01-17-2007, 11:49 AM
The Final report from the excavations at Dura Europos gives examples of shield designs from Trajan's column (Florescu 1965). There are examples of 'Auxiliary' shields with stars,wreaths, eagles, concentric rings,lightning bolts and interestingly enough, the representation of Romulus and Remus and the She-Wolf. The investigative work on the shields examples from Dura were done by a Belgian gentleman by the name of Cumont. He concluded that the general base colour for all the shields and fragments thereof was-Wait for it-RED. Those examples that were restored or any that were complete enough to give a fair representation of were all highly decorated eg Homeric shield and Amazon shield and the cavalry shield with the decorated inside.
As the Marcus Aurelius examples as cited were predominantly oval, does that suggest that the transition from rectangular to oval had already begun? Or that simply the Auxiliary did all the fighting in his long wars?
The reason for the example of the DURA Shields is that there is mention of some direct correlation between those designs and the Trajanic ones. If we consider the possibilites, would it not be unreasonable to assume that with the extensive use of the oval shield by Marcus Aurelius' armies and the use of symbols on Trajanic shields that the two could have been readily combined in the late 2nd cent?
Alan Machen
As the Marcus Aurelius examples as cited were predominantly oval, does that suggest that the transition from rectangular to oval had already begun? Or that simply the Auxiliary did all the fighting in his long wars?
The reason for the example of the DURA Shields is that there is mention of some direct correlation between those designs and the Trajanic ones. If we consider the possibilites, would it not be unreasonable to assume that with the extensive use of the oval shield by Marcus Aurelius' armies and the use of symbols on Trajanic shields that the two could have been readily combined in the late 2nd cent?
Alan Machen
