Stele of Staphhilos

[aligern]

Ran across this interesting picture of a stele from Panticapaeum



https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f1/d8/60/f1d8606df2005b64549194aab552553a.jpg

Roy

[DougM]

Some interesting styles combined there in clothing, armament and hair.

[aligern]

Yes, is he holding a bow,or a sica?  Is that a bowcase over his right shoulder?

I had not seen ths before and had conceived Bosporan troops as either the Roman auxilia with baggy trousers, or the wild hairy type with square or rhomboid shield from the Kerch tombs. This chap looks a bit different.
Roy

[Jim Webster]

Yes, is he holding a bow,or a sica?  Is that a bowcase over his right shoulder?

I had not seen ths before and had conceived Bosporan troops as either the Roman auxilia with baggy trousers, or the wild hairy type with square or rhomboid shield from the Kerch tombs. This chap looks a bit different.
Roy

If he's holding something in his left hand, then his shield is strapped to his arm, which would genuinely surprise me, I wouldn't have thought that this sort of shield was ever 'double grip'

I can see there could be a quiver over his shoulder (perhaps with bow case) and it could be a bow in his right hand.

[aligern]

But that piece of stone against the edge of his shield looks very like a hand holding something??
Roy

[Andreas Johansson]

Yeah, looks very much like a hand holding a dagger to me.

[Jim Webster]

Yeah, looks very much like a hand holding a dagger to me.

yes I'd second that, but it does mean that the shield is being held in an unusual way as well

Jim

[aligern]

It does indeed Jim and that might be 'real' or it might be just an artistic thing to show him grasping a sword Or other weapon. Wargamers eould need to believe in some sort of guige , whereas that would not bother a sculptor :-)).

[Swampster]

The clothing looks similar to quite a few other stelai from the area - Mielczarek shows some others with the same jacket and tightish trousers, some on foot and some mounted. I think he has a beard though it could be just damage. The hairstyle also isn't too far from others - the 'Parthian' look may be down to being better carved than most. The same combination of clothing, beard and hair can be seen on some stelai with mounted figures.

The shield isn't a shape I've seen on others - oval is more common with some being very large. I'd agree that he seems to be holding something in his left hand - perhaps the hilt of his sheathed sword - but that would mean the shields was on straps.

[Tim]

Very much looks to be holding a bow in the left hand and a slung quiver over the right shoulder, per Roy's first post.  Not sure what the weapon in the right hand might be.  Very interesting find.

As for the viability of firing a non-recurve shortbow while using a shield that size I cannot attest.  We do have examples of shortbowmen firing using a much smaller shild but these are from much further West and centuries later.

[Patrick Waterson]

Bow, shield and sword; with reference to an earlier discussion, might this solve the conundrum about Mithridates' archers and how and why they stood up to Roman legionaries?

[Duncan Head]

I agree with Tim that he seems to be holding a bow in his left hand, and you can see the lower end of the bow beneath the base of the shield, continuing the curve that reaches down from his hand. The shield could be suspended from the baldric coming down from his right shoulder, though it looks more likely that that is supporting the quiver visible over his shoulder. I'm not sure whether he's supposed to have an arrow or a javelin in his right hand.

Bow, long shield, and either a thonged javelin or a lance appear again in the stele of Gazourios (which is dated to C1 AD in one book I've got, more generally to C1-3 AD elsewhere, matching Staphilos who is dated to C1-2 AD).

[Swampster]

Bow, shield and sword; with reference to an earlier discussion, might this solve the conundrum about Mithridates' archers and how and why they stood up to Roman legionaries?

I might remind you that a certain person wrote in that discussion:
" The use of the bow is (except for Cretans) basically incompatible with that of the shield.  So unless we want a hypothesis whereby a unit of archers followed the swordsmen into the marsh, picking up shields and throwing away bows (in the middle of the Romans who were striking down fugitives left, right and centre) then on the basis of what Plutarch has written we are left with bow-armed swordsmen, whether they resisted or not."

My suspicion is that Staphhilos is a cavalryman, despite the lack of horse in the carving. The shield is the conundrum - the rest of the gear is very much that of riders on a variety of stelai. They are often shown accompanied by a shield bearer or an infantryman - I suspect the former as shown on some stelai from the other side of the Black Sea.  Mielczarek does say, however, that there are stelai of infantry with bow but does not show any.

Are we seeing a complete selection of weapons the man was supposed to be able to use but not necessarily all at once?


As for the shape of the shield, it seems that there are examples of a flat ended shield in "Watzinger C. Griechische Grabreliefs aus Südrussland " but I don't have it and cannot find it online.

[evilgong]

I just see clothing rather than him holding something...  the jacket making a triangle shape with both sides swept back.

It does look like  a quiver over his shoulder.

db

[Dangun]

Is there any more context?
Is it the sculpture the funerary stele of an individual? Any inscription? Part of a building?
Just wondering...

And just thinking about the logic of the sculpture. If you wanted to strap a shield on to an arm while using a bow, would you strap it to the bow arm or the arrow arm? To strap it to the bow arm as per the sculpture would offer less protection and require a lot more work (5 to 7 kilos on the end of a straightened arm already struggling to hold a bow on target). Or does this just suggest the bow and shield combination was just a transportation arrangement rather than an arrangement for use?