okay guys so as you can probably tell from the title of this video um we are going to be talking about late roman shields not only their construction their decoration a little bit of their use but i also want to tackle at least briefly this question of you know the roman legions for at least 200 maybe 300 years had you know this famous design of shield this kind of somewhat curved uh convex rectangle the famous roman scutum right the shield that shows up in video games and movies and tv shows that everybody probably thinks of when they think of roman shield well the late imperial shields weren't like that they were ovular sometimes they were circular so why the change um now before we get going i just want to briefly say that i'm not designing this to be like the end-all be-all video um the study of late roman shields in terms of military equipment when you compare it to you know what we know about like helmets uh spearheads swords that kind of stuff is relatively understudied so i'm not designing this to be like the ultimate video i'd want this to be a broad introductory baseline kind of thing so when i do more in-depth videos we're all approaching it from the same area from the same uh knowledge level as it were so then why is it that late roman shields are relatively understudied well this has to do with the nature of the evidence for the late imperial period when you were studying military equipment for something like i don't know the napoleonic wars world war one world war ii uh the us civil war the vietnam war whatever it's relatively easy to do that because we have an abundance of texts we have an abundance of you know photographs and other forms of artwork we have an abundance of in some cases like battlefield archaeology but we also have a lot of surplus material like surplus firearms surplus uh helmets surplus uniforms vehicles etc so it's very easy to study these conflicts and know what these soldiers used how effective they were how these things were made when you study ancient military equipment it gets a lot harder it becomes much more difficult there are certain instances where this doesn't really apply but generally speaking organic materials so things like leather straps leather edging on maybe helmets or shields um definitely you know belts baldricks for suspending the swords scabbards which are you know made of wood um and definitely for the purposes of this video the shield boards it's made of wood unless it undergoes very specific um you know circumstances very specific processes in the ground or in the bog wherever the stuff is deposited wherever we find it unless it takes on the properties of minerals organic material just doesn't survive so largely speaking in terms of archaeology when we talk about material evidence for this stuff it's a lot of inorganic stuff metals of course that's not exactly great either if a spearhead is left out in the woods for 2 000 years it's going to corrode so maybe we found this spearhead or a sword or something but maybe it's really corroded we don't really know what it looked like so we have some material evidence for the study of ancient military equipment we have some texts but again you know texture organic things written on paper papyrus vela may be formed of leather they can decay they can burn they can get lost if they're soaked uh you know the ink runs off and then we're screwed so we don't have as many texts from antiquity surviving as we would like we have some artwork but you can't just look at the artwork especially for the late imperial period we'll talk about why this is in a couple minutes on this video you can't just look at artwork and say oh well the equipment depicted is like this therefore the equipment looks like it it's entirely possible that the person who is uh doing the artwork maybe their purpose is to entertain you maybe their purpose is to tell a story and they don't really care too much about what the equipment looks like maybe they're kind of familiar with the equipment but like not really so maybe they draw the sword being suspended from the wrong side maybe they draw the bow incorrectly like the list kind of goes on here so those are like the introductory problems we have when we're studying this particular topic now before moving forward i just want to briefly define dates so when we say late roman empire late imperial period what does that mean uh well we could take our cue from jones who was this big deal british classicist working in the early 20th century uh who wrote this really influential really really big trilogy on the late roman empire he goes from about 250 ish so the middle of the crisis of the third century to 602 with the death of emperor morris when the roman general focus or us if you want to pronounce his name that way because you can and it's a little pun on what he did to the roman state um seizes power and executes morris in the middle of constantinople it's a very large time frame so for this video and other ones moving forward i want to narrow that down a little bit so when i say the late roman empire what i mean is about the fourth century going up until about you know 4 25 4 30 4 35 so that date range is chosen the first third of the fifth century uh because this is when the roman empire in the west really begins to break up politically and this is when the barbarians successful kingdoms really start coming into their own and although they're built on roman foundations they're bringing their own stuff into play here so it changes what the equipment looks like okay so not everybody agrees with me on this uh but i think for the discussion of late roman shields it would be useful to start a little bit before the late period during the antony era so this is otherwise known as the um era of the five good emperors between about 96 uh with the assession of hadrian to 192 with you know mercerius and commodus uh when they die and then uh the sovereign dynasty comes into being so the antonine period sees a lot of changes in military equipment changes in some body armor some swords helmets some shields a little bit this is what bishop and colston in their book roman military equipment called the antony military revolution because things changed so rapidly over about 100 year period now when you're examining this era the problem is that in terms of archaeology we lack actually surviving examples up of antonine period shields so basically about a century so we don't really have material evidence but what we do have is plenty of artwork and when you take everything together um when you corroborate everything what the artwork tells you is that the auxiliaries use the standard you know ovular shield that they're known to use in this period but the legionaries still continue to use the traditional you know roman scutum the uh curved rectangular shield that everybody thinks of when they probably hear the words roman shield these this continues into the antonin period in terms of archaeology yes we don't have you know the plywood construction or anything like that but what we do have specifically the research i did for this although it shows up all over the empire the specific site i researched for this video uh was the waffen magazine the uh armory in the roman fortress slash legionary dockyard slash port on the danube incarnatum which is located in modern day austria though in roman times this would have been the province of pannonia superior so in this vaffin magazine what we find are a ton of shield bosses and some other things as well those other things that we find at carnaudum uh are leather coverings or pieces of leather coverings anyway so these are things you would you know cover the shield with to protect the ward and everything else from the elements like rain snow um sometimes this leather covering would be painted sometimes not we have archaeological evidence of both and the other thing we find okay is evidence of copper edging what that means is that what it suggests rather is that the antonym period shields continue to be bound right the edges are bound in up copper they're bound in metal now you skip forward a little bit into the crisis of the third century this is where things start changing this is where we start getting early stages of what eventually becomes uh late antique shield construction so during the crisis of the third century we have some evidence of shields from sites along the danube the rhine britain deeper into roman territory as well um but the stereotypical military site for all of this stuff in the third century by far the best comes from the site of duryaropos located in modern-day syria which during roman times was a fortress uh slash fortress city which was destroyed in a siege by the persians between about 256 and about 257 so at dora um and if i find good images i'm going to put them on the screen here we have recovered generally speaking four types of shield we have a large ovular type of shield with no boss we have two shields if you want to consider these shields made in a wicker construction um definitely braced with wood covered with rawhide these are quite possibly you know archery shields things you would maybe set up in front of ranged units to protect them we have three ovular shields constructed up in a plank method so this is not the traditional legionary scutum which was made from at least three layers of wood not unlike plywood okay so it was layered together these round shields from dura these are planks so these are stacked not unlike anglo-saxon shields and not unlike the famous norse shields or the viking period these appear to have been slightly convex definitely not as curved as much as the traditional legionary scutum these are significantly less but the fact remains that these were curved to a degree anyway we also have recovered uh four traditional rectangular convex scudum the typical legion shield one of which is one of if not the best preserved scutums ever discovered from the roman period in addition to all of this so my point with this is that we actually have the wood preserved this is huge in terms of understanding you know shield construction and determining uh battlefield effectiveness how well they can stand up to blows how thick the boards were stuff like that we also have at least 20 uh shield bosses coming out of the dura europas archaeological site we have at least 22 planks from the ovular shields again this is huge and from those shield boards we can determine at least four kinds of ovular or the circular shields used during the crisis of the third century and then if you want to extrapolate a little bit moving into the early chunk of the 4th century the 300s now studying the late imperial period lady antiquity poses two problems in terms of military equipment um and that is well i already mentioned one of them right we don't really have material evidence but the other is that we do have a lot of artwork uh we have some archaeology and we have some texts and what those three things taken together tell us is that the late roman armies adopt uh to a degree barbarian or barbarian-esque equipment why would you do this if the scooter and the gladius was like the winning combination that conquered the roman world why would you abandon it well we'll talk about that in a minute now as far as like artwork evidence goes um and this is where we can't just read artwork literally we always have to quantify and contextualize everything because like any source artwork has problems in late antiquity we have a lot of artwork which shows you know the typical rectangular curved scutum this the stereotypical roman shield but this is also when artwork goes into a neoclassical revival period so it might just be artistic license we don't really know certainly the vast majority of artwork though from late antiquity and the text tell us that rounded planked shields were used now how they were built uh that's a little more difficult to determine but once again this is where some archaeology to the extent that we have it anyway can lend a hand from 4th century egypt possibly it's possible these were not discovered in egypt but as far as i'm aware it is although you should be aware that this is contentious among the people that really studied this we have four surviving examples from the late fourth century of shields two of which okay are sufficiently preserved to allow us to really figure out the construction although again we need to be careful here because these are somewhat smaller than what the artwork maybe shows in terms of like proportions in terms of how it fits on your body uh and we don't have shield bosses for these guys as well so they've been interpreted not as like combat shields uh but maybe as hunting shields so you may have seen a video released by metatron you know inquiring as to why the romans didn't use leather straps on their shields um and it's not a bad video however in late antiquity if these are indeed hunting shields are not combat shields if these are hunting shields um there's no boss and it looks like there's a space to put some kind of a thong or a strap on so he might not be entirely correct and this might actually be an example of where straps were used but we know in terms of military equipment combat shields weren't used that way um my point is that there's a lot of nuance to this you have to be really careful with making generalizations or talking about this in any way shape or form now these shields both of them are circular both are made of plank so again they're not the uh you know plywood construction of the typical legionary scooter of the imperial period or the high imperial period anyway and although the exact dimensions are different when you combine them and you average out the measurements they come out to about 1.05 meters in diameter uh with the planks being about 50 millimeters in width and about seven millimeters in thickness okay so this is like these are the dimensions that we're working with these shields also along with you know late antique finds from bogs in central europe uh like thorsburgh like naidum uh ilirepadal i hope i'm pronouncing those correctly because some of them are danish these broadly match in terms of construction in terms of size the door europa shields so the shields at dura appear to have set the pattern for how the late roman army constructed and faced their shields in terms of edging during the late imperial period the copper alloy engine sometimes is called oricalcum this disappears and it's replaced by a leather binding sometimes it's rawhide i am not certain as of this moment if that leather binding was sewn in or if it was thumbed i've seen studies that say either or um it's entirely possible it was both or maybe one of the studies is just wrong it was actually done one way i don't know it's going to take more research but i'm hoping to find an answer which i can work into a later video archaeology art and texts right the three sources we use for the ancient world when they're combined they tell us the following about late roman shields so the dura shields and going into the late imperial period these are typically circular or ovular and they're often faced with leather to be you know some kind of a protective case or maybe just a protective layer so they're faced with either leather or gesso and the dura shield specifically appeared have been faced with gesso we know it was at least applied onto one layer of glue maybe there was a layer of fabric underneath some of the archaeology suggests that but as far as i know that particular bit of the dura shields they're not clear now how strong this gesture was as a protector also was not certain so in the late period after the crisis of the third century it's not really clear if gesso was used to face the shields but leather definitely was uh we do have some of that surviving and often that leather was painted and if the leather wasn't painted the actual wood would have been painted well why is this so leather and if not leather um the wood it provides protection for the shield and the paint also provides protection for the wood and the paint not only notifies the soldier as belonging to a specific unit in a specific army but it also uses okay christian iconography so saints the cairo uh crosses images of jesus why is this well the late antique period this is when the roman empire converts to christianity um and it works christianity into the idea of empire so in the late antique period there is very much this idea that the roman empire is the christian empire so where the soldiers go god and christ also go and if christ is on your side if you have him on your shield you're under his protection and you'll win we also have the image in this period of jesus christ as a war god as a soldier god now that's kind of weird because if you go to church in the modern day you know jesus is like this nice guy he said nice things about people like he died on the cross for a sins if you believe that um seems like kind of a humble man but if you read the new testament jesus isn't exactly the nicest of individuals and the key portion of the bible that you can look to for this and this is definitely what romans identified with uh are christ's actions in the temple in jerusalem when he goes there and he sees merchants and other people on temple grounds selling stuff out of those you know stalls they're selling wares what does he do he doesn't he doesn't go get the police he doesn't go get soldiers he goes up to them and he starts flipping over the stalls he's breaking things he uses force to drive the merchants out of the sacred grounds of the temple so to roman soldiers and the roman state with the war mentality this was this was perfect symbolism for them this is why this is on their shields additionally now these shields as i mentioned before they're also slightly convex in keeping with the germanic find from this period which begs the question why did they adopt germanic or germanic-esque equipment well we don't really have an answer to this as far as i'm aware what i want to do uh with this particular question and i'll probably delve more into detail with it in other videos is give you two facts about laid antique military equipment in the late roman army and try to interpret it into a reason as to why this was done so the barbarian had this stock imagery in um you know roman culture the romans are civilized they draw some of their legacy from greece and who wouldn't want to be greek because that means you're civilized that means you're better than other people um but to be roman to be in the christian roman empire means you were within a divine state you're under god's protection and if you're a roman aristocrat and you receive the classical education you can quote virgil and homer everybody else by heart um part of what roman aristocrats in the late period believed was that through education you are lifted up and you are uh divinely ordained to lead the masses of humanity you become through education the better part of humankind the barbarian though well they're savages they're not the better part of humankind they're kind of sub-human they're nasty people they're brutal and they're warlike so in part barbarian imagery and barbarian equipment was adopted because it had this cool mystique so that's part of why they do this additionally in the late empire stuff was manufactured up in fabrikai state-run military factories there's one for swords there's one for helmets there's one for shield etc all of the stuff has to be to a degree mass reduced well if you're mass producing shields it's faster it's easier you get more out of your production line if you're doing a plank construction rather than if you're doing plywood um we know this from you know modern archaeological experiments so those two things combined adopting a dramatic style shield and the fact that it's easier to bang out in the production line this is maybe a reason for why this was adopted now that being said uh before i end the video i just want to highlight that although the traditional rectangular curved scutum was used during the imperial period and although their ovular or you know circular shield was used during the end of the roman empire of the western empire anyway that doesn't mean that this was just universal across the board we know the romans used many many different kinds of shields depending on the unit depending on the soldier's function depending on who the soldier was uh like you know for example imperial guard units had larger shields than standard legionaries we know that so my point is that we shouldn't necessarily look at this as applying just across the board you know one size fits all kind of thing that's not the best way of doing it but at this point you know i've kind of reached the end of the video so hopefully this was a useful intro for you if you want more information check out the stuff i've listed in the description and until the next video guys take care i'll see you all next time done you