Quote Originally Posted by machinor View Post
Are you sure about that last bit? It always seemed to me that "scutum" (apart from specifically meaning the shield of the Roman soldiers) was the generic Latin term for "shield". Very much like "aspis" in Greek. Thus the Iberian "Scutarii" got their name although not carrying the Roman scutum; they do look similar but then again so do scutum and thureos.
You have to understand that "scutum" and "thureos" are terms describing a variety of shields that are loosely tied together by various characteristics. It's all a spectrum, so that there is in reality no such thing as an Iberian scutum or a Roman scutum. In the same way that Livy described both the small round shields of the Spanish tribes and the small round shields of the Macedonians as caetrae, the same oval shields with vertical spindle bosses and spines were called by Livy a scutum and by Polybius a thureos. To Polybius, the shields of the Iberians, Romans, Galatians, and Greeks alike were thureoi. Later on the term "scutum" came to have a generalized meaning, but in the Republican period it has a very specific meaning, which is cognate to thureos.