The "Fred thread": the Argead Macedonian Army

[PMBardunias]

I would think that is to keep the shield in line with the arm. Thus the baldric suspends the shield from the neck over the shoulder / arm and the loop about the wrist brings the shield towards the forearm carrying the shield. It is not utilised to support the sarissa which is carried by both arms and not the shield strap.

Lets be clear, there are three possibilities: 1) the ochane supports the arm holding the sarissa as Connelly suggests, 2) the ochane is simply holds the pelta when not being used actively, 3) ochane bears the weight of the shield, but it is tied to the left wrist/forearm to allow it to be moved around to a limited extent.

1) allows for limited range of motion of the left arm, but supports extended use of the sarissa. 2) allows complete freedom of movement for the arms, but then requires the shield to be taken up before sword fighting. The fellow on the left of Johnny's painting has simply slung the shield over his shoulder like this. If the shield must be taken up anew, there is not reason to pass the wrist through the antilabe rather than simply grip it because you no longer have a sarissa to hold. You are simply holding it like an old style aspis at this point. I have no problem with the notion of simply having the pelta slung for later use, except it does not conform to the notion that the shields were brought forward for battle. 3) This is the worst of both worlds. You have a limited range of motion before you start to choke yourself with the ochane- as Johnny's central figure shows. Also, attemtping to move the shield around from just a wrist strap at the edge is very difficult and the strap actually makes this worse. For example, if you raise the shield and the ochane shortens in front, you may then have a problem lowering your arm again! Trust me, you have to try this. Just take a 60cm stick and a rope and you can see the problems with how the strap acts. Since as you move the shield, the strap is not helping to support it all that much, and a 60cm pelta is not all that heavy, you'd be better off simply strapping it to your forearm and forgetting the strap entirely. Did Cretan archers wear their shields in this manner? I have seen that often in depictions, but I don't know if it is accurate.

Good, then we can accept that that shield on the Pydna monument is not a valid piece of evidence when discussing phalangite shields.

I never said it was. I brought it up because you suggested that a shield of this type was "modified" for use with sarissa. Clearly there is no way that man's wrist can go through the antilabe without his elbow also going through the porpax like one of those bizarre Russian shield-gauntlets.

The loop is to help maneuver the shield, while adding a viable handgrip to support an Argive aspis probably would not have been possible to do on a budget (or perhaps not easily at all, but I'm not exactly sure what it would entail).

Replacing the porpax with a piece of wood and 4 nails or two straps that are brought together in the middle to form a grip is about as cheap as it gets. You'd make money on the sale of the bronze from your old porpax! But probably cultural influence caused the double grip to be maintained.

I think you misunderstood my statement. I simply meant that Plutarch makes clear that rather than use the porpax as the primary method of supporting the shield's weight as the Spartans used to do with the strapless Argive aspis, they removed the porpax and instead used the ochane as the method of supporting its weight.

I understood you, I just don't see anything in that statement that implies the porpax was removed, simply that the onus is now on the ochane to support the shield.

But we're talking about Argive shields here, and not peltae - that's the whole point. If they had peltae (Asclepiodotus' Macedonian shield, or similar kinds), they would certainly have used them. But since Argive shields were probably present in good numbers, simply converting them would have been the cheapest option. Their size would have conferred some benefit as well, since such shields would have covered much more than just the torso.

The discussion seemed to have broadened to Macedonian shields as well, but once again, chopping down an aspis or simply remaking the core and scavanging the bronze face probably takes not much more time and surely less cost than coming up with many thousands of sarissas. The Spartans had ample time and resources (wood and helot labor, since you already have more bronze than you need) to make proper peltae in this instance.