The shield he is hiding behind is the most sophisticated object on the battlefield. A scutum is not a plank — it is a laminate, three layers of thin wooden strips glued into a single curved board, and the one complete example ever recovered, from Dura-Europos in Syria, is built from strips two millimetres thick and comes to a total of between four and a half and six millimetres of wood. Polybius describes the finishing: canvas laid over the face first, then calfskin, with iron along the top and bottom edges and an iron boss set at the centre. That gets a shield about a metre tall, thirty centimetres deep in the curve — enough to wrap a man — and weighing something like ten kilos. Curved, they overlapped into a barrier that arrows had to work at. And the boss was not decoration. A legionary punched with it.

King & Country have him down on one knee with the scutum grounded and the pilum angled out past its edge, butt braced, waiting for a charge to arrive rather than going to meet one — the red face carrying wings, thunderbolts and a legionary emblem, the segmented armour and helmet behind it. He is the crouching half of a designed pair: Standing Roman Legion Throwing Pilum is sculpted to stand over him with a shield raised across his back. Extend that unit along a front with The New Roman Legions and put The Ballista Command Set on higher ground behind, and the diorama tells the whole Roman method in one glance — a line that holds while something worse shoots over its head.

Model: ROM060 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set