Help with shield patterns ????

[Robert Vermaat]

Please note, that it is rather improbable that the shield designs in the notitia show the designs actually used by these units

I would love to begin a thread about statements such as yours. I wasn't very impressed with a similar statement in the last Ancient warfare, which was all too simply brushing aside what was drawn in the ND, ignoring evidence to the contrary.

I'm not saying that the shield patterns as shown in the MSS of the Notitia Dignitatum are 100% correct, far from it, but equally do I think that calling their use 'improbable' is basing on anything solid either. While I cvan imagine that many of these designs were more intricate than the simple drawing that have come down to us, several of them are indeed represented in contemporary art, and as yet proof that the ND designs are not based on the imagination of a Medieval copyist who had no clue what he was doing.

As a result, warning that re-enactors should refraid from using these design are a bit overeager. If we did that for all Roman shields, there would be opreciously little to use.

if they were using shield emblems consistently at all.

We do have a reference in Ammianus (XVI.12.6) to Germans recognising Roman units by their shield designs:
Alamanni enim scutorum insignia contuentes norant eos milites permisisse paucis suorum latronibus terram, quorum metu aliquotiens, cum gradum conferrent, amissis pluribus abiere dispersi.
"For the Alamanni, on seeing the devices of their shields, realised that these soldiers, who had given ground before a few of their brigands, were the men in fear of whom they had at times in the past scattered and fled with heavy losses, before coming to close quarters."