Tassels inside hoplite shields

[LawrenceG]

These images show what might be tassels on the back face of hoplite shields.

http://sites.psu.edu/thehopliteexperience/wp-content/uploads/sites/10736/2014/04/800px-Hoplite_fight_from_Athens_Museum.jpg

https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/schrijfsels/wp-content/uploads/legacy/6513/crater.jpg

Anyone know if that is what they are and what they were used for?

[Duncan Head]

Illustrations sometimes show a cord running round the inside of the shield, attached at several points. It is usually explained as a means of slinging the shield on one's back. Sometimes, there are tassels at the attachment points of that cord: see here or here for instance. The tassels on your first illustration could be explained in this way, but with the cord running between them not being shown.

[Baldie]

Think metatron or Scola gladitorior or similar did a you tube discussion about various shields and the cords and tassles on them.
No doubt it will be for all kind of clever things or something stupidly mundane like getting rid of flies.

Seem to remember something really interesting about a shield design not necessarily being better than another but generations of warriors and armourers saying we do it like this because this is what a shield looks like.

[Erpingham]

The tassels on your first illustration could be explained in this way, but with the cord running between them not being shown.

Or perhaps the attachment points for the cord were permanently fixed to the back of the shield but the itself cord was not always fitted?

[PMBardunias]

Illustrations sometimes show a cord running round the inside of the shield, attached at several points. It is usually explained as a means of slinging the shield on one's back. Sometimes, there are tassels at the attachment points of that cord: see here or here for instance. The tassels on your first illustration could be explained in this way, but with the cord running between them not being shown.

I am skeptical of the cord being a carrying strap primarily because we have vases that show a carrying strap added alongside the usual cord, see attached. The idea put forward, by I think Hanson, that it allowed you to have a section to grip if your antilabe snapped is shown to be unlikely if you actually try to do it because the angle is impossible (and why not just have a second antilabe?)

In my opinion, the cord, like the guilloche pattern on so many aspis rims and the vertical bronze extensions of the porpax, is primarily a surviving element of a shield, perhaps woven, that the aspis evolved out of. The guilloche pattern, looking like wicker, as a relic of such a shield was noted by Snodgrass. I think the porpax extension, like when Romans painted spina on shields that no longer had a spine as a structural element, is a reflection of a shield built upon a central spine, like a boat hull. A spine is an obvious thing to decorate, so if they had a tradition of decorating the spine, then they might have kept the decorative surface and lost the structure. The cord may have originally been a truss, running around the bowl of a wicker or lighter wooden shield to help keep the domed shape. Greeks used such rope trusses in boat construction to eliminate what is called "hogging", the middle of the boat deforming upwards.

As for the tassels, they could be an obvious decorative element, but perhaps they once were bells. One difference between an unit of bronze hoplites and an a group of light troops is noise, so maybe accentuating that noise is intimidating. The only practical use I have had for tassels is that if you drop your aspis face up on a gymnasium floor, it is a bit like dropping a coin on a smooth surface. It takes a moment to get a grip and your fingers under the rim. With long tassels, it will usually fall on the tassels at some location. Since hoplites rarely fought on hardwood floors and the tassels are usually shown too short for this, it is not likely the reason they are there.