Legio V Macedonica Roman Standard

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

Founded in 43 BC by the consul Gaius Vibius Pansa and by Octavian, it was among 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 probably settled in north-eastern Italy. The nickname Macedonica derives from its long posting in Macedonia, where the legion was stationed after the civil wars, before its transfer to Oescus in Moesia, on the Danube.

Between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD the V Macedonica took part in Corbulo’s eastern campaigns against the Parthians and, under Trajan, in the Dacian wars, then remained on garrison duty between Moesia and Dacia (Troesmis, Potaissa). Detachments of the legion were deployed in the Jewish wars, in Armenia and in Numidia, testifying to the high regard in which it was held by the imperial command. In the late imperial period a cavalry component joined the mobile eastern field armies for good, and the legion, by then integrated into the Eastern Roman army, probably disappeared in 636, in the defeat at Yarmuk against the Arabs.