I've been doing some research about the arms and armour of the roman legionary, most notably the Scutum. Every preproduction seems to have the hand mounted horizontally. My question is this; * What examples are we basing this on? * Why was this used instead of a vertical handle?
Polybius mentions their construction in Histories (6.23) but it doesn’t mention the grip style, HOWEVER, most of the construction style is in line with the one surviving actual scuta that we have found (the Dura-Europos shield which is from Syria in the 1930s) and that shield has a horizontal grip. Additionally the depiction of scuta on Trajans column seem to be held horizontally, that obviously is open to interpretation but many of the other depictions on the column are accurate to archaeological finds (although many are possibly anachronistic).