Like, I've seen red and gold banners in all kinds of fictional and popular history works, but wouldn't banners have degraded away by now? I was wondering if we figured out that they used red and gold for national stuff similar to how we figured out that they painted their statues, but after looking it up I discovered use of the red-gold motif for Rome in fictional works long before we figured out the statues were painted.
I thought it was purple? Can we add purple if anyone answers this?
See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1419e6/why_is_the_color_red_often_associated_with_rome/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/321ht0/throughout_popular_culture_roman_soldiers_are/
I'm also not sure if its coincidence that much of our mental picture of Rome comes from the days of the British Empire and guess what colour their troops wore? But I'll leave that for an expert on the period to answer.