169
Re-enactors in full kit showing use of a 1st-2nd century AD Roman Testudo formation to allow troops to mount a wall
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
169 points (97.7% liked)
Historical Artifacts
556 readers
156 users here now
Just a community for everyone to share artifacts, reconstructions, or replicas for the historically-inclined to admire!
Generally, an artifact should be 100+ years old, but this is a flexible requirement if you find something rare and suitably linked to an era of history, not a strict rule. Anything over 100 is fair game regardless of rarity.
Generally speaking, ruins should go to [email protected]
Illustrations of the past should go to [email protected]
Photos of the past should go to [email protected]
founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wouldn't it make more sense to overlap the shields the other way, to transfer the weight of the guy down and into the ground? I'm assuming they tried both ways and the other way has problems that I'm not seeing, but I'm not seeing it.
I wonder if this way around was to help the climber get a foothold above the shield whilst being shot at.
My imagination tells me they'd be sprinting up there whilst having arrows shot at them, so anything to get their foot on would be handy.
Maybe the other way around they'd be more likely to catch their foot under the shield in front of them too, tripping them up.
The above is all just my imagination though so hopefully there's someone better read around here that can answer more accurately.
That would make sense, yeah. I suppose you can see that on the picture too, he's standing on the shield boss of one shield and the edge of another. It still seems like it would be very heavy for the guy at the top, but I suppose they don't spend that long standing there, maybe.
I guess I'm not seeing what you mean by overlapping the shields the other way?
The way they are currently set up the bottom shield is in front of the shield above it, so that when it gets pushed on it is supported by the next shield (which is again supported by the next shield, and so on).
It feels more intuitive that the shield should overlap the other way (instead of the top of your shield being supported by the next shield, the bottom of your shield would be supported by the previous shield) because the final shield in the row has to be the heaviest to hold and the first one is supported by the ground.
Okay, I see what you mean now. Not sure why they didn't do that.