A horseman with a shield has some difficulty riding on horseback, because he must control the horse with his left hand, which holds the reins as well as the shield. If he does not use the reins, he must control the horse with his legs. The nomads, horsemen since childhood, could ride well in this manner, but the Greek riders usually had no such horsemanship skills. In the Hellenistic period the Greek cavalry adopted the shield as a main defensive arm. This was of course followed by a change of tactics; however, this article discusses the sources of the adoption. The latter is an example of the intercultural interactions in the ancient Greek warfare of the Hellenistic era. There are no ancient sources which deal specifically with the origin of the Greek cavalry shield; usually the scholars only state the fact of the adoption of the shield without arguing their points of view.2 The aim of this paper is to analyse the different kinds of cavalry shields used and reconsider the origin of the arms accordingly.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Schwartz, Adam;
(2009)
Reinstating the Hoplite: Arms, Armour and Phalanx Fighting in Archaic and Classical Greece
(/isis/citation/CBB001212249/)
Article
Marco Formisano;
(2011)
The Strategikós of Onasander: Taking Military Texts Seriously
(/isis/citation/CBB989497388/)
Book
Cuomo, Serafina;
(2007)
Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity
(/isis/citation/CBB000830134/)
Article
Tsoucalas, Gregory;
Kousoulis, Antonis A.;
Poulakou-Rebelakou, Effie;
Karamanou, Marianna;
Papagrigoriou-Theodoridou, Maria;
Androutsos, George;
(2014)
Queen Cleopatra and the Other “Cleopatras”: Their Medical Legacy
(/isis/citation/CBB001421991/)
Article
Berrey, Marquis;
(2014)
Early Empiricism, Therapeutic Motivation, and the Asymmetrical Dispute between the Hellenistic Medical Sects
(/isis/citation/CBB001214193/)
Article
Barone, G.;
Mazzoleni, P.;
Aquilia, A.;
Barbera, G.;
(2014)
The Hellenistic and Roman Syracuse (Sicily) Fine Pottery Production Explored by Chemical and Petrographic Analysis
(/isis/citation/CBB001320845/)
Article
Cameron McPhail;
Robert Hannah;
(2012)
The Cartographers of the Taurus Line: the Bematists, Dicaearchus and Eratosthenes
(/isis/citation/CBB414082075/)
Book
Kathryn Stevens;
(2019)
Between Greece and Babylonia: Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-Cultural Perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB741082094/)
Article
Netz, Reviel;
(2011)
The Bibliosphere of Ancient Science (Outside of Alexandria) A Preliminary Survey
(/isis/citation/CBB001250232/)
Thesis
Dana Trammell;
(2023)
Classical Gynecology: A History of Unrealistic Expectations Defined by Realistic Sexism
(/isis/citation/CBB992842853/)
Article
Keith Dowen;
Lech Marek;
Sławomir Słowiński;
Anna Uciechowska-Gawron;
Elżbieta Myśkow;
(2019)
Two Twelfth-Century Kite Shields from Szczecin, Poland
(/isis/citation/CBB011866484/)
Article
Rolf Fabricius Warming;
(2023)
The Viking Age shields from the ship burial at Gokstad: a re-examination of their construction and function
(/isis/citation/CBB308713396/)
Book
Marco Formisano;
Hartmut Böhme;
(2011)
War in Words: Transformations of War from Antiquity to Clausewitz
(/isis/citation/CBB645658776/)
Article
Ida Gilda Mastrorosa;
(2011)
Biondo Flavio e i militiae Romanae instituta: una lezione "moderna" su fondamenti e caratteri dell'impero di Roma
(/isis/citation/CBB387291235/)
Chapter
Rainer Leng;
(2011)
Selektion und Missverständnisse. Rezeption antiker Kriegstechnik im späten Mittelalter
(/isis/citation/CBB204399641/)
Chapter
Luigi Spina;
(2011)
Beschreibung einer Belagerung: wenn Worte den Krieg ›sehen‹ lassen
(/isis/citation/CBB628998095/)
Chapter
Serafina Cuomo;
(2011)
Skills and Virtues in Vitruvius' Book 10
(/isis/citation/CBB622620093/)
Chapter
Christof Baier;
Ulrich Reinisch;
(2011)
Das römische Militärlager und die ›ideale Stadt‹ der Neuzeit. Polybios, Machiavelli, Dürer, Serlio, Stevin und die Suche nach der idealen städtischen Raumordnung
(/isis/citation/CBB206139326/)
Article
Michael S. Curl;
(2019)
Late Medieval Lance Use: Mounted Combat and Martial Arts in Western Europe from the 14th to the 16th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB137116420/)
Chapter
Jack Gassmann;
(2020)
The Use of the Crossbow in Medieval Cavalry
(/isis/citation/CBB189490510/)
Be the first to comment!