Legio V Macedonica Roman Standard

The Legio V Macedonica was one of the longest-serving units of the Roman army, active from the late Republican age until the Byzantine era.

Founded in 43 BC by consul Gaius Vibius Pansa and Octavian, it was one of the twenty-eight legions on which the military power of the future Augustus was based. It probably fought at Actium in 31 BC, contributing to the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and its veterans were settled in northeastern Italy. The nickname Macedonica derives from its long stationing in Macedonia, where the legion was deployed after the civil wars, before being transferred to Oescus in Moesia, along the Danube.

Between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, the V Macedonica participated in Corbulo's eastern campaigns against the Parthians and, under Trajan, in the Dacian Wars, remaining then as a garrison between Moesia and Dacia (Troesmis, Potaissa). Detachments of the legion were used in the Jewish wars, in Armenia and in Numidia, testifying to its high regard within the imperial command. In the late imperial age, a cavalry component of the legion permanently joined the eastern mobile commands, and the legion, by then integrated into the Roman army of the East, probably disappeared in 636, in the defeat of Yarmuk against the Arabs.