Mykale, a naval battle?

[Old Husker]

This thread has been quite a revelation for me on details of the Persian shield! The only thing that I'd like to point out regards the excellent illustration that Paul Bardunias posted back on July 7, which shows the Persian shield-bearer jabbing with a spear. I believe that this must have been the mode in which the front line or two in a normal Persian battle array fought most of the time, holding the shield with one hand (even if it's bottom were resting on the ground or even shallowly entrenched) and striking overhead with a spear. This approach would have strengthened the shield wall by both pushing back against othismos and jabbing to wound the enemy front-men as well as discourage them from pressing against the spara. Such a technique parallels dipictions on Babylonian artifacts displayed at the British Museum, which show pairs of shield-bears with an archer, suggesting that such earlier Middle Eastern warfare probably informed the later Persian method of shield use.

The idea of Persian front-rankers using bows rather than spears seems much less likely; even if their spara could be fixed in the ground, it would have been far too easy for an attacking hoplite to hit and knock it over. Of course, against an opponent that stood at a distance to employ missile weapons, it might have been more practical to add bow fire from the leading ranks, thus this could have have been used against some Asian opponents with weak 'shock' fighting capability.