Roman Shields

Hilary & John Travis

• Publisher: Amberley Publishing
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781445638430
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The Roman military is an iconic, ancient institution; everybody is familiar with the image of fearsome Roman soldiers marching in their famous columns. In this book, Roman military experts John and Hilary Travis turn their attention to the shields used by the historic Roman stalwarts, drawing on their expertise, their wealth of illustrated material and the world of re-enactments. In its study of the panoply of shields used by the Roman army, this book differs from those preceding in that it has combined the reams of published information on sculptural imagery and archaeological hard evidence with an in-depth look at the artefacts themselves, their component parts and physical manufacture, going further by reconstructing and subjecting them to regular use in combat conditions.

Table of contents

• Cover
• List of Tables
• List of Illustrations
• List of Colour Plates
• Acknowledgements
• I - Introduction
• II - Development of Roman Shields
• III - Republican Period Shields
• IV - Shields of the Early Imperial Period
• V - Shields of the Later Empire
• VI - Shield Bosses
• VII - Decoration
• VIII - Construction of the Shield Board
• IX - Destructive Field Testing of the Reconstructed Board
• X - The Shield in Use
• XI - Reassessing the Evidence
• Picture Section
• Appendix I - The Origins & Development of the Roman Army
• Appendix II - Equipment & Fabricae
• Appendix III - Wood
• Appendix IV - Leather
• Appendix V - Metal
• Appendix VI - Size, Gesso, Paint, Pigment and Dyes
• Bibliography