Greek world shield symbols - sources offered.

**kaptainplanet** · 08-05-2014, 11:23

Hello everyone.

This summer I was in my homecity Athens, and visited the Numimatic museum. I thought that the most likely guess about which symbols each city-states/leagues' hoplites' shileds had on, is that they were the same as the symbols on the coins, meaning the symbols of the corresponding area.

So, I took lots of pictures of coins, along with noting down their area of origin, from the Black Sea to Asia Minor, and Greece proper to Sicily.

Should I post them on here, or are you guys already sufficiently covered on that issue?

**Yavana** · 08-05-2014, 17:20

I would be happy if you could post them, even though, unfortunately, I am not a member of EB Team

**I_damian** · 08-05-2014, 21:32

Yeah I'd like to see your pictures too!

**Alcibiade** · 08-05-2014, 22:41

Same here :-)

**V.T. Marvin** · 08-06-2014, 00:19

Even if the pictures will not end up being used for EB2 units, they would still enrich the community with the knowledge, so yeah, feel free to post it here and be sure that it would be much appreciated.

**kaptainplanet** · 08-06-2014, 22:40

Ok, here goes my pics. The choice of which coins i photopahed was made with EB needs in mind, and according to a mix of the following criteria:

1) CONDITION OF THE COIN. Generally bad or medium condition coins were avoided
2) DEPICTION ON THE COIN ( I didt photo any of the MANY coins depicting gods, heroes, faces, and generally any indistinguishable figures
3) BEAUTY OF DESIGN. Subjective, but with so many coins there, one additional criteria was needed to filter soem stuff out.
3) RARITY OF SYMBOL. (being Greek, with an interest in History, I can tell when a symbol is something I have never seen before. e.g., the twin reversed heads).
4) AREA OF ORIGIN. An area of interest to EB that a) I either assumed must have a comperative lack of sources compared to other, more well known areas ( Eg Epeirus vs Athens) or b) is getting its own faction was focused a bit more. For example Cheimerios Vosporos area, Epeiros area, Magna Grecia, Crete.
5) APPROPRIETNESS FOR SHIELD SYMBOL. As the reason for this museum visit was to help the EB team, only symbols that I would expect to be on a shield were selected. For example heads were ommited, scened of people performing tasks were ommited, complicates scenes (like four horse chariots and the such) were ommitted. I focus more on depictions that can be used as an areas symbol.

As a final remark, the museum collection is huge and contains much more coins than those in the pictures. Therefore, I dont imply that my selection is complete, or even representative of an area. Just a suggestion for shield designs.