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