 3.0 army list I/59, Tullian Roman. DBA provides the gaming structure; the visual and social interpretation of the elements derives from the historical research presented on this page.

Historical images reproduced from Wikimedia Commons are used according to their public-domain or Creative Commons conditions. The Giglioli shield image is an original modern reconstruction created for MicroHistory Models Italy and is not a reproduction of the original tomb painting.

The finished army is a historically informed modelling interpretation, not an exact reconstruction of a documented sixth-century Roman force.

This project is presented for historical, educational and modelling purposes.