a small light shield, sometimes attributed to the Amazons, but used by numerous nations of antiquity, such as the inhabitants of Thrace, Spain, and Mauritania, before its general introduction among the Greeks. It consisted mainly of a frame of wood or wickerwork covered with skin or leather, without the metallic rim, and of a great variety of shapes. It was sometimes round, as in the special case of the cetrà, sometimes elliptical, sometimes variously sinuated round the rim, sometimes even quadrangular, but most commonly crescent-shaped or lunated, as alluded to in the "Aenamoidum lunatis agmina petitis" of Virgil. (Eneid, i. 490.) Soldiers bearing the pelta were called pelteata.