Ancient Greek Battle Standards.

by TheZek42

Did the Greeks have standards or banners like the Romans did? What kind of markings did these have on them? The loss of a Roman standard was a particularly heavy blow to the Legion that held them; did the Greeks have something similar? Was their standard (if they had one) a big deal in their armies?

Iphikrates

Nope. Nothing like this. Sorry, this is a very short answer. There is no evidence of banners, flags or standards in Greek battle formations.

Unlike Roman legions, the units that made up Greek armies (with a few minor exceptions) had no institutional permanence. They were raised at need from defined administrative districts: no war, no army. With the exception of the established bases of small standing units in the later Classical period, Greek states had no barracks, no staff cadre, and little dedicated military infrastructure beyond walls and docks. In short, Greek city-states had no military.

Without a military, it is difficult to instill in recruits any sense of unit cohesion by generating a unit identity through customs, traditions and symbolism. Units did not train together and rarely fought together; there were no officers whose livelihood was tied to the army and whose status was connected to the history of a particuar unit.

However, the ties of unit identity and institutional history are also less important in the case of militia armies. Greek citizens marched to war with their neighbours, with officers who had been elected to their position, and with strong regional and city-state identity to unite them in purpose. They fought, in theory, for their own homes and families, and had no need of banners and standards to make them eager to fight.

The Roman legionary eagle was in many ways a substitute form of moral encouragement for a military that was no longer formed in the same way. Early to Mid-Republican armies consisted of citizen levies similar to their Greek counterparts, but in the days of the later Republic, Rome increasingly relied on professional forces composed of paid soldiers. To ensure that these men nevertheless felt enough moral commitment to fight and take risks for their community like citizen militia, the Romans started to emphasise legionary standards as rallying points, avatars of protective deities, and as symbols of collective identity and ideals. It is in professional and permanently established forces, especially ones that are drawn from an increasingly hetereogenous population and used on campaigns across sprawling territorial empires, that insignia like these take on a far greater significance.