The Telamon Grip

A Theory of Critical Function for the Least Understood Features of the Greek Aspis

By Andrew Yamato

Photos by Andrew Yamato except where noted

Originally published Ancient Warfare magazine.

“Telamon” is a Homeric term for the strap by which large Bronze Age shields were slung and swung around the bodies of heroes in the Iliad. It has also come to describe, perhaps anachronistically, the rope or cord looped around the interior of Archaic and Classical hoplite aspides (or “Argive shields”) through a series of bronze attachment points. In that later context, its purpose has always been something of a mystery. 

The simplest and most logical explanation is that the telamon can be configured to carry the aspis on the bearer’s back, which is not only attested in artwork, but has been found by reenactors to be comfortably practical: slack length is pulled into two shoulder loops at the top of the shield, with the horizontal porpax fitting into the small of the wearer’s back. The various spans of cord between the bronze fittings are, moreover, useful for tucking extra clothing, bedding, or other personal items. Author and AW contributor Paul Bardunias has speculated that the telamon might be a vestigial element carried over from an earlier iteration of the shield: a tightly drawn internal trussing that may have served to reinforce a concave shape once made of wicker, and that could theoretically strengthen even a wooden core. The main problem with this theory is that the telamon is almost invariably depicted slack, not taut, and the weight of the rope and its bronze fittings seem a high price to pay for an obsolete nod to tradition.   

A third theory is based on the fact that the same slack length in the telamon necessary to create shoulder loops can alternatively be pulled through the secondary antilabe frequently seen on the interior left of the aspis, creating a loop just long enough to be held taut in the shield hand of the hoplite to the bearer’s left, along with his own antilabe – what I call the “telamon grip”. Such an arrangement creates a physical yet flexible connection down the length of a phalanx rank which reenactors since at least the 2015 Marathon reenactment have found helps maintain cohesion, especially over broken ground. It also makes sense of another mystery of aspis design, which is the secondary antilabe itself. This is often described as a “spare” fitting, useful in the event of a broken primary antilabe by simply flipping the shield upside down, but this maneuver must be dismissed as entirely unnecessary (I’ve never heard of a broken antilabe) and totally impractical in the heat of any hoplite battle violent enough to require it. And yet we very frequently find this odd fixture depicted in art and present on artifacts themselves (most notably the Bomarzo Shield in the Gregorian Etruscan Museum at the Vatican): it must have served a purpose. Indeed, I believe that along with the telamon, the secondary antilabe may hold the key to understanding several key aspects of hoplite warfare. 

While the precise location of telamon fittings may have varied from one aspis to another, a telamon long enough to produce shoulder loops generally creates a telamon grip loop long enough (approximately 20cm beyond the rim) for the telamon grip to maintain an ergonomic overlap of two apsides’ offset rims, translating to a frontage of approximately 75cm per hoplite. This is ideal for phalanx combat, providing both sufficient space for offensively wielding the dory and the defensive stability of an overlapped shield wall. As with any linked chain, however, the telamon grip only provides linear consistency when under tension. My reenactment group The Greek Phalanx learned this the hard way in May 2025 during experimental maneuvers at Fort Loudon, Pennsylvania. With helmets restricting peripheral vision and attention focused on singing our paean, our line of fifteen shields repeatedly collapsed on itself while advancing, even with most of us using the telamon grip. If maintaining a straight and evenly spaced frontage was so difficult for a handful of hoplites advancing straight ahead in a single rank, how could phalanxes four to fifty shields deep and hundreds wide have maintained consistent cohesion in the face of the enemy?

If current scholarship is to be believed, the answer is not training. While I suspect that citizen hoplites had more military training than surviving texts attest, our experience suggested that coordinating even basic maneuvers for massive phalanxes on an ancient battlefield would have required more and better formation training than all but the best-drilled Spartiates and epilektoi (and even they seem to have failed at combat maneuvers as often as they succeeded). Instead, I suspect the answer may lie in the telamon grip combined with a single, simple mantra, handed down as a battlefield axiom from father to son:

“Grasp the rope to your right, pull it taut to the left.”

A front rank so dressed quite effortlessly maintains both a standard fixed distance between files and a standard fixed frontage for the phalanx as a whole, without the need for the extensive formation training otherwise essential to maintain such cohesion. The hoplites of each subsequent rank could then simply follow the men directly in front of them without the need for the telamon grip themselves. 

A phalanx regulated by telamon grip may also help explain why strategoi posted at the far right of the front rank in the first place (if one accepts that they generally did so). Traditionally understood as the “position of honor,” the difficulties of being seen and heard from this location at the extremity of the formation make it less than ideal for command, but it is from the only place from which the phalanx could actually be controlled. As long as the spacing of that first rank is maintained consistently, with each man remembering to keep his righthand neighbor's telamon pulled taut (but not pulling so hard that he physically pulls his neighbor to the left) it allows a strategos posted on the far right of the front rank to not only order the phalanx forward, but actually gives him a limited ability to literally steer the entire formation obliquely to the left or right, simply by moving in that direction. 

Interestingly, the telamon grip-regulated phalanx permits one significant variation: total reversal, with the strategos posting on the extreme front left and the front-ranker promachoi pulling right – a feat requiring some preparation and practice, but nothing beyond Epaminondas and his Thebans (among others). Indeed, for more trained hoplites of Spartan or epilektoi formations, the telamon grip may even have expedited the next level of linear tactics: wheeling (i.e. facing changes while maintaining a straight frontage). The shoulder-to-shoulder linear formations of black powder armies wheeled by training soldiers to “lean in, look out” – that is, to physically lean into the body of the next man toward the posted turning point and “look out” down the radius of the line to the far end of the flank executing the turn. A rank of hoplites linked by the telamon grip could, when given a wheeling order by a leader posted on one flank or the other, execute the maneuver simply by “looking out,” without the need for physical compression, thus maintaining their tactically optimal spacing. It is perhaps by just such a practiced technique that the Spartans were able to repeatedly execute their famous “cyclosis” maneuver to envelop the enemy’s left flank.    

Would the telamon grip have consistently worked to regulate entire phalanxes? Certainly not, but it’s difficult to conceive of a simpler, more practical approach to cohesively maneuvering a massive mob of untrained, nervous hoplites. As the paean was raised and the advance began there would be no need for any promakhoi to remember anything over their pounding hearts but “pull left...pull left.” Such a mantra might even have worked to counter the rightward drift famously described by Thucydides in his account of the battle of Mantinea. It would certainly have deterred individuals from either overenthusiastic sallies (per Hellenika 7.1.31: “the soldiers were inspired with so much strength and courage that it was a task for their leaders to restrain them as they pushed forward to the front”) or frightened hesitation, serving as a constant, physical reminder to maintain the line and pace at all costs – nothing less, nothing more. As a formation tactic it would have been – at the very least, and however imperfectly executed – far better than nothing, which is essentially all the current conventional wisdom allows. 

The telamon grip would ideally be maintained at least until the enemy was directly engaged, whether by a mass charge to collision or more measured spear-fencing. At that point, as the battle inevitably disintegrated into more local and individual combat, hoplites could release their neighbors’ telamones, sacrificing a physically linked shield wall to gain greater freedom of action. By permitting the strategos to bring a cohesive phalanx to meet the enemy, the telamon grip had probably done its job; it was fundamentally a tool of maneuver rather than melee.    

It is true that many aspides are depicted on vases without telamons, secondary antilabes, or either. Although I have not performed a thorough survey of the many thousands of artworks featuring aspides, the secondary antilabe in particular appears to be more frequently seen in Classical rather than Archaic art, which may indicate it was an innovation of that era. (The Bomarzo shield itself dates to the 5th or 4th century.) If so, it would correspond to the advent of the closely ordered Classical phalanx – a phenomenon increasingly thought to have dated to the time of the Persian Wars – with its greater need for cohesion than the looser Archaic phalanx it supplanted. 

Our sample of intact aspis artifacts is too small to conclusively determine how commonplace secondary antilabes might have been. As has been noted, however, the telamon grip would only need to be used by a minority of hoplites (i.e. the front rank) to be effective in maintaining a phalanx. It is plausible that aspides so equipped were issued to specially trained epilektoi units like Thebes’ Sacred Band, whose primary role as the front line “cutting edge” (if one accepts that theory of their deployment) may not even have been to fight fiercely, but rather to maintain their massive phalanx’s consistency and cohesion.

The developmental origins of the aspis remain shrouded in mystery and speculation, and we may never know the intention behind either the telamon or the secondary antilabe with any certainty. Archaeological experimentation has revealed, however, that virtually every element of the aspis’ sophisticated design and laborious construction served a practical, tactical purpose. I hope that this article has made a compelling case that the telamon and secondary antilabe were no exceptions.