THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

'
THE ROUND SHIELD. 465
the Bronze Age circular and equipped with a boss survived
in Ireland luitii almost modern times. Its dimensions and
general appearance tally very closely with the description given
by Strabo of the shields used by the Lusitanians, circular
shields of about 2 feet in diameter made of wood covered with
leather.
This Lusitanian shield was probably the same as the
common Spanish caetra, a small shield, which was certainly
circular as is shown by the proverb, Quis rotundmii facere
caetram nequeat
?
This is in strict accord with the testimony of certain
Spanish coins ^
probably of the second century B.C., on which
are seen horsemen carrying round bucklers, with a central
boss.
" One of these shields shows four smaller bosses arranged
in cruciform order around the central boss (p. 4.57): another
seems to be plain except the umbo and a projecting rim."
The caetra was likewise used in Mavu'itania, where it was sometimes
made of elephant hide.
Livy compared the caetra to the pelta of the Greeks and
Macedonians. The latter is familiar to us in the Greek writers
as the habitual equipment
also -A
pelta similar to the a))cile(\). 4.").5 n.),
(jf the 1'hracians-. But there was
and to the indented
Myceuean shield. As this pelta only survived in the rites of
the Curetes, whose connection with Samothrace and the Troad
has been shown (p. 198), it was the shield of the true Thracians,
the kindred of the Myceuean peopli^.
From this it would
appear that all aei'oss Kui'o])e with the exception of Italy,
CJreece, and 'J'hrace, the i-ouiid shield with the central boss was
in vogue from the Bronze Age down to classical times, and
that wherever (jblong shields niakt' their a))pearance in ii])per
Roman or ai'e imitations oi
Eiwjpe they are either actually
the Roman scut u in.
The shield of the Macedonian ])halanx, though I'ound, was
not the ordinary Gre(,'k asjiis. For, while the latter had no
boss, the former had this appendage in a conspicuous form.
466 THE ROUND SHIELD.
On coins of Antigonus Gonatas is seen this shield with a boss,
in which is the head of Pan, his crook on his shoulder, whilst
Athena Itonea on the reverse bears a shield of similar type
(Fig. 94)^
In the Macedonian shield as well as in the round Thracian
Fig. vaiis, Uriiir.i' I nipl, tin-iil.-:, j). 'A-'>i: Arch. Joiinnil, xiil., p. 1S7.
XXI, 27; \x\iii. '>
;
\n. 7"> ;
n'. s'.t.
Head, Hint. Sioit.. p. '203. Tlie illustration in the text is from a drawing
(.if
my own specimen
\>\ my friend the Kev. .1. G. Clark, M.A.
''
Herod. VII. 72- k.
3(1