Iphicratian Pelte & Pelte Sarrisophoron

[MeinPanzer]

By the way, have any reenactors tried to reconstruct a double-armed Iphicratean peltast? How practical is it to try to wield a twelve foot/4m spear and a pair of javelins at the same time? Many authors say that this is impossible, but apparently the thureophoroi did it. I suppose they stuck the long spear in the ground while they threw the javelins?

The painted stele of Dionysios, a Bithynian mercenary who died in Alexandria, shows the deceased equipped with a thureos, two short javelins and a longer fighting spear, so it is obviously not impossible. My guess is that they just bundled the javelins and the spear in the shield hand while skirmishing.

...because if Iphicrates "pelte" was of a new or unusual shape, we should have been told so. In all this hypothetical discussion of 'oval' pelte, we are in danger of losing sight of the fact that in both sources, Iphicrates 'reform' is said to be the replacement of the Hoplite's Aspis with the Pelte, not the introduction of a 'new' or differently shaped one.

The shields aren't mentioned as being 'new' because those sources are writing from a later perspective. By the time of those authors, everyone in the Greek world who had any sort of contact with the military would be familiar with the oval shield. So, they were replacing the old aspis with a pelte, but for these later authors, a pelte no longer referred to the old type of crescent-shaped pelte. And, as Paul points out, the fact that they felt it necessary to qualify the word pelte with a specific adjective points to the fact that these shields were atypical.

I have not found a reference yet for the thureophoroi spear lengths other than Duncan Head's comment (perhaps it's in Luke's article, I'll have to check). There's a similar argument about whether it was possible to use a rhomphaia with javelins.

Or, for that matter, how one wielded a rhomphaia with a shield like a thureos.

...I wouldn't disagree that the 'symmetrous' is a qualifier, but it is more likely to distinguish a round pelte ( for which there is plenty of other evidence) from a crescent- shaped one, rather than an oval type( for which there is no evidence......) Besides, Nepos specifically tells us 'round', and he was likely drawing on the same source as Diodorus, so 'symmetrous' is almost certainly round too.....

This is going in circles... Iphicrates' reforms were to arm his troops with unusual equipment, so for examples of their armament we should look to which shape of shield is commonest in the archaeological record? And at any rate, we have already established that there is evidence for oval shields being used in Thrace, where Iphicrates lived for some time, only 30 to 40 years after his death, and that it's not a stretch to imagine that they first began to replace the crescent pelte in the first half of the fourth century BC.

And Nepos is most certainly not drawing on the same source as Diodorus, considering that he tells us they were armed with mail.