+- RomanArmyTalk (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat)
+-- Forum: Research Arena (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Greek Military History & Archaeology (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/forumdisplay.php?fid=9)
+--- Thread: Hoplite Shield Designs (/showthread.php?tid=4345)
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - hoplite14gr - 09-12-2008
By Christos Giannopoulos:
http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/c ... ginal.aspx
Enjoy
Kind regards
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Kineas - 10-15-2008
So--soon I paint my shield.
I've had lots of excellent advice from this forum on design. Now I'd like advice on color. I already know what colors I want--red and black and white--but the shades are troubling me, and I spent some uncomfortable minutes in an art supply store today and came away empty handed.
For red and black, how did Greeks mix colors? Is iron-oxide red a correct color? I assume cadmium is out--tyrian purple-red? Did they mix it in paint? for that matter, what did they use as medium?
Powdered burnt bone for black? Charcoal? Something else?
Help!
Apologies if this is elsewhere and I missed it.
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Giannis K. Hoplite - 10-16-2008
Quote:Is iron-oxide red a correct color?This is definately correct. They used it on wall paintings and painted sculptures. Unfortunately i can't remember where they got black from.
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Kineas - 10-16-2008
Thanks, Giannis
I owe you and Stefanos quite a few beers at this point.
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Kineas - 11-02-2008
My final shield, for the registry!
![[Image: n681611203_1554726_69.jpg]](http://photos-203.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-snc1/v344/145/122/681611203/n681611203_1554726_69.jpg)
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - hoplite14gr - 11-03-2008
Well done Cristian.
Nice combination of the "official emblem" and hoplite's personal emblem or talisman. The white cross (KROUSSOS) was the emblem asociated with the Orfics and white was the sacred calour of Dionysos whose cult was spread in Beotia.
Best
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Dutchhoplite - 12-31-2008
Hi all
I was wondering wasn't there a list or article with Athenian clan symbols in this thread?? Maybe i just overlooked??
Anyway, thanks for any help :wink:
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - hoplite14gr - 12-31-2008
Well Jeroen some clans have been mentioned here but so for an extensive work about them is of my friend G. Iliopoulos and not yet translated in English.
Happy new year!
Hoplite Shield designs - Paullus Scipio - 01-01-2009
There is no evidence whatever for "Athenian Clan symbols".....such an idea is pure speculation.
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - hoplite14gr - 01-01-2009
The most known "GENOS" (translated as "clan" in English) was the Alkmeonides. The term for example "GENOS ALKMEONIDON" appears in the writings of Plutarch, Herodotus and Thukidides.
The issue is to follow the evolution of the word GENOS in the Greek language.
In Hesiod and Homer the "Genos" describes both race and clan and sometimes (rarely) nation.
In the "natural histories" of early writers use the terms "Genos" and "Ethnos" (modern literal translation "nation") even as "Ethnos zoon" (nation of amimals!) which shows the evolution of this word.
Plutarch and Pausanian who live in A.D . pariod and have their education affected by the "Alexandrine Scool" use the term "Genos" as "clan" or "family group".
The term Genos as a family group (clan) is consolidated from the Alexandrine scholars, kept by the Byzantine authors and even today is used in modern Greek as description of family and in context of biology texts as describing gender (very rarely).
Except texts in some cases archeological finds complement the texts.
The clans lost their power with the Klesthenian reforms where he decreed that every new tribe (from those he created) had 30 "GENI = clans".
Source: Herodotus Plutarch
Kind regards
Hoplite Shield designs - Paullus Scipio - 01-02-2009
...Athenian Clan symbols....I was referring to the fact that there is no evidence to associate a particular badge/symbol/shield design with any particular Athenian clan.
Numerous attempts have been made to explain badges found on Athenian coins or depicted on hoplite shields as belonging to particular clans.
These are all dubious/spurious.
The supposed adoption of the 'triskeles' by the Alcmaeonid clan as its shield device is the only association which has any literary evidence to support it, and as we shall see this is itself almost certainly incorrect.( The triskeles symbol has three running human legs bent at the knee and joined at the hip.)
In Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata the men in the Chorus encourage each other to become young again, to shake off their old skin, calling themselves 'Whitelegs, we who went against Leipsydrium'. Leipsydrium in northern Attica was occupied and held against the Athenian tyrants in about 513 by a group of aristocrats under the leadership of the Alcmaeonid clan. A later , date unknown, commentator annotated the manuscript:
"Whitelegs on account of their having a white badge upon their shields; Aristophanes means the people now known as the Alcmaeonids".
This evidence seems fairly cut and dried at first glance.
However, the word actually written was lykopedes meaning 'Wolflegs' rather than leukopodes 'Whitelegs'. And other sources tell us that the hirelings of the tyrants had wolf-skins on their legs and wolf blazons on their shields. Therefore this identification cannot be correct.
Furthermore, there are at least three references to the shield devices of members of the Clan and none involve 'whitelegs' !
1. The poet Pindar records the shield device of the mythological progenitor of the clan, Alcmaeon, as being a serpent.
2. Alcibiades, a famous member of the clan, is recorded as having a shield device of an Eros ( winged cherub) wielding a thunderbolt - seen as slightly blasphemous by many of his contemporaries
3. A clay plaque from the Acropolis depicts a warrior and originally bore the inscription 'Megakles kalos' ( Megacles is beautiful/handsome) but the name 'Megakles' was crudely scratched out (probably following his ostracism in 486 BC)and that of 'Glaukytes' substituted. Both were members of the Alcmaeonids. Unfortunately the shield device is that of a 'Silenos'/Faun/Satyr !!
So much for the only 'evidence' for an Athenian Clan symbol/shield device.
What evidence there is points to individually chosen shield devices, rather than family/clan devices, no two of which are alike !!
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - hoplite14gr - 01-06-2009
Just three examples
Plyleidae: Horses backside - pottery fragment in British Museum and Kylix in Hermitage Museum plus marble fragments in Acropoli and Vravrona Museums. Also two coins: one minted in Attika and one minted in Delphi. The coins have on the backside the chariot wheel as appearing on shields in pottery at the Vatican and Karlsruhe Museums. (Paris B.T. II I plate XXXIII 15, E.A. Gardner Catalogue of Greek vases in FWM 1897 Newell N.Y. Category H xiii 1905) Some distinguished members of the clan (Olympic winners) sport the chariot as appearing in 86. 25 Tampa museum of Art.
The clan controled the cult of Artemis (Stefanos Byzantios Ethnika Peri Poleon Akademie und Verlagsanstellung Gratz 1958 section Plyleidae)
Alcmeonidae: Tha majority of the pottery shoing the variations of the triscelon are concentrated in Berlin an Munich and most of them have been excavated by the German Archeological school in Athens from the Faliro Area (Power base of the clan),
Coins in the Hague six collection all minted in Delphoi (T H C London 1890)
Coins in minted in Attica (Seltman Cambridge catalogue, Warren Boston catalogue 1748)
Alkmeon championing the Delphic Oracle in the Kirrean war puts the snake as was his right as “patriarchâ€
Hoplite Shield Designs - Paullus Scipio - 01-07-2009
Stefanos' post raises so many issues that it is best if I reproduce it with commentary. I apologise if I have mis-interpreted what he has written, and am very mindful that he is debating in what is not his native language.....
[quote]Just three examples
Plyleidae: Horses backside - pottery fragment in British Museum and Kylix in Hermitage Museum plus marble fragments in Acropoli and Vravrona Museums…..where it appears carried by Athena on a ‘pan-athenaic’ amphora. However, it is also depicted on Geryon’s shield (legendary King of Tartessus in Spain from whom Heracles stole his famous cattle as his tenth labour) as well as the usual anonymous warriors (at least three different examples)…. What is the association with this family?
Also two coins: one minted in Attika and one minted in Delphi. The coins have on the backside the chariot wheel… I have shown elsewhere that noble families did not mint their own coins in Attica, so coin devices cannot be associated with any particular family, let alone coins from Delphi being associated with an Attic family….. as appearing on shields in pottery at the Vatican and Karlsruhe Museums. (Paris B.T. II I plate XXXIII 15, E.A. Gardner Catalogue of Greek vases in FWM 1897 Newell N.Y. Category H xiii 1905) Some distinguished members of the clan (Olympic winners) sport the chariot as appearing in 86. 25 Tampa museum of Art.
Again, chariots and chariot parts are common emblems, being carried by Athena ( one of some 60 odd shield devices carried by by Athena on Attic pottery!) Amazons, and being depicted not just on Attic pottery, but other Greek and South Italian pottery too…what is being alleged here? That designs associated with chariots are symbolic of Olympic games chariot race winners? What evidence, beyond guesswork, supports this idea? And why the ‘Horses hindquarters’ (being polite :wink: ) and not say, horse-head, or complete horses or even horses hooves, all of which are widely depicted?
The clan controled the cult of Artemis (Stefanos Byzantios Ethnika Peri Poleon Akademie und Verlagsanstellung Gratz 1958 section Plyleidae) What does this mean? ‘Controlled?’…and if, say, the family were hereditary priests of Artemis, what is the supposed connection to chariots/horses as shield emblem? Wasn’t the Horse an attribute of Poseidon?
Alcmeonidae: Tha majority of the pottery shoing the variations of the triscelon are concentrated in Berlin an Munich and most of them have been excavated by the German Archeological school in Athens from the Faliro Area (Power base of the clan),
[color=blue][i] “Power baseâ€
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Kineas - 01-07-2009
Lorica's shield. for the registry.
![[Image: n681611203_1888674_2475.jpg]](http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v1946/145/122/681611203/n681611203_1888674_2475.jpg)
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Giannis K. Hoplite - 01-07-2009
I love it! Simplicity and beauty.