04-02-2009, 12:13 AM
Paul,
You wrote:
>What do you think of the suggestion that the dyplon and boetian shield never existed. It
>was suggested by Webster back in the 50's that, just as later art showed heroes
>carrying anachronistic dyplons, the early portrayals of dyplons represented not
>contemporary shields, but a throwback to mycenean figure 8 shields. Thus it never
>existed.
I believe that there are a couple of strong arguments against discarding the representation of dyplon shields as artistic shorthand or a throwback by artists. They are:
- The shield is technically feasible to produce
- There is not a consistent usage of it in the representation of heroes, which makes it difficult to argue that it is shorthand.
There are also a couple of points on interpretation that must be considered:
- If you discard the dyplon shield as not representative you would also have to discard everything else associated with heroic representation as it is immediately suspect. In other words you can't have your cake and eat it too.
- As heroic scenes compose the bulk of vase art on the subject we are interested in, that would virtually eliminate vase art as a source for interpretation.
However, as helmets, greaves, cuirasses, swords exist that clearly demonstrate that the vase art is a fairly good representation of every other item in context with dyplon shields, it is reasonable to believe they existed. Given the extremely limited sample set of surviving shields contemporary with the representations of dyplon shields (1-2) I don't see a foundation for a strong argument against this position.
All that said, I do believe that the dyplon shield is on its way out at the end of the archaic period. But I also believe it did exist.
Have fun!
Cole
You wrote:
>What do you think of the suggestion that the dyplon and boetian shield never existed. It
>was suggested by Webster back in the 50's that, just as later art showed heroes
>carrying anachronistic dyplons, the early portrayals of dyplons represented not
>contemporary shields, but a throwback to mycenean figure 8 shields. Thus it never
>existed.
I believe that there are a couple of strong arguments against discarding the representation of dyplon shields as artistic shorthand or a throwback by artists. They are:
- The shield is technically feasible to produce
- There is not a consistent usage of it in the representation of heroes, which makes it difficult to argue that it is shorthand.
There are also a couple of points on interpretation that must be considered:
- If you discard the dyplon shield as not representative you would also have to discard everything else associated with heroic representation as it is immediately suspect. In other words you can't have your cake and eat it too.
- As heroic scenes compose the bulk of vase art on the subject we are interested in, that would virtually eliminate vase art as a source for interpretation.
However, as helmets, greaves, cuirasses, swords exist that clearly demonstrate that the vase art is a fairly good representation of every other item in context with dyplon shields, it is reasonable to believe they existed. Given the extremely limited sample set of surviving shields contemporary with the representations of dyplon shields (1-2) I don't see a foundation for a strong argument against this position.
All that said, I do believe that the dyplon shield is on its way out at the end of the archaic period. But I also believe it did exist.
Have fun!
Cole
Cole
