The "Fred thread": the Argead Macedonian Army

[Paralus]

And when he saw that the rest of the Macedonian troops also were drawing their targets from their shoulders round in front of them, and with long spears set at one level...

Plutarch (Amel.Paull. 19.2) describing the Macedonians at Pydna. Clealry they are pulling their shields from "their shoulders" and around in front of them. Thus they are not on the arm but slung from the neck by a strap.

The shield represented in the tomb of Lyson and Kallikles along with the "hoplite" armour is some 75 cm in diameter from memory. Both are a match for the panoplies rendered on the Paullus monument. This led Markle to originally identify it as a hoplite shield. J K Anderson's view (Shields of Eight Palms' Width California Studies in Classical Antiquity, Vol. 9 (1976), pp. 1-6) is that these shields "are not unique, or even exceptional" and that they "could have covered its bearer from throat to thigh". The diameter of the monument shields is estimated at close to 80cm. Whilst the men on the monument are not fighting in phalanx, Markle has now claimed that the L&K shield must be identified with the smaller phalanx shield. Problem is this is in no way a 60 odd cm shield which the manuals proclaim as the best. If it were deeply bowled (and there's every reason to suspect so) such may have been a way of keeping an arm ring out of play whilst the shield hung from the neck.

In any case, as Anderson quotes Pritchett in commenting on the clash with the manuals' prescription:

"we seem to have the choice of accepting the figure of 0.80 m. from the few preserved artifacts... or of following Asklepiodotos who gives
the diameter as eight palms (0.6166 m.)." He adds that "it seems safer to follow the archaeological evidence."