I saw this shield in the biblical film, "King of Kings". The design on the shield looks more like something that someone in the prop department saw in a history book rather than something completely made up. Does anyone have any idea what this design might be?

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the picture quality- took it from the TV screen.

A quick web search of 'Roman shield designs' will show you many very similar designs....the up and down turns appear to be wings of a double eagle. I think the shield in your photo may have had some 'artistic liscense'. Just my two cents.....Roman-era things are not big in my knowledge-base. Cheers!...........McM

I plead ignorance of knowing this film, or the 1927 de Mille movie (there is a 1927 prop shield out there, just as fantastical).

It seems to me the romans never used such a shield, which would probably mean the design/symbol is just as made up. It looks more like two wing nuts than any double eagle one might imagine.

What scene is the capture from?

http://biblefilms.blogspot.com/2006/05/king-o...guide.html

There is a sphinx prop out there as well and I am sure digging deep might yield a pile of stuff but the sphinx is even more fantasy than the shield pictured in this thread.

Cheers

GC

Sorry, the image isn't showing up. The rule of thumb is this: Everything in the movies is WRONG. There are exceptions that slip through now and then, but try not to let those spoil your enjoyment of the film.

That said, a lot of Hollywood "Romans" are loosely based on Trajan's Column, or more likely on Victorian interpretations of it. So the general emblem may have some basis in fact, though it's probably done in raised metallic relief on a flattish undersized shield with big bolts around the rim, all finished in dark "antique" gray/brown/black apparently because it all happened 2000 years ago...

Sorry, didn't mean to froth! Can you repost the image somehow?

Matthew

PS: http://www.larp.com/legioxx/scutum.html

I was wondering more about the symbols on the shield than the shape (although the shape is nothing I've seen before in books on the Roman Army).

I'm a bit new to the study of the Roman army. I know, for example, that jagged lines are Jupiter's thunderbolts, and that wings are eagles' wings. This shield:
http://www.imperiumancientarmory.com/customscutum.jpg
has something cylindrical on the left and right side, projecting out horizontally from the center. I'm not sure what it is.

I believe these items in the center are conch shells, although I'm not sure what their purpose is (homage to Neptune?).
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/roman-scutum-shield-16776567.jpg

Ah, got it now, thanks! Yeah, the basic shape is utter fantasy, I'm afraid! The emblem seems to be just a "melt-down" from a generic Trajan's Column style.

The spiral features we generally call "spines". They seem to date back to the wooden spines that were part of the boss way back into the late Bronze Age. Such features survived to the end of the Republic, at least, and after that became part of the painted motif (or applied thin metal, etc.). These are roughly 2nd to 1st century BC:

[ Linked Image ]

The rectangular features on that one shield are tabulae or tablets, shaped like a writing tablet. You can see them in artwork and carvings of various sorts. But there should be lettering or text of some sort in them, presumably the unit number and/or name, etc.

One subtlety that I see going wrong quite often is that the Romans never seem to have any horizontal feature projecting from the boss without a vertical feature. You *do* see vertical spines with nothing projecting horizontally, but not the other way around. I suspect folks are still copying the Ermine Street Guard, who got it wrong 30 years ago and haven't changed.

Also, people tend to over-size the wings, but they generally have to fit next to diagonal lightning bolts, which limits their size.

Vale!

Matthew

Just to muddle the waters a little more, this is a prop from the "Gladiator". That movie and it's historical accuracy has been talked to death, but at least the legionnaire scutums looked pretty good...

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Yes, the shields in Gladiator were surprisingly good. But again, why the grime and "antiqued" look? Color and shine was the whole point of painting shields. Some were even decorated with gilded silver! And every shield had a drawstring leather marching cover, so the "campaign grime" argument is no good. It's another case where they went to much greater effort and expense to get it wrong! Very strange.

Matthew

To be fair to them, I don't think that any amount of leather covers and maintenance would help in the middle of hard campaign in Germania forest, in muddy spring/autumn that it was supposed to be?

Obviously, it would look different, but that's given, Hollywood dirt and wear always looks way more majestic than actual one. ;)

To me the most popular designs on Roman shields are 4 wings and arrow-shaped thunderbolts. The thunderbolts are the weapons of Jupiter, the chief Roman deity, while the wings represent his bird, the eagle.
[ Linked Image ]

There are variations to the thunderbolt design. here are some on Greek coins
[ Linked Image ][ Linked Image ][ Linked Image ]

and here is a more modern representation used in heraldry [ Linked Image ] Napoleonic eagle also has the thunderbolt, and so the thunderbolt is on the Swedish coat of arms. [/url]