Sometime ago I attempted to create some Ligurian mercenaries and hope to be able to finish them off in the next week or so.

The Ligurians like the Iberians and Etruscans are part of an ancient group of peoples who inhabited the area of the Western Mediterranean. There is surprisingly little documentary evidence concerning their language or customs and their influence in the region was substantially diminished by incursions of large numbers of Celtic peoples from the north, who appear to have taken most of the productive farming areas, thereby reducing the Ligurians to being an impoverished community of tribes occupying the barren hills of the Maritime Alps. Ligurian involvement in the Second Punic War in support of the Carthaginians and the regions strategic importance to the Romans, lying as it did between Italy and Gaul, subsequently led to complete subjugation of the Ligurians and the absorption of the region into the Roman Empire. However this would have been a far from easy task, as the Romans had always found the Ligurians a fierce adversary who used their upland territory with it's thick cover of dense Mediterranean scrub, an ideal cover for guerrilla warfare. It was this strong resistance to Roman rule that subsequently led to the complete destruction and obliteration of their culture.



Being small in stature with dark hair and olive skins the Ligurians were what we would recognize today as being of Mediterranean appearance and were probably not too dissimilar to the people living in those areas today. Despite a troubled relationship with their new neighbours the Celts, both peoples traded and goods such as clothing, weapons and armour in times of peace. It is also believed that the Ligurians had a particular close and long association with the Greek settlers of the region and especially the citizens of Massilia and Ligurian fishermen were frequent visitors to its harbour. It is therefore more than likely that Ligurians would have been greatly influenced by Greek customs and religion.
Many Ancient warriors decorated their shields with the faces of evil spirits to frighten and intimidate their enemies, the Greeks often used the face of Medusa. I therefore thought that it would be likely that the Ligurians adapted this Medusa face and merged it with the faces of gods in Ligurian legend, the details of which are now lost to us. It was commonly the practice at the time to adapt other religions and merge gods and goddesses with your own. As we do not have any accurate accounts of what Ligurian shields looked like, it is more likely that they were more influenced by the Greeks and Etruscans than the Celts in matters of religion and belief and therefore decorated their shields in a similar manner.




These are some screen shots I did some time ago, the warriors with the flaming javelins are to be made into a cavalry unit. Flaming javelins are an important weapon as they are used to alight vegetation once an enemy is lured into dense scrubland, to inflict heavy casualties upon the ranks of Roman soldiers.


http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1..._top/ling2.jpg
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1..._top/ling3.jpg
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1..._top/ling4.jpg
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1..._top/ling6.jpg
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1..._top/ling7.jpg