'Comedic' from SanderS - 'SPQR'

Hoi there Folks!

The choice for the miniatures I'd like to enter in this bonus round, kind of presented themselves to me, rather than me picking them out purposefully. Now I need some of your patience to put this post in perspective. I am a book-addict; I read about 3 books at the same time, switching between them either way my fancy goes and so my bookcases are brimming with all kinds of the little buggers. Amongst my historically oriented books are the usual suspects like Bernard Cornwell's series (Sharpe, Arthur, Uthred etc), The Flashman Papers, The Space Captain Smith Chronicles, some Douglas Jackson works, but also a lot of Simon Scarrows books, most prominently the Macro and Cato series. It's about the first book of the latter series I'd like to tell a tale. The first book "Under the Eagle" sees two unlikely friends join the Legions invading Britain in 42 AD under Claudius' orders.
 
The famous first encounter of young Cato with any enemies, takes place shortly before his Legion leaves the German border for Britain. This scene has been immortalised by (was it Warlord?) in the little vignette seen below.

Now these are not funny but the following situation IS, well in my humble opinion. A border skirmish sees Cato and his "comrades" faces some very angry Germanic tribesmen and the following scene had me ROFLMAO  for a long time. While engaging the enemy Macro orders his Legionaries to loose their pila, only young Cato is so entranced by all that is happening that he...oh well let's hear it from Mr Scarrow himself:

"Unlike the front rank of legionaries, Cato still carried his javelin and, rather than carry the awkward weapon into the heaving melee he decided to hurl it as far forward as possible before drawing his short-sword.But the javelin-throwing he had practised on the parade ground bore no resemblance to throwing it in battle conditions. As he drew his arm back he almost impaled the man immediately behind.'Oi watch it you stupid CENSORED!'the man shouted angrily, as he barged past Cato. 'You'll do someone an injury.' Cato flushed with embarrassment and then quickly hurled the offending weapon forwards at an unfortunately low trajectory, which caused the javelin to glance off Macro's helmet and fly off horizontally over the heaving mass of Germans before dropping out of sight." 

Now I could go on about how I painted them; I chose black shields because most of the other Romans you see around have red ones and I like these better. I could tell how at the school where I work an experimental archaeologist, specialized in the Roman army (with 3 brilliant books under his belt) has told us that the legionaries had to provide their own tunics and therefore most of them would have different coloured ones and only the richer ones (like the officers and NCO's) would have brightly coloured tunics in red for instance and that I represented that on these figures. Mind you; that would all be true yet NOT funny. So then let's show you another picture of a Roman soldier, of sorts...grinning like mad because his boss wanted him to don a silly outfit at school.

So here's yours truly dressed up and just about as experienced as poor young Cato...

Oh and no silly remarks about the watch, the beard or the way the armour doesn't fit and...oh, just no remarks okay!?


Cheers Sander