Umbones for republican scutum

[Crispvs]

When you say 'Republican' don't forget that this term encompasses five hundred years or more. You really need to be a bit more specific than that. I think that the type of boss shown would be fine for a very late Republican shield, but if you were to go back even to the time of Polybius (which is only as far as the late second century BC) you would probably find that the vast majority of bosses would be wooden 'barleycorn' bosses, some possibly with a metal plate equating to the Gallic 'butterfly' boss, which was almost certainly an intermediary step between the wooden boss and the all metal boss.

As far as decoration goes, we really start to see a lot of decoration on surviving bosses from the second century AD onwards, with earlier identifiable Roman bosses being fairly plain. That said, when Caesar was in Gaul he would certainly have put Gallic smiths in friendly or conquered areas to work making equipment for his soldiers and they would be very likely to decorate their pieces in the way they were used to.
That said, the decoration on this boss does not look at all Celtic to me. The leaves are far too naturalistic and seem much more like the decorative patterns seen on some first century AD apron terminals (then again, it also reminds me somewhat of late 19th century wallpaper :wink: ).


Crispvs