Some Aspis Revisionism

[Paullus Scipio]

Kineas wrote:

That said, I also agree with Stephanos--I don't think bronze faced shields were common. I think that like the spoils at Olympia, this is the best of 280 shields or more from Pylos, right? The very best!

...whilst we can never know the proportion of fully bronze faced to bronze rimmed shields, it is worth noting that the bronze 'blazons' recovered at Olympia are 7-6 C BC and seem to have gone out of fashion by the Persian Wars ( caveat: we probably don't have enough samples to be sure).

I wouldn't call fully bronze face shields uncommon - again the impression is that these became more popular as time went by - for example Xenophon famously tells us that Lycurgus dictated ( i.e. an old custom) that Spartan shields were bronze faced (L.P.11.3), because they "were soon polished and tarnished slowly", and of course Spartan customs were widely imitated elswhere. Certainly among surviving Aspides, a number have smooth bronze faces e.g. the Vatican Etruscan one, the Macedonian one from the so-called Philip tomb....on the other hand, one would expect that the more expensive ones might survive in greater numbers in tombs, and there can be no doubt that cheaper versions without full bronze facings existed as evidenced by the findings....but I'm not sure I'd go so far as to suggest fittings such as the porpax were leather only.....

Also, that particular 'Sphacteria shield' is unlikely to have been among "the very best" - it had been discarded down a cistern by the 3 C BC,which was then filled in, whilst several/many other examples had been kept and were still on display when Pausanias saw them c. 170 AD