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Good call Lawrence. An interesting episode - I always find the 'More or Less' podcasts good value and have them on my subscription list.

Not sure if it's accessible outside the UK, but:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0mczjg0

Quote from: Erpingham on November 03, 2025, 05:26:25 PMFascinating how detailed the reply was yet turned out to be fictional.

Obviously trained on the texts of ancient Greek and Roman historians.

Seems a lot better than soggy chicken bake a la greggs

Well, it might be evidence for soldiers in Persian (or "Median") clothing with a Greek-style hoplite shield. This is the "traditional" interpretation of kardakes-hoplites. But, as Richard T pointed out in his Greek Hoplite Phalanx book, calling them "hoplites" doesn't necessarily mean Greek hoplite gear. We have figures in this costume with the aspis on the Alexander Sarcophagus, but Nick Sekunda has alternative identifications for these. And although he does have a reconstruction of a kardaka-hoplite based on figures on the Mosaic, I've never been sure what figures he means, nor whether the shield he uses (the one under Alex's horse, decorated with concentric circles) is actually a hoplite aspis at all (there is no clear offset rim). So any tiny snippet of information along those lines is useful.

Yes Alastair, what an inspired suggestion. Whilst I was busy rooting around in the image database c. 2022 Duncan found what he was looking for!

Well done Duncan (and Alastair). Take that, AI bot!

Now you have tracked it, what is the image telling us? 

Alastair, thank you, that's brilliant! I had been putting off using the Wayback option because I didn't know how much of the database it would preserve - I feared I might get listing pages but not data on individual items. But no, it's there, categories d'objets>bullae>Musee archéologique de Bandirma>page 8; item DS88, found at Daskyleion (so Jim's guess of an Anatolian provenance is correct).

Many thanks.

I don't know if this will help, but you might try accessing the site's presence via the Wayback Machine archive. This is a more or less random link to the Musée Achéménide part of the site there from 2019. You can navigate from there to what's been preserved from other dates, so hopefully this will give a fighting chance of finding something helpful there.