Light Armed Cohorts and Standard bearers shield

[jkaler48]

John,

I agree that officers had their means of transporting their gear. However, why not use an elaborate umbo. Julius Caesar I believe mentions that dona were worn into battle and if the Lauresfort are anything to go by, they would have been more expensive than any umbo.

However, as fas as that picture that Peroni showed, it appears that bent nails were used with that umbo. Thus it appears that both nails and those flat rivets that would presumably have pins and are presumably from scuta could be used.

I can imagine a later period Centurion like the earlier Scaeva needing to easily remove his umbo to replace his shield board. (Scaeva's himself probably had a late Republican style umbo which I don't think any decorated one have been found.)


"Julius Caesar, Civil War 3.45

Thus there happened no less than six actions in one day; three near Dyrrhachium, and three about the lines. In computing the number of the slain, it appeared that Pompey lost about two thousand men, with several volunteers and centurions, among whom was Valerius Flaccus, the son of Lucius, who had formerly been praetor of Asia. We gained six standards, with the loss of no more than twenty men in all the attacks; but in the fort, not a soldier escaped being wounded; and four centurions belonging to one cohort, lost their eyes. As a proof of the danger they had been exposed to, and the efforts they had sustained, they brought and counted to Caesar about thirty thousand arrows that had been shot into the fort, and showed him the centurion Scaeva's buckler, which was pierced in two hundred and thirty places. Caesar, as a reward for his services both to himself and the republic, presented him with two hundred thousand asses, and advanced him directly from the eighth rank of captains to the first; it appearing that the preservation of the fort was chiefly owing to his valour. He also distributed military rewards among the other of them double pay, and a double allowance of corn.