Why did the oval shield replace the scutum?

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Sempronius,

I’m afraid I can ‘shoot that down’ right away, which I will try to do in a gentle manner.

The theory that I was told (along with the change to cavalry tactics, increased used of spears) was that the the greater influence and recruitment of non romans lead them to use their native arms. once all people in the empire were considered "romans citizens" and the legionary citizen/auxilery barbarian distinction began to dissolve into a generalized "infantry' unit.

That theory is an old one, indeed launched by contemporary writers, who complained that the late Roman army was made up of barbarians mostly! However, despite very clear non-Roman influences, this theory was proved to be invalid. Roman forces always included some number of non-Romans, but these were mostly equipped by the Roman state, as we can see from funerary object taken back into barbaricum. Hugh Elton also showed that there is no hard proof for a 4th c. Roman army made up from largely non-Roman soldiers. Although we begin to see this process taking place in the last decade of the 4th c., and continuing in the West only, during the 5th c., this was a long time after the equipment changes that we are discussing.

This meant that as more and more non italian Romans entered military service and the state asked them to pay for their own gear again they used what was native and familiar to them, the rounded. As the legions began to be depleted of italian-native romans the increase of these non native Romans meant that the standard shield was no longer the Square Scutum we all recognize, but the Round dish shield. This meant that the units using this shield became familiar with it and after successive generations joined the legion they would have been trained in the use of the round shield, causing it over afew generations to become the new standard.

Well, that would mean that these changes would have started very early! When the square scutum was introduced, it not only succeeded the oval scutum, but the latter continued to be in use next to the square one. And all the time, non-Italian soldiers from the Roman provinces entered the army, long before the square scutum went in decline. All this time, no native weapons were used, as these were no longer present for inhabitants of the Empire. Germanic troops had been fighting for Rome since Caesar, but as described above, when their numbers began really increasing, the changes were already in place. In fact, the Roman army had looked to its neighbours for new developments all the time: the gladius came from Spain, the spatha was also non-Roman, etc. And again, all this time the development was started from within the Roman army, and not due to large numbers of barbarians bringing their own weapons. Indeed, as above, the Roman army usually furnished the non-Romans with weapons, a practice which did only change when homogenous groups of Romans were entering the army (as federates, as short-timers or as cheap replacements for depleted frontier armies). But that was much later.