"Did thureophoroi have designs on their shields?" Topic

Or would a solid color be fine?

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For me, and my limited painting skills, that's the great thing about thureophoroi. As far as I am aware, solid colours, perhaps two different colour for each half, were usual for the later Successor armies. White was quite common.

Duncan Head's WRG book is an invaluable resource for this period.

Some did, some didn't. The Thracians at Pydna had plain white thyreoi; the paintings at Sidon (Bill's link) show shields half white, the other half in various grey or ochre shades: Nicholas Sekunda has suggested this is "shading" on portrayals of all-white shields, but it could be meant for a genuinely two-coloured shield.

On the other hand, Google "tomb of the erotes shield" for some model thyreoi from a Macedonian tomb in Euboia with thunderbolt and winged Medusa designs. There is even a surviving thyreos-facing from Bactria (in Nikonorov's "Armies of Bactria") which has a few remaining traces of a figured design – the eyes from a human face are just about the only thing recognisable.

Most designs offered by decal/transfer designers are fanciful to allow for more than plain colors. Plain colors do seem to be the normal from our low numbers of sources.
White and red. The tomb of the Erotes does indeed create an impression that some units had symmetrical designs, and may have had embossed items.

The last time I meddled with this was here:

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Some of these ideas are from the Nile Mosaic of Palestrina, which deals with Ptolemaic troops of some later time.