Legio V Macedonica Roman Standard

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

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 cognomen 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 garrisoned between Moesia and Dacia (Troesmis, Potaissa). Detachments of the legion were used in the Jewish Wars, in Armenia and Numidia, testifying to its high regard with the imperial command. In the late imperial age, a component of its cavalry permanently entered the Eastern mobile field armies, and the legion, by then integrated into the Roman army of the East, probably disappeared in 636, during the defeat at Yarmuk against the Arabs.