tour 3 of 15
Enlightenment: The Birth of Archaeology
Dr Woodward's shield
According to tradition, this embossed iron
buckler
was discarded from the Royal Armouries at the end of the reign of
Charles II (1660-85). John Conyers then sold it to the physician
and
antiquary
Dr John Woodward of Cambridge in
1693.
The shield is
illustrated with scenes from ancient Roman history. In 390 BC an
army of Gauls led by Brennus invaded Rome. After a long siege of
the Capitoline Hill, the Gauls agreed to leave Rome in return for a
payment of one thousand pounds in weight of gold. But the Romans
objected to the weights used by the Gauls, which were heavier than
standard, causing Brennus to throw down his sword in anger. In
response, the Roman leader Camillus raised an army which drove the
Gaulish invaders from the city.
The shield depicts Rome
being burned by the Gauls and gold being weighed for the ransom.
These scenes follow descriptions by the ancient Roman writers Livy
and Plutarch so closely that Woodward believed that the shield was
made at the same time as the events depicted, rather than being a
later illustration of the texts. Woodward published a treatise
outlining his theories in 1713. This immediately prompted a satire
by Alexander Pope on the follies of antiquarianism,
The Memoirs of Martinus
Scriblerus. The satire was produced by the
Scriblerus Club, a literary group formed in 1713 to satirize
'all the false tastes in learning'. Its members
included Pope and Jonathan Swift.
The true origins of Dr
Woodward's shield remained the subject of much debate
throughout the eighteenth century. In fact it is now believed to
have been made in France in the mid-sixteenth
century.