Use of word pelte in general sense

[Sean Manning]

Can anyone remember an example where a Greek author uses the word pelte to mean "a small shield, but not necessarily the Thracian crescent-moon type"? There are lots of uses of "peltasts" for troops with smallish shields, but I'm struggling to come up with an example which isn't compounded. Aelian does say that peltasts (ie. troops who are neither Macedonian hoplites nor light-armed) carry pelte but I'd prefer something from -V or -IV.

[Ariobarzanes]

Xenophon uses it a couple of times to mean shields borne by "light" troops who may or may not be using the Thracian type.

The best example is at Anabasis 5.2.28-30:

On the next day the Greeks were for returning to camp with their provisions. But inasmuch as they feared the descent to Trapezus (for the way was steep and narrow), they laid a sham ambuscade: a man of Mysia, who likewise bore the name of Mysus, took ten of the Cretans, stayed behind in a bit of undergrowth, and pretended to be trying to keep out of sight of the enemy; but their shields (peltai), which were of bronze, would now and then gleam through the bushes.

The other example I can think of is Anabasis 2.1.6 (shields collected by the Greeks after the battle of Cunaxa).

The problem is that he also uses the word in a bunch of contexts to refer to shields carried by Thracians, so I'm not sure that we can draw distinctions between the Thracian-style pelta and the one carried by the Cretans in the above example.

[Sean Manning]

Thanks. Cretan shields were round and bronze, so they prove that Xenophon used pelte to refer to several different types of shield.

[hoplite14gr]

Pelte would initially be animal hide. Then the term was retained for "light" shields referring to the original animal hides used for protection.
Its intersting that the term survived as such in the english language (i.e. stripping a wolf from his pelt)
Kind regards