"Republican roman shields" Topic

Hey all, im new to Romans if im looking to get decals for an army. would they all be the same? or different for different units?

colour style etc

cheers in advance

link

Nobody really knows, so do what you like.

It also depends when in the Republic: for the mid Republic, the Punic and Macedonian wars, there is no hard evidence and most shields may have been one plain colour.

One of the earliest illustrations of a patterned shield is from Praeneste about 100 BC or so –

– and after that shield patterns get commoner.

One possibility is a consistent design for a legion but each cohort using different colours, but that's guesswork really.

Not based on anything other than the transfers from Little Big Man Studios but for my 2nd Punic War Romans I did the Roman Legions with the same shields and the Allied Italian's with different pattens to differentiate. link

I've flip flopped a bit in my own research on Roman shield designs. Nowadays, I find it really hard to believe that they (mid Republic Romans) wouldn't have decorated them when:

*all your neighbors decorate their shields
*there's nothing in writing saying shields couldn't be decorated
*you're part of a citizen militia of part time soldiers
*downtime in camp leading to creative expression (trench art, Vietnam helmet graffiti, etc)

@Incognito, what I do know for certain is that you should avoid yellow and orange shields at all cost. Such colors were associated in Roman society with femininity and bridal gowns; unsuited for a son of Mars.

@Gurkan: AFAIK, its not certain that the soldiers in the Praeneste mosaic are Romans. They might be Ptolemaic thureophoroi.

"*all your neighbors decorate their shields"

Oval shields both in (non-Gallic) Italy and in the Hellenistic world are more commonly shown plain – often white – than with any decoration.
See e.g. Burns PDF link p.166

Complicated designs like those in the tomb of the Erotes are very unusual and may perhaps have more ritual significance than showing actual designs carried in the field (the aegis perhaps being an exception). By the first century the heads of various generals, kings and other bigwigs are displayed as if on a shield e.g. the 13 dignitaries in Mithridates' monument on Delos and these are clearly not depictions of actual shields.

Later aspides are also often shown with very simple or even no device, though there is a possibility in some tomb paintings that artists are showing how clever they are in painting shiny bronze shields – possibly the same with the reflective shield on the Alexander Mosaic.

However, as I put in a 2019 thread on similar stuff…
"We know from an example in the 2nd Punic War that newly arrived troops could be identified by their shields. This could mean e.g.
a) the shield devices were all the same in each unit, but different between units (as generally thought to be the case in the Empire)
b) the legion which had been together long enough had had time to paint all the shields the same
c) the new shields were still in good condition
d) something else!"

Worth noting that shields could be mass produced e.g. the 30000 from Arretium. Churning out so many would probably have left little or no time for any decoration. Quite possibly some kind of device could have been added once in the hands of the men, though the resources needed probably meant it would be more than just a bit of bored daubing. I suspect the average soldier on campaign would have preferred his eggs in his belly rather than on his shield.

As referenced by Swampster, the one possible piece of evidence that we have from the 2nd Punic War is Livy's claim that Hasdrubal suspected that Livius' army at the Metaurus had been reinforced when he spotted among the Romans "old shields he had not seen before".
(scuta uetera hostium notauit quae ante non uiderat)

So something about Claudius' troops' shields distinguished them from Livius', but quite what? Just looking a lot more sun-faded and/or battered (which seems the primary inference from Livy's choice of words)? Different design? Different colour? All of the above?

Noteworthy that Hasdrubal was also alarmed seeing some rather lean horses (ie not well fed on a march), and was looking for signs of sunburn on the troops' skins that might also indicate a long march…

It's all a bit it hit and miss. Having wanted Caesarian Romans rather than Punic ones, then picking the cheaper option via Warlord. I at least had the shields sorted, or so I thought. Thanks to Little Big Man that is.

Poke around and you discover that there's difference over did they really have metal banding round the rim? Was the middle vertical reinforced shape painted or left plain wood. If painted, was it the same as the background to the overall design? Was there a brass boss, or was it just the square behind the central raised portion that was metal of some kind.

Was that square even really there, or just Warlord's invention?

Finally, what about the back of the shield? Paint it to represent natural wood? Plain leather, or painted the same background as it the front side?