Sprout, you're right about the round shields; I'd forgotten. Also, the INCREDIBLY rare Roman Cavalry used a smaller shield of some sort too, unless the research used in a series of books I read last year(A Dream of Eagles; The Skystone, The Singing Sword and two others) was wrong... According to that, the main reason the Roman armies were defeated (aside from laziness and complacency) was their refusal to use good mounted tactics. As an aside, a friend of mine once pointed out that the Romans actually had the technology to create automatic weapons, but didn't have gunpowder and never really saw a use for it... (Oh, geez - Now I'm expecting to see images of Romans in authentic armor wielding Tommy Guns...)