"Shields or not?" Topic

Hi everyone,
In the 4th and 5th centuries, did legionary archers wear shields like auxiliary archers?
Thank you.

I don't think we really know.

According to Phil Barker's Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome figure 26 the archeological evidence is yes.

Probably

And if they had shields, what type were they?

Big enough to offer minimal protection in hand to hand combat but not too big to get in the way of their main job?

At that time there were no uniforms as such. Auxiliaries came from many different tribes and ethnicities. Soldiers used what they could and what they found useful. Our fascination with uniforms and details of uniforms is a modern wargamer's obsession. On my table for the Late Roman/Migration period, pretty much anything goes.

The later Roman army of the 4th and 5th centuries had the legions, regular auxiliares, and barbarian auxiliaries. The regular auxiliares which were usually called the Auxilia Palatina did have uniforms.

The following website lists the units of the fifth century Roman army and most of their shield patterns link

The figure I referred to is shown with a small shield, about a foot and a half in diameter.

As a diehard fan of Phil Barker, I'd still be more inclined to believe Gurkhan's "I don't think we really know" over Phil's "the archeological evidence is yes".

Cheers,
John

Even the shield designs in the two main manuscripts of the Notitia Dignitatum are not necessarily accurate for the entire "Late Roman Period" 4th and 5th centuries. Some colors are different and they represent the best information that the illustrator had. At best, they are a snapshot in time of a very short and undefined period of the late empire. As all soldiers know, even in the modern era of nearly complete uniformity soldiers come up with variants. Again, for the Late Roman period, almost anything goes.

The same shields as the infantry auxiliary archers of the 4th and 5th centuries? And these legionnaire archers were armored?

We simply do not know whether any or all legionaries, let alone their archers, were armoured during this period. Remember, the size of the army had probably doubled from the days of the early principate, and the risk of mass casualties had also increased – not just notorious disasters such as Barbalissos in the third century or Adrianople in the fourth, but more frequent campaigns against rather more dangerous opponents than had been the norm in the past.

Emperors struggled to pay all of their troops all of the time, so the chances that all of them, as opposed to the best units in the praesental field forces, had body armour, especially metallic armour, might be slimmer than some would think. Priorities are always going to helmets and shields for melee types, to provide good basic protection, anything else might be a postcode lottery.

One could, for example, argue that an archer in a border unit employed on garrison, policing and patrolling duties, might actually be more likely to have a shield, because he might be more likely either to have to whack someone close up, or risk getting whacked close up. But that is pure speculation and possibly a classic case of applying what might seem commonsense today to ancient attitudes.

I think that legionary archers were equipped like other legionaries.