May 1, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the invention of the shield, shield wall tactics and the Roman tetsudo.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
part two in our series Looking at shield Walls. Now.
In the last episode, we ended up focusing primarily on
one maybe unlikely, but a pretty interesting explanation of a
passage in a first century Chinese history that described a
(00:36):
group of soldiers information with shields overlapping like fish scales.
We ended up looking at a paper from many years
ago by an American scholar named Homer Dubs that tried
to connect that observation in the ancient Chinese history to
a fact from Roman history about a group of soldiers
(00:57):
that were sent somewhere east after being captured by the
Parthian Empire in battle. And we ended up coming down
with some major doubts about this particular theory, But it's
interesting because of the various facts that connects to, one
of which was simply that you could have a formation
of ancient Roman soldiers with their shields overlapping so that
(01:17):
they looked like fish scales. Now that's a kind of
striking image in itself. So I know, Rob that captured
your attention and made us want to come back and
talk about shield wall maneuvers more generally today.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
That's right, And before we get into shield walls, I
thought it would be helpful to just talk about shields
for a minute acknowledge the underlying invention. So, as Brian
Fagan and Thomas Hewlett described in the Seventy Great Inventions
of the Ancient World, a book I've referred to on
the show many times, the shield likely predates human body armor,
(01:50):
and in fact, I'd say it seems to be a
little stronger than that. I think pretty much everybody agrees
that the first armor of any kind was the shield.
Body armor itself probably only goes back to the third
millennium BCE, but the first shields are just lost in
the shadows of prehistory. The use of shields likely emerged
from just the use of found objects or nature facts
(02:13):
defend off attacks. And of course we can easily imagine
how one would quickly realize that, oh, the simple club
that I can use offensively is also something I can
use defensively. What else could I do to this to
make an even better block? Right?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Just going from holding any object to fend off an
enemy attack, maybe any hard object, and turning that into
more dedicated designs, something that has a broader face, maybe
to face against the enemy, something that would have more
deflecting zone, and so forth exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
And it's thought that early hunters likely quickly learned that
you could stretch and she could stretch an animal hide
of some sort over a wooden frame or a wicker
frame in order to provide a wide, durable defensive block.
Now I did briefly glanced at Douglas j Emlin's Animal
Weapons on this topic. This is a great book that
(03:06):
gets into I brought this one up in the show
before as well, about the evolution of various offensive and
defensive features for organisms, and then comparing that to various
arms races in the development of different weapons systems among humans.
Emmlin doesn't have much to say about the shield specifically,
but in general compares the development of human body armor
(03:27):
to an interesting case that of the stickleback fish, with
marine species having more spines, more pronounced armor plating, and
then fresh water variations being like less spiky, less armored,
And the idea is that this kind of underlines his
general statement and that is that in general observation of
(03:48):
nature is that any kind of weapon is costly. You're
putting biological energy into the development of those that armor
or those weapons, and you're missing out on other things
because of it. And you know, it's it's like that
in actual warfare as well. I mean there are various
human complications as well, but generally, if something is no
(04:11):
longer useful, it will stop being used. And if there
is a need for something to keep up with some
sort of other advancement, well then that's where the development
is going to go.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Right, And that's something people it's easy to forget about
the costs of defenses, and that'll definitely play into some
things I think we're going to talk about in the
episode today that like you know, you might think, like, well,
why not just have a really really huge shield, you know,
like just takes a gigantic space so the enemy really
can't get to you at all. If you think about
(04:44):
it for a minute, that comes with all kinds of downsides.
It's getting heavier, it's harder for you to move around,
it makes it it reduces the amount of space that
you have access to and attacking and so forth. There
are downsides to defenses. They're not only upside.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, and there's ultimately a a whole host of like
known downsides like among the general public, and then downsides
we don't think about, and a lot likewise advantages run
the same way. And a lot of this is because
of what we see in movies. You know, even if
we're not actually setting down to watch some sort of
a sword and sandal epic to learn about ancient warfare,
we can't help but sort of absorb the image of that,
(05:21):
and then we carry that around even if we're like
I do this, I find myself doing this. I'm like
reading some sort of text about ancient warfare, and you know,
it's a really good text, very well cited, making very
rational arguments. But you know, I have seen movies like
three hundred, I've seen movies like Gladiator and Troy and
so forth, and you know those movies are going to
(05:42):
inherently have errors, and they're just part of like my
visual catalog of the time period.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
They influence your view of what happened in history without
you even consenting to the fact that they're doing that. Well,
you didn't like set out to say I'm going to
learn what ancient combat was like by watching a movie.
It just kind of gets in there. You don't have
to try.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Now this idea of what if I just had a
big shield though, This is really interesting when we get
into the history of armor though, because we just pointed
out that the shield came first. Everything else followed. As
we've discussed in the show before, you had the invention
of the helmet, roughly twenty five hundred BCE being the
(06:24):
time when this becomes popular, and this largely emerges as
a counter to the devastating battlefield prowess of the mace,
and so soldiers of the ancient world did typically wear helmes,
but according to Fagan and Wholett, they typically wore no
additional body armor and depended on the use of a
large shield to cover them from head to foot, with
(06:47):
the frequent addition of a pair of greeves, they write
to protect the lower legs. But we'll have more to
say on that in a bit. So, yeah, this idea
you go back to the ancient world is like you
have a shield, you have a helmet, and you're essentially
good to go. No notes, and they had this would
remain standard for centuries upon centuries to follow and even
on up into the sixteenth century CE among the Aztecs
(07:10):
of the America's a big caveat here. There's going to
be a lot of variation in specific shields, but there
are some sweeping generalities that are in play. Basically, they
say it was a popular approach for various militaries at
various times, in part because a simple shield was far
easier to produce and mass produce compared to fitted body armor.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yes, another really important economic consideration. The cost of making
something is not just the cost of the materials that
go into it. Something that can be you know, made
a thousand times the same way is generally going to
be easier to do than something you need to fit
to individual people.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah. Another really important thing about the shield, and this
is this is not going to come as a shock
to anyone who has even just ever had a character
pick up a shield in a role playing But if
whatever you're doing on the battlefield can be done one handed,
be it like a spear or a short sword versus
a two handed weapon or a bow, then a shield
(08:11):
adds a great deal of additional protection. And unlike in
your your RPG, you can't in real life you're you're
not gonna say, well, I could give my character a shield,
but would it look as cool as ultimately you know,
it may just be like one point of armor class,
two points of armor class, whatever the case may be
(08:31):
in your game, but in reality it can make a
obviously a huge difference.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, that's a good point. I would almost say note
for the creators of D and D like I. Then again,
you know, I'm not a military historian, so I don't
really know, but I would tend to think that you
should get more AC from your shield than you should
from your armor.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah. Yeah, And I'm guilty of this too though. It's
like I'll be I'll just think, well, I don't know
if this character would have a shield that's not really there.
And you know the counter argument as well, it would be, well,
I guess getting pelted with arrows is your character's style.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Maybe it depends on the kind of armor, like you
get more AC from like plate armor, but yeah, people
get a lot of AC from just putting on hide
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yeah, I guess it also in dungeons and dragons and stuff.
It also depends on sort of like what is your
visual iconography that you're leaning on to create your character
and so, and that might be actual historic iconography, or
more likely iconography from films and fantasy. Anyway, coming back
(09:36):
to the idea of the film and a big shield,
we do see just this arrangement depicted in ancient art.
An example that the authors here bring up is the
twenty five hundred BCE Vulture stela from Tello, which shows
the troops of Sumerian ruler Inannatum dressed in helmets, brandishing
(09:58):
spears and carrying large rectangular shields. The depiction, they also argue,
seems to provide us with a very early depiction of
a shield wall, so a collective formation of shields. However,
as we'll touch on in a bit, just because you
see shields position a certain way in art, even ancient art,
doesn't mean that's necessarily exactly how it was arranged. But
(10:21):
we'll come back to that. They add that the exact
kind of shield used would depend largely on the roll
of the given infantry. So fast moving skirmishers are typically
going to depend on small shields. They could be used
with precision and without hindering your speed and maneuverability. Meanwhile,
you're plotting heavy infantry would often benefit from these big
(10:42):
rectangular shield designs that they could provide a great deal
of cover and could be lined up to present a
shield wall against attacks. A very late example of the former, though,
you can look to the clans of the Scottish Highlands
and the Highland Charge where they would would they would
drop their musket after firing it and then rush forward
(11:05):
with a with a small shield and a melee weapon.
It's like a shock attack, but that would be a
you know, prime example where you can benefit from the
protection of the small shield with but still being able
to maintain a great deal of mobility and speedy. Now,
one of the resources we turned to for this episode
is the excellent blog of doctor Bretz Devereaux, a collection
(11:29):
of Unmitigated Pedantry, which is a great blog if you're
interested in the history of warfare, especially if you're interested
in Roman warfare, but he gets into a lot of
medieval warfare as well, and frequently analyzes warfare that we
see depicted in the Lord of the Rings show, even
(11:52):
movies like Dune, and of course things like a Game
of Thrones or Rome or you know, the latest Gladiator movie, and.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
So forthing those scenes with the historical lens talk exactly
what matches up to what we know about ancient warfare
and what does not exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, one particular post though, relates to what we're talking
about here today, and that's a twenty twenty three post
titled Collections shield Walls and Spacing, Hollywood Mobs and Ancient Tactics.
So we'll come back to some of his observations regarding
depictions of shield walls and modern media. But I bring
him up now because he makes the following observation about
shield sizes. Quote, Battlefield shields tend to vary within a
(12:30):
relatively narrow range of sizes and basically two major shape categories,
either round or oblong. So there's a lot of variety,
certainly as I already mentioned, but they tend to fit
into these two broad categories. Alongside the usage already sighted,
he also points out that there were never, so far
as he could tell, square shield. So if you see
(12:51):
a square shield, like a perfect square shield in art
or in some sort of TV show or movie, you
were right to be suspicious.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Right, So the real shields found in history are either
like a circular disc of varying size or something that
is fairly tall, basically sort of the shape that you
would imagine a person could hide their tall body behind.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, it's like it's either going to be like those
round sleds that you slid down a hill on, or
they're going to be like those the long sleds you
slide down a hill on, but you just don't see
square sleds.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
That's a good point.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
So Devro makes some really fine points about shield size
relative to the body of the soldier wielding. It that
these shields were on the whole big, generally larger than
we see in films and video games. The larger ones
were broad enough to on their own block a significant
portion of the soldier's body, and even the smaller examples
could cover exceptionally well if you were turning your body,
(13:49):
turning your shoulder toward the enemy, making yourself as narrow
as possible behind the shield, which was typical.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Form right, and in fact, it almost seems that people
tend to distinctively know to do this if you know
you're in a dangerous situation, if you are think you're
about to get into a fight, whether armed or unarmed,
you tend to want to pivot your body so that
you become narrow so that your side faces your opponent
instead of your facing them head on.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Now, in looking at these different shield sizes, you know,
I can think about what's cool and what looks effective
for combatants, but I know when I see it, I'm like,
if it was actually me, I would say, give me
the biggest one you have with the most coverage possible,
you know, and it needs to be about the size
of a church door. But an interesting thing that Devreeu
(14:40):
points out as well is that most shields are going
to focus on protecting the head in the chest, and
even smaller shields are going to do this quite well.
And as far as lower parts of the body goes
like you know, lower legs, the feet and all. He
adds that in close combat, all strikes are going to
originate from shoulder height, and you know, certainly you could
(15:01):
aim at your opponent's feet in such combat, but it
would be tricky and it would expose you to counterattack.
So the defense is ultimately well placed here. Also, coming
back to body positioning, you're going to have your body
perpendicular to the combat. And on top of that, most
of the shields you're looking at are going to be
maneuverable to some degree or another. I mean they're all
(15:23):
maneuverable to a degree, but perhaps more so than a
novice might assume just looking at images.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Right, So, a shield is not like a static defense,
say of a particular part of your body, but it
is something you move around in reaction to the enemy
and to protect the parts of your body that need
to be protected depending on what you're about to do.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
It makes me think about Captain America's shield. I haven't
watched enough Captain America recently, and maybe he's my least favorite,
so I don't notice what he's doing as much. But
he does throw the shield around, which does feel kind
of like someone thought, well, the shield isn't interesting enough,
Maybe he can throw it and it can be a weapon,
Like let's make it more active and less passive. But
(16:05):
in reality, like the shield is going to be a
rather active defensive bit of armor. Now, as far as
arrows go, Devereux points out that it's only short range
that you'd need to worry about concerning like your lower
legs and feet. Long range missiles are going to be
coming from above anyway, So again, imagine yourself holding that
(16:25):
shield up. You know, if it's positioned correctly towards the
incoming arrows, you're not going to have to worry as
much about your feet. So basically, shields can provide a
great deal of coverage for the individual fighter on their own.
But then in formation we get into the widely used
shield wall formations that you see in various militaries throughout
the ancient world and for centuries and centuries after that.
(16:57):
Now Devro goes into a great deal more detail about
all of this that we're not going to cover. That
post is a great deep dive, so I recommend checking
it out. But there are several key points that he
makes about shield walls, and points about how shield walls
are generally incorrectly depicted in video games, movies, and art.
And again this is kind of important because these are
(17:20):
the examples that end up coloring the way we think
about it. So I'm compressing many of his points here,
but essentially this one I found really entertaining and insightful.
Really tight formations of soldiers with shields and swords just
look cool. They look cool now, and they look cool
in Roman times, and as he points out, we actually
(17:43):
see Roman depictions all their own troops locked into tight
formations for seemingly this reason, like tighter formations depicted than
they would have actually had on the field.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
That's right. So he's making the point that when you
see a movie scene today where armed infantry with say
spears and shields or swords and shields, are going into
battle and you see them with the shields all lined
up side to side, touching, you know, so that you
couldn't even get in between the shields. They're making a
literal wall of the shields or even overlapping. That that
(18:16):
was not actually a common battle tactic in many ancient armies.
You would have different kinds of formations, and sometimes for
various reasons, soldiers would close up into tighter ranks and
hold their shields out. And we'll talk about some reasons
for that as we go on, but they're not often
in reality as tight as we see in fictional media.
(18:38):
There's more space in between them for good reasons.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, But I guess part of it is like the
idea that it gets across, like, look how tight these
soldiers are, like they are a single unit. They're like
a single mass, you know. We like the idea of that.
Another example he brings up is that early modern gunpowder
tactics eventually became quite tight in their format to maximize
(19:01):
fire over frontage. Uh and and this and this also
did not depend on combat maneuverability. You weren't having to
swing the you know, like your your rifle around. But
this tight image of formations then is used to imagine
formations for historic soldiers who were swinging around weapons or
using big spears or something. So that that's I think
(19:23):
that's a great point as well, the way we take
modern or at least more recent examples and then use those,
perhaps even subconsciously to imagine the past, which you know,
this is a big tool that we use in imagining
the past in general, like start with what you know
and then and then imagine like ancient people doing that.
(19:43):
But you know, it doesn't apply, you know, one to
one for every situation. Another point that he brought up
that I really liked was that, you know, in in
various screen depictions especially, we see more unrealistic depictions of
shield walls. And that is because fiction's off and revolve
around some sort of novel and exciting solution to a
(20:04):
tactical problem, when in reality, quote, like most tactics, shield
walls are effective but not particularly clever.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Right in reality, the so called shield wall is not.
It's not a trick. There's nothing especially clever or counterintuitive
about it. It's like lining up your infantry, your heavy infantry,
in a formation where it would be hard to get
through them.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah. Yeah, I was watching an episode of The Studio,
which is a comedy about the movie industry. Has nothing
to do with shield walls, but there's a part in
one of the episodes where they're saying, look, they're telling
this young promising director, we're not going to tell you
how to make your movie, but we have a formula
that absolutely works and makes money, and we'd like you
(20:48):
to keep that in mind. It's basically what's going on here.
This is not the exciting ideas make for on the battlefield,
make for great stories, but at the end of the day,
there's a formula that works, and nearly those generals are
going to stick to it as much as possible.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Okay, so what were most real shield wall infantry formations
like and why were they like that?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Well, devro gets into more detail, but basically like, you're
just gonna have more space because I mean, this is
the big one. You need space to move around and
wield your weapon and wield the shield, because remember what
we were talking about, the shield is a more active
defense than it may seem in like a still photograph
or in some of these movies. You know, shields were
(21:30):
mobile and permittive fair amount of coverage when utilized properly.
Shields were also large again and could cover an individual
quite well, even against incoming arrows which he drives home.
Were not as plentiful and rapid fire as films make
it seem, so troops could and did advance against incoming
arrows like arrows, like it's not just you know suddenly
(21:51):
that it's raining arrows and the troops just can't move
for five minutes.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Our arrows will blot out the sun. That's hard to
do in real life.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, and then something will definitely come back to in
a bit. Super Tight formations tended to just in general
make troops slower and less effective at fighting, which kind
of comes back to what we're saying. You just they
need space to do what they need to do.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Right, So you can imagine a formation that is still
in effect a wall of soldiers with shields, so it
is a shield wall, but that doesn't necessarily mean that
the shields are touching edge to edge or even overlapping.
There would be some reasonable space, probably a few feet
in between them in most of these formations where you'd
be expecting a soldier to fight.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Yes, so again, many ancient armies made use of the
shield wall as well as rectangular formations of troops the PHAILANX,
and it's one of those tactics that likely developed independently
more than once. There's a lot of variation and certainly
different terminology, but suffice to say that it all generally
came down down to how as a unit, these soldiers
(22:55):
could stick together, cover adjacent troops with their shields, and
keep the front line offensive against the opposing forces front line.
And all of this was the domain of domain of
trained soldiers. So Devro warns that it's easy to air.
On either side of this realization, you'll you'll either assume
that the troops were inexperienced and untrained, or that they
were robots or just superhumanly trained, you know, professional soldiers
(23:20):
who just could not air and you know, and would
not break.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
One of the points he makes that I think is
pretty interesting is that we have this intuition that if
we wanted a line of soldiers to be really impenetrable,
you would have you would want to like have their
their shields touching each other so that it forms actually
like an unbroken physical barrier of matter. The shields are
(23:45):
all right there next to each other, but that just
the threat of a soldier paying attention to the space
in between the shields is in reality a barrier that
you can't really get through because it is a threat barrier.
It's not that the shields are physically touching all the
way down the line, but you can't just like rush
(24:07):
into that space because you know if you rush into
that space, you will almost certainly get get hit with
a spear or a sword.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
It's almost like taking the game, the childhood game of
Red Rover, where you actually join arms if I'm remembering correctly,
to try and keep the other children from running through
your line. Like there's that mentality. But obviously, in say
professional American football, nobody's locking arms as part of a
defensive line or anything. Like. They're mobile, they can move
(24:37):
and if they're spaced appropriately in the right position, like
they can stop somebody trying to run past.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Them, right, So Yeah, that's a good comparison because I
don't play football, But the way I assume it works
is like you're also trying to notice where the person
blocking you on the other team is looking, and if
they're paying attention to where you're about to go, that's
going to probably deter you because you know that they're
going to come to meet you there if you go
that way.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Why don't they let them wear shields though they have helmets,
they have body armor, but no shields, no Spearit is
either all right. I think it's time for us to
finally come back though to the Roman testudo again, not
the default mode of Roman shield formations, but one that
could form in certain circumstances, and one that has, I
think for many people become like just the icon of
(25:23):
a tight shield wall and also one that just resonates
with us on multiple levels.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
That's right, And this is the formation actually that Homer
Dubbs talks about in the paper that we discussed in
the last episode. So just to refresh, Homer Dubs, twentieth
century American scholar, famously argued that a group of Roman
soldiers captured by the Parthian Empire after the Battle of Kari,
(25:49):
which is today would be in southeastern Turkey in fifty
three BCE. He says that they made their way east
into Asia and fought in in a battle against the
army of the Han Chinese Empire in the thirties BCE,
and then eventually that's the survivors same group of Roman
(26:10):
soldiers settled in a region of northern China and became
the ancestors of a group of people called the le Chien. Now,
in the previous episode, we raised a number of reasons
for doubting this hypothesis, with different levels of doubt for
the different parts of it, particularly doubting the Roman ancestry
of the le Chien people at large, which was I
(26:30):
would say pretty thoroughly discredited by y chromosome genetic analysis
published by Joe at All in two thousand and seven
in the Journal of Human Genetics. We also raised doubts
about the role of Romans in the historic battle between
the Hun warlord Chicchi and the Chinese army. There's less
direct evidence against this, but we just noted that it's
(26:53):
an interesting idea. But many scholars with the relevant historical
specializations have disagreed with dubs and we observed personally from
reading his paper that it just rests on a lot
of speculative assumptions. He's making a lot of jumps and
is it's dubious the amount of certainty he seems to
have when he gets to the conclusion. It's more I
would rank it more like kind of an interesting possibility. Yeah,
(27:16):
this is kind of a side note, but I've mentioned
this on the show before. It's the kind of idea
that I think benefits from what I would call esthetic epistemology,
the kind of thing that people want to believe is
true because it's cool to think about. And you know,
I think the age we live in and the podcasting
medium in particular, really have a weakness for esthetic epistemology.
(27:41):
I don't know why it is. Podcasts, but it seems
to me podcasts today are a place where it is
so easy to leverage interest into factuality. And there are
some big shows out there that make this, I would say,
almost their entire project. It's just something something, it's a
really cool idea. It kind of changes everything you know
(28:03):
about history or it's like whoa, you never would have
thought this could have happened, But that's crazy to imagine.
And so it just starts to be like, well, then
it is true, and if you doubt it, you've got
your covering it up. You're trying to hide something. It's
just something I think podcasters and podcast listeners should be
aware of.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, I mean we have to be aware of it
as well. You know, I'll get excited about an idea
and then you know, maybe I'll learn a little bit
more about it and I'll have to, you know, realize, well,
we got to couch this in the appropriate knowledge, in
the appropriate analysis.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah. Same here. It affects me too, But we're doing
our best, folks. We try to bring you things that
are interesting, but also be real about.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
What we can know and what is likely based on
our knowledge.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
But anyway, so coming back to Dubb's paper itself, the
original reason he suggests that it was a group of
Roman soldiers that were the people described fighting in this
battle against the Western Chinese army. The reason he says
they're Roman soldiers is a line in a Chinese history
composed mostly in the first century called the History of
(29:17):
the Former Han Dynasty or sometimes just the Book of Han,
and it's a passage describing the battlefield in this battle
based on a painting made by someone who is there,
and it mentions a troop formation defending the city. As quote,
more than one hundred foot soldiers lined up in a
fish scale formation, and Dubbs takes this to mean that
(29:39):
the soldiers were holding shields in their hands and that
the shields were overlapping one another and covering the men
all around, like the scales overlapping on the skin of
a fish and covering the fish. Now, for a number
of reasons, Dubbs argues that this description really could only
refer to Roman legionaries holding a particular type of center
(30:02):
grip shield called a scutum or plural scuta, and performing
a maneuver called a testudo. Now, whether or not Dubbs
was correct about the battle, it's again, I think it's
not impossible. Interesting idea, but there are a lot of
causes for doubt. It is worth taking a look at
what the testudo was and what we know about it.
(30:25):
Testudo is a Latin word that means tortoise, and if
we look at some passages in ancient Roman texts, we
can see a bit about what it was and how
it was used. For example, I picked up a few
references to the Testudo in Julius Caesar's commentaries on the
Gallic War. This is a text that Julius Caesar wrote
(30:46):
himself about his first hand experience of military conquest and
suppression of uprisings in the region of Gaul. That's a
lot of modern day France basically. And yes, he did
write this himself about his own experiences, and yes he
does refer to himself in the third person, so it's
quite funny. So the first passage I was going to mention.
(31:08):
And by the way, this is the English version translated
by McDevitt and Bond.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
This is in.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Book two, chapter six. Caesar says, quote the Galls mode
of besieging is the same as that of the Belgai,
when after having drawn a large number of men around
the whole of the fortifications, stones have begun to be
cast against the wall on all sides, and the wall
has been stripped of its defenders. Then, forming a testudo,
(31:35):
they advanced to the gates and undermine the wall, which
was easily effected on this occasion, for while so large
a number were casting stones and darts, no one was
able to maintain his position upon the wall. So this
is describing the galls attack on the wall of a
fortified position. They gather around the walls. They're throwing stones.
(31:56):
I guess you have to imagine missiles are probably going
both directions, and mainly they're throwing stones to get the
defenders away from the edge of the walls. And then quote,
forming a testudo, they advance to the gates and undermine
the wall. So the testudo is something they assemble into
when approaching the gates of a fortress or a walled town.
(32:18):
There's another passage in book five, chapter nine. Caesar is
describing leading a detachment of Roman soldiers to meet the
enemy in a position I think in a forest, and
referring to the enemy, he says, quote, they advancing to
the river with their cavalry and chariots from the higher ground,
began to annoy our men and give battle. Being repulsed
(32:40):
by our cavalry, they concealed themselves in woods, as they
had secured a place admirably fortified by nature and by art, which,
as it seemed they had before prepared on account of
a civil war, for all entrances to it were shut
up by a great number of felled trees. Okay, so
that's the setup. The enemy has retreated fortified position in
(33:01):
the woods, then Caesar says, they themselves rushed out of
the woods to fight here and there, and prevented our
men from entering their fortifications. But the soldiers of the
seventh Legion, having formed a testudo and thrown up a
rampart against the fortification, took the place and drove them
out of the woods, receiving only a few wounds. Okay,
(33:23):
So once again the testudo, this time created by the
Roman soldiers of the seventh Legion. It's described as a
formation useful for approaching and eventually overtaking a fortified enemy position. Now,
in both of these cases, Caesar does not bother to
explain the testudo. He doesn't say what it is. He
just assumes the reader will already know. So what exactly
(33:46):
is being described here, Well, we'll get a more complete
description in Plutarch's Life of Antony, which comes in the
middle of a description of a Roman campaign against the
Parthian Empire. That of Antony, not Crassus this time, and
this is a version of this section translated by John Dryden.
At the descend of a hill where the Romans were
(34:08):
obliged to pass, They got together and let fly their
arrows upon them as they moved slowly down. But the
full armed infantry facing round received the light troops within,
and those in the first rank knelt on one knee
holding their shields before them, the next rank holding theirs
over the first, and so again others over these, much
(34:29):
like the tiling of a house or the row of
seats in a theater, the whole affording sure defense against
arrows which glanced upon them without doing any harm. So
here's the testudo formation. It is like a tortoise pulling
its head and legs inside its shell. Soldiers in a
testudo formation close in tight with one another, so the
(34:52):
men in the front row present a wall of shields
held side to side or overlapping like roof tiles, facing
the o enemy. And sometimes shield walls would also be
formed on other sides of the formation, depending on need
I guess, depending on where the enemy was facing. And
then the men behind the first row would put their
(35:12):
shields up on top of the formation and then layered,
going row by row all the way back to create
a protective roof. So it's like you if entered the
tortoise's shell.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
You have.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
You are protected all around, or at least on whatever
sides are facing the danger.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Yeah, you've kind of made like a tiny fortress, a
tiny house out of your shields. There.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Now, you might ask, if you can create this nearly
impenetrable dome of protection all around, why wouldn't soldiers just
always move in the testudo? Right, Plutarch says that the
arrows glanced off them without doing any harm. Why isn't
this just what all pre modern soldiers did all the time.
(35:54):
The answer is the testudo might be very safe, but
it is not very good for most things you would
want infantry troops to do. So, first of all, it's
slow to move. It's like, for one thing, maintaining that
barrier is going to be actually kind of difficult to do.
And the troops are going to be bunched very close together.
So the formation can move, You can march this way,
(36:16):
but it can't move very fast, and it's not going
to be very maneuverable, Like moving around things or changing
directions is just going to be difficult. You can also
imagine that for most soldiers within this formation, visibility is
going to be greatly reduced. You can't really get a
very good idea of what's going on around you. If
you're at one of the edges, maybe you can peek out,
(36:37):
but even then you're probably gonna have limited visibility in
the other directions, you know, not the side you're facing
anything except the side you're facing toward. So yeah, that's
going to be a problem as well. Also, soldiers can't
fight in this formation. Armed infantry are not only supposed
to move around and avoid getting killed, they need to
(36:59):
be able to age with the enemy and either drive
them back or kill or wound them. And in fact,
we see examples in the ridings of Cassiustillo of Roman
soldiers in the testudo formation actually not doing very well
because they're being savaged by heavy party and cavalry charges.
So they form a testudo and then the armored horses
(37:22):
rush on them and they're overtaken, and it apparently just
you know, crashes through the shields, and you know, many
men are killed, are killed or wounded. So, despite what
you're going to see in a lot of movies with
medieval combat where you see something like the testudo often used,
at least the one row of shields, you know, all
lined up like a wall. It was not very useful
(37:43):
in situations of melee contact with the enemy. So what
was it actually good for. It seems that the testudo
was an ideal formation if you wanted to protect infantry
from a heavy barrage of missiles, from arrows, javelin, even
thrown stones. And this is why you often see it
(38:03):
being used for attacking maneuvers during sieges or in approaching
fortified positions. So there are defenders up on the city
wall and they're shooting arrows or throwing stones, and you
want to approach the wall or the gate to attack
it or to undermine it. The testudo formation is useful
because it allows you to close that distance with minimal
(38:27):
casualties from airborne missiles along the way. That's something that
it is very good for.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Absolutely. Yeah, this, you know, I'm going to make another
sports comparison here, which is rare for me, and in
doing so, I make it the sports terminology and correct.
But I kept thinking of of the testudo is being
kind of like a granny shot in basketball, something that
I'm to understand, even in professional basketball can be very effective,
(38:58):
but only in certain circumstance. Answers like there's a strong
case to be made that what was it the free throw?
Is that what you call it, that that someone can
make baskets with better regularity and control if they're using
a granny shot, like you know, between the legs, underhanded
as opposed to the more cool looking and and I think,
(39:19):
you know, largely more effective in other areas of the game,
you know, overhanded pitch of the basketball. So it's kind
of like that, like if you the testudo is going
to be highly effective in very certain circumstances, and if
you tried to use it outside of those circumstances, or
those circumstances were compromised, then it might spell disaster, I
(39:41):
would say. The The other thing about the testudo, like
the granny shot, is that it does look kind of stupid.
And I think I think this is worth acknowledging. Like
the testudo looks, Yes, it does look really cool. It
is really neat. It is kind of this idea of
perfect you know combat in defense in UNI and by
trained soldiers, and we love that aspect of it, but
(40:04):
it also just looks weird and kind of dumb, you know,
like they're they're becoming a turtle. They're making a little
house on the battlefield. And at the same time, it's
amazing people becoming a shape individual shields becoming an enclosure.
So I find myself entertaining both of these feelings anytime
I look at like an illustration of the testudo, or
(40:26):
I found a video online where some class somewhere had
had managed to get children to form one with like
plastic shields and swords while the I assume the teachers
pelted them with things, and then they successfully advanced on
the teachers and then mastered them. Now one more observation
that Devereaux makes about shield walls, studos and how they're
(40:48):
depicted in modern entertainment. He pointed out something that I've
seen at least one of the shows that he's he's
referencing here, but I just it did not occur to me.
He said, if you watch Game of Thrones, there are
episodes where you see the Lanister troops engaging some sort
of system where on the front line you have dedicated shieldmen,
(41:10):
so guys who have no weapons, just a two handed
shield of some sort, and then behind them there are
people with a with a like a pike, a two
handed pike, and then behind them you have people with bows,
And he points out that this idea of having like
a dedicated shield bearer and a dedicated spear bearer, you
(41:33):
just don't see this like it just it might look
cool in a film like this, but it's almost always
it's always going to be like a shield and spear
bearer or shields and swords. And a big part of
this is that otherwise, like your shield guy gets taken out,
the guy behind him doesn't have a shield, he just
(41:53):
has a pike. That means that defense on that line
has just completely fallen apart. Like one of the strengths
of a shield wall or the testudo is that any
individual in the formation could step up and replace somebody
who's injured or killed.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Right, So you'll have a file within the formation that's
like lined up behind all of the soldiers in the
first row. Yeah, and if someone is killed or wounded
or asked to fall back or whatever, the file advances
up behind them.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah. So that's a great point. It's something I'd never
noticed before in fantasy warfare. Perhaps there are other examples
of it out there, I know that. On his blog
in general, you can read lots of comments about details
and historic and semi historic television and television shows and films,
as well as of course fantasy and sci fi as well.
(42:45):
So of course the use of shield walls and fish
scale like formations fell in and out of fashion on
through to the Middle Ages and ultimately became obsolete in
the age of gunpowder. But it is often pointed out
that you do still see some version of these tactics
used with say, riot police, who are contending generally not
with firearms, but with improvised projectiles and simple hand to
(43:09):
hand weapons that may be improvised as well. So you
can look up various images of this online. You know,
some sort of like big kind of plasticy looking shield,
like a riot shield, and then you know, they'll often
form some sort of a wall, and sometimes they will
also form the roof over the heads of the soldiers.
Not as the examples tend not. They don't look as
regimented as a proper testudo, but it is kind of
(43:31):
like the spirit off it's still still useful in very
certain stripped down circumstances in our modern world. Likewise, you
also see examples of protesters using the shield walls of
one sort or another another as well. Yeah, but no
football players again for some reason, no shields on the
American football field, or the British football field for that matter.
(43:53):
No shields there. All right, Well, we're going to go
and close out these episodes here. I hope that everyone
has enjoyed our detour into the world of shields and
shield walls. But we're going to be back with something
else next week. In the meantime, Yeah, we invite you
to write in if you have thoughts about this, especially
(44:15):
some of the various media that we've mentioned. You know
how this stuff plays out on TV, in films, in
video games. Devereux frequently cites Total War as being a
franchise that often influences the way we picture things like this,
So write in. All that is fair game, just a
(44:36):
reminder of the stuff to blow your mind. Is primarily
a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
concerns to talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Huge things, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
You can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
part two in our series Looking at shield Walls. Now.
In the last episode, we ended up focusing primarily on
one maybe unlikely, but a pretty interesting explanation of a
passage in a first century Chinese history that described a
(00:36):
group of soldiers information with shields overlapping like fish scales.
We ended up looking at a paper from many years
ago by an American scholar named Homer Dubs that tried
to connect that observation in the ancient Chinese history to
a fact from Roman history about a group of soldiers
(00:57):
that were sent somewhere east after being captured by the
Parthian Empire in battle. And we ended up coming down
with some major doubts about this particular theory, But it's
interesting because of the various facts that connects to, one
of which was simply that you could have a formation
of ancient Roman soldiers with their shields overlapping so that
(01:17):
they looked like fish scales. Now that's a kind of
striking image in itself. So I know, Rob that captured
your attention and made us want to come back and
talk about shield wall maneuvers more generally today.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
That's right, And before we get into shield walls, I
thought it would be helpful to just talk about shields
for a minute acknowledge the underlying invention. So, as Brian
Fagan and Thomas Hewlett described in the Seventy Great Inventions
of the Ancient World, a book I've referred to on
the show many times, the shield likely predates human body armor,
(01:50):
and in fact, I'd say it seems to be a
little stronger than that. I think pretty much everybody agrees
that the first armor of any kind was the shield.
Body armor itself probably only goes back to the third
millennium BCE, but the first shields are just lost in
the shadows of prehistory. The use of shields likely emerged
from just the use of found objects or nature facts
(02:13):
defend off attacks. And of course we can easily imagine
how one would quickly realize that, oh, the simple club
that I can use offensively is also something I can
use defensively. What else could I do to this to
make an even better block? Right?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Just going from holding any object to fend off an
enemy attack, maybe any hard object, and turning that into
more dedicated designs, something that has a broader face, maybe
to face against the enemy, something that would have more
deflecting zone, and so forth exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
And it's thought that early hunters likely quickly learned that
you could stretch and she could stretch an animal hide
of some sort over a wooden frame or a wicker
frame in order to provide a wide, durable defensive block.
Now I did briefly glanced at Douglas j Emlin's Animal
Weapons on this topic. This is a great book that
(03:06):
gets into I brought this one up in the show
before as well, about the evolution of various offensive and
defensive features for organisms, and then comparing that to various
arms races in the development of different weapons systems among humans.
Emmlin doesn't have much to say about the shield specifically,
but in general compares the development of human body armor
(03:27):
to an interesting case that of the stickleback fish, with
marine species having more spines, more pronounced armor plating, and
then fresh water variations being like less spiky, less armored,
And the idea is that this kind of underlines his
general statement and that is that in general observation of
(03:48):
nature is that any kind of weapon is costly. You're
putting biological energy into the development of those that armor
or those weapons, and you're missing out on other things
because of it. And you know, it's it's like that
in actual warfare as well. I mean there are various
human complications as well, but generally, if something is no
(04:11):
longer useful, it will stop being used. And if there
is a need for something to keep up with some
sort of other advancement, well then that's where the development
is going to go.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Right, And that's something people it's easy to forget about
the costs of defenses, and that'll definitely play into some
things I think we're going to talk about in the
episode today that like you know, you might think, like, well,
why not just have a really really huge shield, you know,
like just takes a gigantic space so the enemy really
can't get to you at all. If you think about
(04:44):
it for a minute, that comes with all kinds of downsides.
It's getting heavier, it's harder for you to move around,
it makes it it reduces the amount of space that
you have access to and attacking and so forth. There
are downsides to defenses. They're not only upside.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, and there's ultimately a a whole host of like
known downsides like among the general public, and then downsides
we don't think about, and a lot likewise advantages run
the same way. And a lot of this is because
of what we see in movies. You know, even if
we're not actually setting down to watch some sort of
a sword and sandal epic to learn about ancient warfare,
we can't help but sort of absorb the image of that,
(05:21):
and then we carry that around even if we're like
I do this, I find myself doing this. I'm like
reading some sort of text about ancient warfare, and you know,
it's a really good text, very well cited, making very
rational arguments. But you know, I have seen movies like
three hundred, I've seen movies like Gladiator and Troy and
so forth, and you know those movies are going to
(05:42):
inherently have errors, and they're just part of like my
visual catalog of the time period.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
They influence your view of what happened in history without
you even consenting to the fact that they're doing that. Well,
you didn't like set out to say I'm going to
learn what ancient combat was like by watching a movie.
It just kind of gets in there. You don't have
to try.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Now this idea of what if I just had a
big shield though, This is really interesting when we get
into the history of armor though, because we just pointed
out that the shield came first. Everything else followed. As
we've discussed in the show before, you had the invention
of the helmet, roughly twenty five hundred BCE being the
(06:24):
time when this becomes popular, and this largely emerges as
a counter to the devastating battlefield prowess of the mace,
and so soldiers of the ancient world did typically wear helmes,
but according to Fagan and Wholett, they typically wore no
additional body armor and depended on the use of a
large shield to cover them from head to foot, with
(06:47):
the frequent addition of a pair of greeves, they write
to protect the lower legs. But we'll have more to
say on that in a bit. So, yeah, this idea
you go back to the ancient world is like you
have a shield, you have a helmet, and you're essentially
good to go. No notes, and they had this would
remain standard for centuries upon centuries to follow and even
on up into the sixteenth century CE among the Aztecs
(07:10):
of the America's a big caveat here. There's going to
be a lot of variation in specific shields, but there
are some sweeping generalities that are in play. Basically, they
say it was a popular approach for various militaries at
various times, in part because a simple shield was far
easier to produce and mass produce compared to fitted body armor.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yes, another really important economic consideration. The cost of making
something is not just the cost of the materials that
go into it. Something that can be you know, made
a thousand times the same way is generally going to
be easier to do than something you need to fit
to individual people.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah. Another really important thing about the shield, and this
is this is not going to come as a shock
to anyone who has even just ever had a character
pick up a shield in a role playing But if
whatever you're doing on the battlefield can be done one handed,
be it like a spear or a short sword versus
a two handed weapon or a bow, then a shield
(08:11):
adds a great deal of additional protection. And unlike in
your your RPG, you can't in real life you're you're
not gonna say, well, I could give my character a shield,
but would it look as cool as ultimately you know,
it may just be like one point of armor class,
two points of armor class, whatever the case may be
(08:31):
in your game, but in reality it can make a
obviously a huge difference.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, that's a good point. I would almost say note
for the creators of D and D like I. Then again,
you know, I'm not a military historian, so I don't
really know, but I would tend to think that you
should get more AC from your shield than you should
from your armor.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah. Yeah, And I'm guilty of this too though. It's
like I'll be I'll just think, well, I don't know
if this character would have a shield that's not really there.
And you know the counter argument as well, it would be, well,
I guess getting pelted with arrows is your character's style.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Maybe it depends on the kind of armor, like you
get more AC from like plate armor, but yeah, people
get a lot of AC from just putting on hide
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yeah, I guess it also in dungeons and dragons and stuff.
It also depends on sort of like what is your
visual iconography that you're leaning on to create your character
and so, and that might be actual historic iconography, or
more likely iconography from films and fantasy. Anyway, coming back
(09:36):
to the idea of the film and a big shield,
we do see just this arrangement depicted in ancient art.
An example that the authors here bring up is the
twenty five hundred BCE Vulture stela from Tello, which shows
the troops of Sumerian ruler Inannatum dressed in helmets, brandishing
(09:58):
spears and carrying large rectangular shields. The depiction, they also argue,
seems to provide us with a very early depiction of
a shield wall, so a collective formation of shields. However,
as we'll touch on in a bit, just because you
see shields position a certain way in art, even ancient art,
doesn't mean that's necessarily exactly how it was arranged. But
(10:21):
we'll come back to that. They add that the exact
kind of shield used would depend largely on the roll
of the given infantry. So fast moving skirmishers are typically
going to depend on small shields. They could be used
with precision and without hindering your speed and maneuverability. Meanwhile,
you're plotting heavy infantry would often benefit from these big
(10:42):
rectangular shield designs that they could provide a great deal
of cover and could be lined up to present a
shield wall against attacks. A very late example of the former, though,
you can look to the clans of the Scottish Highlands
and the Highland Charge where they would would they would
drop their musket after firing it and then rush forward
(11:05):
with a with a small shield and a melee weapon.
It's like a shock attack, but that would be a
you know, prime example where you can benefit from the
protection of the small shield with but still being able
to maintain a great deal of mobility and speedy. Now,
one of the resources we turned to for this episode
is the excellent blog of doctor Bretz Devereaux, a collection
(11:29):
of Unmitigated Pedantry, which is a great blog if you're
interested in the history of warfare, especially if you're interested
in Roman warfare, but he gets into a lot of
medieval warfare as well, and frequently analyzes warfare that we
see depicted in the Lord of the Rings show, even
(11:52):
movies like Dune, and of course things like a Game
of Thrones or Rome or you know, the latest Gladiator movie, and.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
So forthing those scenes with the historical lens talk exactly
what matches up to what we know about ancient warfare
and what does not exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, one particular post though, relates to what we're talking
about here today, and that's a twenty twenty three post
titled Collections shield Walls and Spacing, Hollywood Mobs and Ancient Tactics.
So we'll come back to some of his observations regarding
depictions of shield walls and modern media. But I bring
him up now because he makes the following observation about
shield sizes. Quote, Battlefield shields tend to vary within a
(12:30):
relatively narrow range of sizes and basically two major shape categories,
either round or oblong. So there's a lot of variety,
certainly as I already mentioned, but they tend to fit
into these two broad categories. Alongside the usage already sighted,
he also points out that there were never, so far
as he could tell, square shield. So if you see
(12:51):
a square shield, like a perfect square shield in art
or in some sort of TV show or movie, you
were right to be suspicious.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Right, So the real shields found in history are either
like a circular disc of varying size or something that
is fairly tall, basically sort of the shape that you
would imagine a person could hide their tall body behind.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, it's like it's either going to be like those
round sleds that you slid down a hill on, or
they're going to be like those the long sleds you
slide down a hill on, but you just don't see
square sleds.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
That's a good point.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
So Devro makes some really fine points about shield size
relative to the body of the soldier wielding. It that
these shields were on the whole big, generally larger than
we see in films and video games. The larger ones
were broad enough to on their own block a significant
portion of the soldier's body, and even the smaller examples
could cover exceptionally well if you were turning your body,
(13:49):
turning your shoulder toward the enemy, making yourself as narrow
as possible behind the shield, which was typical.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Form right, and in fact, it almost seems that people
tend to distinctively know to do this if you know
you're in a dangerous situation, if you are think you're
about to get into a fight, whether armed or unarmed,
you tend to want to pivot your body so that
you become narrow so that your side faces your opponent
instead of your facing them head on.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Now, in looking at these different shield sizes, you know,
I can think about what's cool and what looks effective
for combatants, but I know when I see it, I'm like,
if it was actually me, I would say, give me
the biggest one you have with the most coverage possible,
you know, and it needs to be about the size
of a church door. But an interesting thing that Devreeu
(14:40):
points out as well is that most shields are going
to focus on protecting the head in the chest, and
even smaller shields are going to do this quite well.
And as far as lower parts of the body goes
like you know, lower legs, the feet and all. He
adds that in close combat, all strikes are going to
originate from shoulder height, and you know, certainly you could
(15:01):
aim at your opponent's feet in such combat, but it
would be tricky and it would expose you to counterattack.
So the defense is ultimately well placed here. Also, coming
back to body positioning, you're going to have your body
perpendicular to the combat. And on top of that, most
of the shields you're looking at are going to be
maneuverable to some degree or another. I mean they're all
(15:23):
maneuverable to a degree, but perhaps more so than a
novice might assume just looking at images.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Right, So, a shield is not like a static defense,
say of a particular part of your body, but it
is something you move around in reaction to the enemy
and to protect the parts of your body that need
to be protected depending on what you're about to do.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
It makes me think about Captain America's shield. I haven't
watched enough Captain America recently, and maybe he's my least favorite,
so I don't notice what he's doing as much. But
he does throw the shield around, which does feel kind
of like someone thought, well, the shield isn't interesting enough,
Maybe he can throw it and it can be a weapon,
Like let's make it more active and less passive. But
(16:05):
in reality, like the shield is going to be a
rather active defensive bit of armor. Now, as far as
arrows go, Devereux points out that it's only short range
that you'd need to worry about concerning like your lower
legs and feet. Long range missiles are going to be
coming from above anyway, So again, imagine yourself holding that
(16:25):
shield up. You know, if it's positioned correctly towards the
incoming arrows, you're not going to have to worry as
much about your feet. So basically, shields can provide a
great deal of coverage for the individual fighter on their own.
But then in formation we get into the widely used
shield wall formations that you see in various militaries throughout
the ancient world and for centuries and centuries after that.
(16:57):
Now Devro goes into a great deal more detail about
all of this that we're not going to cover. That
post is a great deep dive, so I recommend checking
it out. But there are several key points that he
makes about shield walls, and points about how shield walls
are generally incorrectly depicted in video games, movies, and art.
And again this is kind of important because these are
(17:20):
the examples that end up coloring the way we think
about it. So I'm compressing many of his points here,
but essentially this one I found really entertaining and insightful.
Really tight formations of soldiers with shields and swords just
look cool. They look cool now, and they look cool
in Roman times, and as he points out, we actually
(17:43):
see Roman depictions all their own troops locked into tight
formations for seemingly this reason, like tighter formations depicted than
they would have actually had on the field.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
That's right. So he's making the point that when you
see a movie scene today where armed infantry with say
spears and shields or swords and shields, are going into
battle and you see them with the shields all lined
up side to side, touching, you know, so that you
couldn't even get in between the shields. They're making a
literal wall of the shields or even overlapping. That that
(18:16):
was not actually a common battle tactic in many ancient armies.
You would have different kinds of formations, and sometimes for
various reasons, soldiers would close up into tighter ranks and
hold their shields out. And we'll talk about some reasons
for that as we go on, but they're not often
in reality as tight as we see in fictional media.
(18:38):
There's more space in between them for good reasons.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, But I guess part of it is like the
idea that it gets across, like, look how tight these
soldiers are, like they are a single unit. They're like
a single mass, you know. We like the idea of that.
Another example he brings up is that early modern gunpowder
tactics eventually became quite tight in their format to maximize
(19:01):
fire over frontage. Uh and and this and this also
did not depend on combat maneuverability. You weren't having to
swing the you know, like your your rifle around. But
this tight image of formations then is used to imagine
formations for historic soldiers who were swinging around weapons or
using big spears or something. So that that's I think
(19:23):
that's a great point as well, the way we take
modern or at least more recent examples and then use those,
perhaps even subconsciously to imagine the past, which you know,
this is a big tool that we use in imagining
the past in general, like start with what you know
and then and then imagine like ancient people doing that.
(19:43):
But you know, it doesn't apply, you know, one to
one for every situation. Another point that he brought up
that I really liked was that, you know, in in
various screen depictions especially, we see more unrealistic depictions of
shield walls. And that is because fiction's off and revolve
around some sort of novel and exciting solution to a
(20:04):
tactical problem, when in reality, quote, like most tactics, shield
walls are effective but not particularly clever.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Right in reality, the so called shield wall is not.
It's not a trick. There's nothing especially clever or counterintuitive
about it. It's like lining up your infantry, your heavy infantry,
in a formation where it would be hard to get
through them.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah. Yeah, I was watching an episode of The Studio,
which is a comedy about the movie industry. Has nothing
to do with shield walls, but there's a part in
one of the episodes where they're saying, look, they're telling
this young promising director, we're not going to tell you
how to make your movie, but we have a formula
that absolutely works and makes money, and we'd like you
(20:48):
to keep that in mind. It's basically what's going on here.
This is not the exciting ideas make for on the battlefield,
make for great stories, but at the end of the day,
there's a formula that works, and nearly those generals are
going to stick to it as much as possible.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Okay, so what were most real shield wall infantry formations
like and why were they like that?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Well, devro gets into more detail, but basically like, you're
just gonna have more space because I mean, this is
the big one. You need space to move around and
wield your weapon and wield the shield, because remember what
we were talking about, the shield is a more active
defense than it may seem in like a still photograph
or in some of these movies. You know, shields were
(21:30):
mobile and permittive fair amount of coverage when utilized properly.
Shields were also large again and could cover an individual
quite well, even against incoming arrows which he drives home.
Were not as plentiful and rapid fire as films make
it seem, so troops could and did advance against incoming
arrows like arrows, like it's not just you know suddenly
(21:51):
that it's raining arrows and the troops just can't move
for five minutes.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Our arrows will blot out the sun. That's hard to
do in real life.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, and then something will definitely come back to in
a bit. Super Tight formations tended to just in general
make troops slower and less effective at fighting, which kind
of comes back to what we're saying. You just they
need space to do what they need to do.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Right, So you can imagine a formation that is still
in effect a wall of soldiers with shields, so it
is a shield wall, but that doesn't necessarily mean that
the shields are touching edge to edge or even overlapping.
There would be some reasonable space, probably a few feet
in between them in most of these formations where you'd
be expecting a soldier to fight.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Yes, so again, many ancient armies made use of the
shield wall as well as rectangular formations of troops the PHAILANX,
and it's one of those tactics that likely developed independently
more than once. There's a lot of variation and certainly
different terminology, but suffice to say that it all generally
came down down to how as a unit, these soldiers
(22:55):
could stick together, cover adjacent troops with their shields, and
keep the front line offensive against the opposing forces front line.
And all of this was the domain of domain of
trained soldiers. So Devro warns that it's easy to air.
On either side of this realization, you'll you'll either assume
that the troops were inexperienced and untrained, or that they
were robots or just superhumanly trained, you know, professional soldiers
(23:20):
who just could not air and you know, and would
not break.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
One of the points he makes that I think is
pretty interesting is that we have this intuition that if
we wanted a line of soldiers to be really impenetrable,
you would have you would want to like have their
their shields touching each other so that it forms actually
like an unbroken physical barrier of matter. The shields are
(23:45):
all right there next to each other, but that just
the threat of a soldier paying attention to the space
in between the shields is in reality a barrier that
you can't really get through because it is a threat barrier.
It's not that the shields are physically touching all the
way down the line, but you can't just like rush
(24:07):
into that space because you know if you rush into
that space, you will almost certainly get get hit with
a spear or a sword.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
It's almost like taking the game, the childhood game of
Red Rover, where you actually join arms if I'm remembering correctly,
to try and keep the other children from running through
your line. Like there's that mentality. But obviously, in say
professional American football, nobody's locking arms as part of a
defensive line or anything. Like. They're mobile, they can move
(24:37):
and if they're spaced appropriately in the right position, like
they can stop somebody trying to run past.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Them, right, So Yeah, that's a good comparison because I
don't play football, But the way I assume it works
is like you're also trying to notice where the person
blocking you on the other team is looking, and if
they're paying attention to where you're about to go, that's
going to probably deter you because you know that they're
going to come to meet you there if you go
that way.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Why don't they let them wear shields though they have helmets,
they have body armor, but no shields, no Spearit is
either all right. I think it's time for us to
finally come back though to the Roman testudo again, not
the default mode of Roman shield formations, but one that
could form in certain circumstances, and one that has, I
think for many people become like just the icon of
(25:23):
a tight shield wall and also one that just resonates
with us on multiple levels.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
That's right, And this is the formation actually that Homer
Dubbs talks about in the paper that we discussed in
the last episode. So just to refresh, Homer Dubs, twentieth
century American scholar, famously argued that a group of Roman
soldiers captured by the Parthian Empire after the Battle of Kari,
(25:49):
which is today would be in southeastern Turkey in fifty
three BCE. He says that they made their way east
into Asia and fought in in a battle against the
army of the Han Chinese Empire in the thirties BCE,
and then eventually that's the survivors same group of Roman
(26:10):
soldiers settled in a region of northern China and became
the ancestors of a group of people called the le Chien. Now,
in the previous episode, we raised a number of reasons
for doubting this hypothesis, with different levels of doubt for
the different parts of it, particularly doubting the Roman ancestry
of the le Chien people at large, which was I
(26:30):
would say pretty thoroughly discredited by y chromosome genetic analysis
published by Joe at All in two thousand and seven
in the Journal of Human Genetics. We also raised doubts
about the role of Romans in the historic battle between
the Hun warlord Chicchi and the Chinese army. There's less
direct evidence against this, but we just noted that it's
(26:53):
an interesting idea. But many scholars with the relevant historical
specializations have disagreed with dubs and we observed personally from
reading his paper that it just rests on a lot
of speculative assumptions. He's making a lot of jumps and
is it's dubious the amount of certainty he seems to
have when he gets to the conclusion. It's more I
would rank it more like kind of an interesting possibility. Yeah,
(27:16):
this is kind of a side note, but I've mentioned
this on the show before. It's the kind of idea
that I think benefits from what I would call esthetic epistemology,
the kind of thing that people want to believe is
true because it's cool to think about. And you know,
I think the age we live in and the podcasting
medium in particular, really have a weakness for esthetic epistemology.
(27:41):
I don't know why it is. Podcasts, but it seems
to me podcasts today are a place where it is
so easy to leverage interest into factuality. And there are
some big shows out there that make this, I would say,
almost their entire project. It's just something something, it's a
really cool idea. It kind of changes everything you know
(28:03):
about history or it's like whoa, you never would have
thought this could have happened, But that's crazy to imagine.
And so it just starts to be like, well, then
it is true, and if you doubt it, you've got
your covering it up. You're trying to hide something. It's
just something I think podcasters and podcast listeners should be
aware of.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, I mean we have to be aware of it
as well. You know, I'll get excited about an idea
and then you know, maybe I'll learn a little bit
more about it and I'll have to, you know, realize, well,
we got to couch this in the appropriate knowledge, in
the appropriate analysis.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah. Same here. It affects me too, But we're doing
our best, folks. We try to bring you things that
are interesting, but also be real about.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
What we can know and what is likely based on
our knowledge.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
But anyway, so coming back to Dubb's paper itself, the
original reason he suggests that it was a group of
Roman soldiers that were the people described fighting in this
battle against the Western Chinese army. The reason he says
they're Roman soldiers is a line in a Chinese history
composed mostly in the first century called the History of
(29:17):
the Former Han Dynasty or sometimes just the Book of Han,
and it's a passage describing the battlefield in this battle
based on a painting made by someone who is there,
and it mentions a troop formation defending the city. As quote,
more than one hundred foot soldiers lined up in a
fish scale formation, and Dubbs takes this to mean that
(29:39):
the soldiers were holding shields in their hands and that
the shields were overlapping one another and covering the men
all around, like the scales overlapping on the skin of
a fish and covering the fish. Now, for a number
of reasons, Dubbs argues that this description really could only
refer to Roman legionaries holding a particular type of center
(30:02):
grip shield called a scutum or plural scuta, and performing
a maneuver called a testudo. Now, whether or not Dubbs
was correct about the battle, it's again, I think it's
not impossible. Interesting idea, but there are a lot of
causes for doubt. It is worth taking a look at
what the testudo was and what we know about it.
(30:25):
Testudo is a Latin word that means tortoise, and if
we look at some passages in ancient Roman texts, we
can see a bit about what it was and how
it was used. For example, I picked up a few
references to the Testudo in Julius Caesar's commentaries on the
Gallic War. This is a text that Julius Caesar wrote
(30:46):
himself about his first hand experience of military conquest and
suppression of uprisings in the region of Gaul. That's a
lot of modern day France basically. And yes, he did
write this himself about his own experiences, and yes he
does refer to himself in the third person, so it's
quite funny. So the first passage I was going to mention.
(31:08):
And by the way, this is the English version translated
by McDevitt and Bond.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
This is in.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Book two, chapter six. Caesar says, quote the Galls mode
of besieging is the same as that of the Belgai,
when after having drawn a large number of men around
the whole of the fortifications, stones have begun to be
cast against the wall on all sides, and the wall
has been stripped of its defenders. Then, forming a testudo,
(31:35):
they advanced to the gates and undermine the wall, which
was easily effected on this occasion, for while so large
a number were casting stones and darts, no one was
able to maintain his position upon the wall. So this
is describing the galls attack on the wall of a
fortified position. They gather around the walls. They're throwing stones.
(31:56):
I guess you have to imagine missiles are probably going
both directions, and mainly they're throwing stones to get the
defenders away from the edge of the walls. And then quote,
forming a testudo, they advance to the gates and undermine
the wall. So the testudo is something they assemble into
when approaching the gates of a fortress or a walled town.
(32:18):
There's another passage in book five, chapter nine. Caesar is
describing leading a detachment of Roman soldiers to meet the
enemy in a position I think in a forest, and
referring to the enemy, he says, quote, they advancing to
the river with their cavalry and chariots from the higher ground,
began to annoy our men and give battle. Being repulsed
(32:40):
by our cavalry, they concealed themselves in woods, as they
had secured a place admirably fortified by nature and by art, which,
as it seemed they had before prepared on account of
a civil war, for all entrances to it were shut
up by a great number of felled trees. Okay, so
that's the setup. The enemy has retreated fortified position in
(33:01):
the woods, then Caesar says, they themselves rushed out of
the woods to fight here and there, and prevented our
men from entering their fortifications. But the soldiers of the
seventh Legion, having formed a testudo and thrown up a
rampart against the fortification, took the place and drove them
out of the woods, receiving only a few wounds. Okay,
(33:23):
So once again the testudo, this time created by the
Roman soldiers of the seventh Legion. It's described as a
formation useful for approaching and eventually overtaking a fortified enemy position. Now,
in both of these cases, Caesar does not bother to
explain the testudo. He doesn't say what it is. He
just assumes the reader will already know. So what exactly
(33:46):
is being described here, Well, we'll get a more complete
description in Plutarch's Life of Antony, which comes in the
middle of a description of a Roman campaign against the
Parthian Empire. That of Antony, not Crassus this time, and
this is a version of this section translated by John Dryden.
At the descend of a hill where the Romans were
(34:08):
obliged to pass, They got together and let fly their
arrows upon them as they moved slowly down. But the
full armed infantry facing round received the light troops within,
and those in the first rank knelt on one knee
holding their shields before them, the next rank holding theirs
over the first, and so again others over these, much
(34:29):
like the tiling of a house or the row of
seats in a theater, the whole affording sure defense against
arrows which glanced upon them without doing any harm. So
here's the testudo formation. It is like a tortoise pulling
its head and legs inside its shell. Soldiers in a
testudo formation close in tight with one another, so the
(34:52):
men in the front row present a wall of shields
held side to side or overlapping like roof tiles, facing
the o enemy. And sometimes shield walls would also be
formed on other sides of the formation, depending on need
I guess, depending on where the enemy was facing. And
then the men behind the first row would put their
(35:12):
shields up on top of the formation and then layered,
going row by row all the way back to create
a protective roof. So it's like you if entered the
tortoise's shell.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
You have.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
You are protected all around, or at least on whatever
sides are facing the danger.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Yeah, you've kind of made like a tiny fortress, a
tiny house out of your shields. There.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Now, you might ask, if you can create this nearly
impenetrable dome of protection all around, why wouldn't soldiers just
always move in the testudo? Right, Plutarch says that the
arrows glanced off them without doing any harm. Why isn't
this just what all pre modern soldiers did all the time.
(35:54):
The answer is the testudo might be very safe, but
it is not very good for most things you would
want infantry troops to do. So, first of all, it's
slow to move. It's like, for one thing, maintaining that
barrier is going to be actually kind of difficult to do.
And the troops are going to be bunched very close together.
So the formation can move, You can march this way,
(36:16):
but it can't move very fast, and it's not going
to be very maneuverable, Like moving around things or changing
directions is just going to be difficult. You can also
imagine that for most soldiers within this formation, visibility is
going to be greatly reduced. You can't really get a
very good idea of what's going on around you. If
you're at one of the edges, maybe you can peek out,
(36:37):
but even then you're probably gonna have limited visibility in
the other directions, you know, not the side you're facing
anything except the side you're facing toward. So yeah, that's
going to be a problem as well. Also, soldiers can't
fight in this formation. Armed infantry are not only supposed
to move around and avoid getting killed, they need to
(36:59):
be able to age with the enemy and either drive
them back or kill or wound them. And in fact,
we see examples in the ridings of Cassiustillo of Roman
soldiers in the testudo formation actually not doing very well
because they're being savaged by heavy party and cavalry charges.
So they form a testudo and then the armored horses
(37:22):
rush on them and they're overtaken, and it apparently just
you know, crashes through the shields, and you know, many
men are killed, are killed or wounded. So, despite what
you're going to see in a lot of movies with
medieval combat where you see something like the testudo often used,
at least the one row of shields, you know, all
lined up like a wall. It was not very useful
(37:43):
in situations of melee contact with the enemy. So what
was it actually good for. It seems that the testudo
was an ideal formation if you wanted to protect infantry
from a heavy barrage of missiles, from arrows, javelin, even
thrown stones. And this is why you often see it
(38:03):
being used for attacking maneuvers during sieges or in approaching
fortified positions. So there are defenders up on the city
wall and they're shooting arrows or throwing stones, and you
want to approach the wall or the gate to attack
it or to undermine it. The testudo formation is useful
because it allows you to close that distance with minimal
(38:27):
casualties from airborne missiles along the way. That's something that
it is very good for.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Absolutely. Yeah, this, you know, I'm going to make another
sports comparison here, which is rare for me, and in
doing so, I make it the sports terminology and correct.
But I kept thinking of of the testudo is being
kind of like a granny shot in basketball, something that
I'm to understand, even in professional basketball can be very effective,
(38:58):
but only in certain circumstance. Answers like there's a strong
case to be made that what was it the free throw?
Is that what you call it, that that someone can
make baskets with better regularity and control if they're using
a granny shot, like you know, between the legs, underhanded
as opposed to the more cool looking and and I think,
(39:19):
you know, largely more effective in other areas of the game,
you know, overhanded pitch of the basketball. So it's kind
of like that, like if you the testudo is going
to be highly effective in very certain circumstances, and if
you tried to use it outside of those circumstances, or
those circumstances were compromised, then it might spell disaster, I
(39:41):
would say. The The other thing about the testudo, like
the granny shot, is that it does look kind of stupid.
And I think I think this is worth acknowledging. Like
the testudo looks, Yes, it does look really cool. It
is really neat. It is kind of this idea of
perfect you know combat in defense in UNI and by
trained soldiers, and we love that aspect of it, but
(40:04):
it also just looks weird and kind of dumb, you know,
like they're they're becoming a turtle. They're making a little
house on the battlefield. And at the same time, it's
amazing people becoming a shape individual shields becoming an enclosure.
So I find myself entertaining both of these feelings anytime
I look at like an illustration of the testudo, or
(40:26):
I found a video online where some class somewhere had
had managed to get children to form one with like
plastic shields and swords while the I assume the teachers
pelted them with things, and then they successfully advanced on
the teachers and then mastered them. Now one more observation
that Devereaux makes about shield walls, studos and how they're
(40:48):
depicted in modern entertainment. He pointed out something that I've
seen at least one of the shows that he's he's
referencing here, but I just it did not occur to me.
He said, if you watch Game of Thrones, there are
episodes where you see the Lanister troops engaging some sort
of system where on the front line you have dedicated shieldmen,
(41:10):
so guys who have no weapons, just a two handed
shield of some sort, and then behind them there are
people with a with a like a pike, a two
handed pike, and then behind them you have people with bows,
And he points out that this idea of having like
a dedicated shield bearer and a dedicated spear bearer, you
(41:33):
just don't see this like it just it might look
cool in a film like this, but it's almost always
it's always going to be like a shield and spear
bearer or shields and swords. And a big part of
this is that otherwise, like your shield guy gets taken out,
the guy behind him doesn't have a shield, he just
(41:53):
has a pike. That means that defense on that line
has just completely fallen apart. Like one of the strengths
of a shield wall or the testudo is that any
individual in the formation could step up and replace somebody
who's injured or killed.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Right, So you'll have a file within the formation that's
like lined up behind all of the soldiers in the
first row. Yeah, and if someone is killed or wounded
or asked to fall back or whatever, the file advances
up behind them.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah. So that's a great point. It's something I'd never
noticed before in fantasy warfare. Perhaps there are other examples
of it out there, I know that. On his blog
in general, you can read lots of comments about details
and historic and semi historic television and television shows and films,
as well as of course fantasy and sci fi as well.
(42:45):
So of course the use of shield walls and fish
scale like formations fell in and out of fashion on
through to the Middle Ages and ultimately became obsolete in
the age of gunpowder. But it is often pointed out
that you do still see some version of these tactics
used with say, riot police, who are contending generally not
with firearms, but with improvised projectiles and simple hand to
(43:09):
hand weapons that may be improvised as well. So you
can look up various images of this online. You know,
some sort of like big kind of plasticy looking shield,
like a riot shield, and then you know, they'll often
form some sort of a wall, and sometimes they will
also form the roof over the heads of the soldiers.
Not as the examples tend not. They don't look as
regimented as a proper testudo, but it is kind of
(43:31):
like the spirit off it's still still useful in very
certain stripped down circumstances in our modern world. Likewise, you
also see examples of protesters using the shield walls of
one sort or another another as well. Yeah, but no
football players again for some reason, no shields on the
American football field, or the British football field for that matter.
(43:53):
No shields there. All right, Well, we're going to go
and close out these episodes here. I hope that everyone
has enjoyed our detour into the world of shields and
shield walls. But we're going to be back with something
else next week. In the meantime, Yeah, we invite you
to write in if you have thoughts about this, especially
(44:15):
some of the various media that we've mentioned. You know
how this stuff plays out on TV, in films, in
video games. Devereux frequently cites Total War as being a
franchise that often influences the way we picture things like this,
So write in. All that is fair game, just a
(44:36):
reminder of the stuff to blow your mind. Is primarily
a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
concerns to talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Huge things, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
You can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
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Robert Lamb
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