07-01-2010, 11:31 PM
Quote:I've read that the "white" helmets of Boeotian cavalry were tinned, I just asumed that the same was true for the Macedonian "white" shields. The color white and silver are often confounded- hence Armes Blanche.
Maybe in more poetic writing it could be, but considering that there was a regiment already called "Silver Shields," I see no reason to take their name as anything other than literal.
Quote:The Pydna shield is not very deep, assuming it has the same profile as the others on that monument. The Ephesus shields are not as deep on the inside as they should be given the outer curve. This could simply be a lazy sculptor or a need to not have too much unsupported stone, but might be more. The porpaxes themselves look odd as well, perhaps extended to match the filled region.
These shields obviously are not as deep as we might expect because they are carved in relief, and not in the round; the sculptor simply wanted to give the impression of depth. If we do take the Pydna shield shown from the inside to be different than the others, then that opens up a whole other can of worms.
Quote:By way of loose analogy I present the Kalkhan. Note how similar the fittings are as well. I have read that these shields can be worn on the arm or held in the fist as need be by the way. I think this was the situation with old-style peltasts's shields that have a double strap grip/porpax system.
I've thought about it in the past, and I suspect that the oval peltae depicted on the Kazanluk tomb paintings possess a very similar system (one looser strap at each extremity and a double strap grip in the middle) so that they could have employed like a series of porpakes to allow the bearer to use a rhomphaia with both hands. That shield type and the rhomphaia both appear in Thrace at about the same time (mid-4th c. BC), so it seems like they very well may have been linked.
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
