Leather Hand Guard/Glove to carry Scutum

[M. CVRIVS ALEXANDER]

Alex, isn't this a different sort of shield? Looks like a two loop grip. That's not the same thing, or the same carry problem. Or am I missing something?

The shiled is certainly different from the rectangular scutum, but the difference is irrelevant to the point I was making earlier in the thread.

[M. Demetrius]

OK, I admit I have not carried a two point shield like that. I was just thinking the support might be different. But again, the pain in the hand is real, regardless of anything else concerning the shield...and the stress pain in the elbow if you carry it very far. Must have taken the Roman recruit quite some time to overcome the training.

[PhilusEstilius]

There is the other side of the argument about the Roman scutum where past re-enactors have used the idea of the size of the Dura shield as the bench mark thus creating a huge 40 by 40 inch chunk of wood.
I tend to think that this idea has been over estimated and were the original battle types only around 36 inch, which gets rid of a lot of wood to carry around and of course makes the whole thing much more easy to use. Just a bit of food for thought for we are told that these guys were much smaller than the average size soldier today