Samnite Infantry

Another Oscan unit, this time a Samnite Infantry unit, part of the Linen legion (or silver legion) has raced ahead of a Iberian unit I was painting at the same time.

It is a unit, 16 strong, with 14 identical poses. They are as earlier mentioned part of the Linen Legion, or Silver Legion. Thus they are considered elite. The Linen legion was chosen in the following manner. The General, selected 10 men who he considered to be strong and braver than the rest, these in turn again each selected 10 men, and so on, until the Legion was 16.000 strong. They were then placed on the right side of the battlefield, as this was a position of honor. They were all clad in white, and had silvered weapons and armor. This was considered holy to them. The rest of the army was deployed on the left, and they numbered some 24.000. They were not clad in white and silver, but had many colors, and golden weapons and armor.

Here is a look at the pose that is the  most common in the unit: the spearman.

Again I have on purpose given him "shoes". The metal on him is either painted silver or chainmail color. Everything else, is white or whitish. The spear is kept in wood color. The box, which you get these figures in (HäT 8040), does not specify which Italians are which tribe, but the samnites are easily recognized by the tripledisc breastplate that they have.

The officer, and standardbearer are the same pose. The standardbearer is not really carrying a standard either. It is a spear with the tunic of a defeated enemy drapped over it, and his belt on top. The idea was to display that your enemy had been forced to become naked, and thus was defeated.

Here is a look at the standardbearer.

As you can see, he is more heavily armored. It is quite possible that he is actually not a Samnite, but some other type of Italian, as he is not wearing a triple disc. However he will do just fine for me. He is also a headswap conversion.

Here is a look at the officer.

He has been equiped with a sword, which I guess will denote him as an officer.  The crest on his helmet might not be a crest, but part of the helmet design. But I have chosen to paint it as a crest. Not that it is very visibile with the Silvered helmet and the light grey crest (Ghostly grey).

Thats it for this post.

~Claus