page_title: Notitia Dignitatum
section_title: Depictions
hierarchical_section_title: Notitia Dignitatum / Depictions
caption_attribution_description: English: Magister Peditum (Insignia of the magister militum praesentalis.) page 4 from the Roman Notitia Dignitatum (5th century AD) 1° row 2° row 3° row 4° row 5° row
context_page_description: The Notitia Dignitatum is a document of the late Roman Empire that details the administrative organization of the Eastern and Western Empires. It is unique as one of very few surviving documents of Roman government and describes several thousand offices from the imperial court to provincial governments, diplomatic missions, and army units. It is usually considered to be accurate for the Western Roman Empire in the AD 420s and for the Eastern or Byzantine Empire in the AD 390s. However, the text itself is not dated, and omissions complicate ascertaining its date from its content.
context_section_description: The Notitia contains symbols similar to the diagram which later came to be known as yin and yang symbol. The infantry units armigeri defensores seniores ("shield-bearers") and Mauri Osismiaci had a shield design which corresponds to the dynamic, clockwise version of the symbol, albeit with red dots, instead of dots of the opposite colour. The emblem of the Thebaei, another Western Roman infantry regiment, featured a pattern of concentric circles comparable to its static version. The Roman patterns predate the earliest Taoist versions by almost seven hundred years, and there is no evidence for a connection between the two.
caption: Shield pattern of the armigeri defensores seniores (4th row, third from left)[6][7][8]
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