Roman shield handles, were they as awkward as in replicas??

I just spent a great day at a Roman museum in Aalen, Baden-Wuettemberg in Germany, which was the front line of the Roman Empire for several centuries. They have some Roman legionary equipment that you can put on and mess around with for fun.

I was amazed to find that the handle on the rectangular "scutum" shield is just a horizonal one-handed grip in the middle of the shield. While this makes sense for carrying the shield around easily, it makes no sense whatsoever to me for combat. The postition of the handle is awkward - you have to twist your wrist unnaturally to hold it, which not only makes it hard to hold but also it means that the impact of any charge would be absorbed by the wrist. The wrist is a weak joint at the best of times but when twisted it's not at all strong.

Here is a photo to see what I mean:

I'd have thought that the shield would be held along the forearm, with a loop on the left-hand third of the shield for the elbow end of the forearm and a handle on the right hand third for the hand to grip naturally. It would allow the impact of receiving a charge to be much more easily absorbed by the shoulder, and it would also make it much easier for the soldier to push his shield back into the enemy. I believe modern riot shields (at least, the rectangular perspex Roman-style ones) are of a similar design.

I spoke to the museum curators about this and they agreed with me that it didn't seem practical but said that all the evidence they know about points to the shield handles being designed in the same way as the replicas. Sure enough, a search online confirms that all replica Scutums, and all diagrams of Scutums, indicate that the handle was designed in this apparently awkward manner.

Do you guys have any idea what historians and replica-makers are basing their design on? Are we sure that the central handle isn't just a carrying handle, and that there weren't other combat handles located elsewhere on the shield?

Feanor, Welcome to the site.

You have asked an interesting question. Basically the evidence is in three parts:

Archaeologically the evidence comes from almost unique finds like the shield at Dura-Europas . This shield is precisely datable to the 3rd century AD when the site was captured and then abandoned and survived more or less intact in desert conditions. It is supported by finds of metal fixtures and fittings from shields elsewhere in the Empire like shield bosses which apart from scraps of wood or parts of leather covers tend to be the only bits of shields which normally survive.

Evidence from monumental sculpture like the analysis of Trajan's column on the STOA site provide evidence of how the shields were carried on the march, used in combat and even stacked when not in use.

Finally there is now several decades of evidence from re-enactors all over Europe and even in America and Australia that it is possible to use the shields as they appear to have been intended with relative ease.

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Holding the shield with an overhand grip allows it to be punched straight forwards, minimising your vulnerability during the stab, and also facilitating the general forward motion of the line.

...However, speaking with my ex-Accident and Emergency nurse's hat on, I would say that a punch with the grip orientated as per illustration could result in a break of the outer metacarpal - in other words, the 'Boxer's Fracture'. The punch delivered via the shield boss would be much more effective, and less likely to injure the hand, if the grip ran down the longer axis of the shield.

The punch delivered via the shield boss would be much more effective, and less likely to injure the hand, if the grip ran down the longer axis of the shield.

If the bar is held like a bike handlebar, the line of force during the punch (let's call it a push, because a punch infers something slightly different) from the handle would then be cushioned by the fatty tissue at the base of the thumb, and go right through the carpels and directly along the forearm. You would be relying on the cushioning effect of the fatty tissue and the give in your intended target to stop the injury.

We could do with comment from a re-enactor.

I had a look on YouTube and found

Well although no expert a few years back I did do some Roman re-enacting and before that some combat, although in a different period, I used a similar shield to the Roman format under discussion.

I can't say that I had any problems with using my shield to punch during combat as the horizontal bar means that your hand naturally slides inside the boss and you can then raise or lower the shield, rotate it or punch with it without any real difficulty. It was actually much more manouvedrable than a medieval shield which was strapped to my forearm as you could only rotate that from the elbow although possibly not as easy to drop from yuor grip during extreme combat.

The 'standard' early Principate rectangular legionary shield does have a couple of slight advantages; being easier to rest on the ground during rest stops or hang from your shoulder on a carrying strap during long route marches.

The rectangular curved shield of the principate wasn't quite as standard as some believe. Many legions would use the oval shield and this form was present almost throughout the Roman era. It wasn't just the auxillaries that used this type which offers the better compromise between defence and practicality. Also around the reign of Tiberius there was a preference for polygonal shields. Bear in mind the curved rectangular shield developed from a tall narrow one in the late republic to a squarer version more useful in open fighting - we know from sources that the masssed closed ranks were a feature of republican warfare and less prevalent during the better protected principatal and mid-roman period.

Here's an interesting video about shields by an archaeologist. It does explain some of the reasons why there is a central handle in the centre of ancient shields such as the Roman scutum:

I like that guy!

Also, well discovered, DC. I think that vid has pretty much summed up the answer to the original quesation.