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

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THE ROUND SHIELD. 469
were before, they then became entirely so. Wherefore, as
experience showed them the uselessness of these, they lost no
time in changing to the Greek fashion of armour*."
The use of a round shield by both the equites and hrst class
indicates that it was the national shape of the race which was
the dominant factor in the Roman state. That the scutum
was not the national Roman shield is
proved by Athenaeus^
470 THE ROUND SHIELD.
The light-armed troops (uelites) carried a parma, a light
round target, three feet in diameter.
It was probably about the time of the First Samnite War
(843 1 B.C.) that the scutum came into general use with all
classes of heavy-armed soldiers and that consequently the
clipeus hitherto borne by the first class fell into disuse.
The clipeus carried by the first class in the Servian constitution
seems to have been a round metal shield closely resembling
\- ir,. \H). At,'aineiiinoiJ, Odysneus aiul Tliersitfs.
who states that the Koiiians adopted it from the Samnites,
who had ]irobably borrowed it from their aboriginal subjects.
It is likewise higlily ])r()l)able that as the archaic cavahy shield
had a bdss, the old llouian i-ouud shield was so e(iui])pe;l.
When thei'efei'e the llenians ado](ted the aboriginal oblong
shield ol' the anc'de ty()e, they inoditied it
by transferring to
it the iitiibu.
I'olyb. Sliuckhur^'li's
VI. 'i-') (
tnuis.).
VI. '11','): KCii Tra/ia ^avuiTil'v 0( ?i.uiOoi> Oi'piov x/'^C"'' TU/ia 5( l/iiipu!i' ^/aiawv.
i'lG. U7. Etruscan bliield ; Tarquiiiii.
the Greek aspis (Fig. 96). It is
probabk'
that the Romans
borrowed this shield not from the Greeks of southern Italy,
with whom tliey did not come into contact until the time of
Pyi-rhus (27S n.c), but
rather from their ueighbiHirs across the
Tiber, amongst whom, as wi' have seen (p. 247), the Argolic
shield had been long domiciled. With the charactoi- of the
latter we are well acipiainted, as f)rtunately many specimens
have been preserved in Etrnscan tombs, in which they were
regularly suspended.