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The testudo was a common formation in the Middle Ages, being used by Muhammad's forces during the Siege of Ta'if in 630, [4] also by the Carolingian Frankish soldiers of Louis the Pious to advance on the walls of Barcelona during the siege of 800–801, by Vikings during the siege of Paris in 885–886, by East Frankish soldiers under king ...
Testudo, the Mediterranean tortoises, are a genus of tortoises found in North Africa, Western Asia, and Europe. Several species are under threat in the wild, mainly from habitat destruction . Background
Testudo formation, a Roman military tactic which involved a formation of soldiers using their shields to form a tortoise-shell-like protective cover against enemy weapons; Testudo, the Latin variant of the Greek chelys harp, involving a sound-box made from a tortoise shell; Testudo, an obsolete constellation now in the constellation of Pisces
Cylix of Apollo with the chelys lyre, on a 5th-century BC drinking cup (). The chelys or chelus (Greek: χέλυς, Latin: testudo, both meaning "turtle" or "tortoise"), was a stringed musical instrument, the common lyre of the ancient Greeks, which had a convex back of tortoiseshell or of wood shaped like the shell.
Descriptions of both shield walls used in attack and as an anti-cavalry formation with spears fixed into the ground exist throughout Roman history, though non-military writers tended to use classical vocabulary in describing such formations as a testudo, its Greek translation chelone (χελώνη), or a phalanx. [15]
The Greek tortoise (Testudo graeca), also known commonly as the spur-thighed tortoise [1] or Moorish tortoise, [3] is a species of tortoise in the family Testudinidae. Testudo graeca is one of five species of Mediterranean tortoises ( genera Testudo and Agrionemys ).
Quoy and Gaimard's Latin description explains the use of nigra: "Testudo toto corpore nigro" means "tortoise with completely black body". Quoy and Gairmard described nigra from a living specimen, but no evidence indicates they knew of its accurate provenance within the Galápagos – the locality was in fact given as California.
The spur-thighed or "Greek" tortoises are usually collectively referred to as Testudo graeca, but this covers a wide variety of subspecies that have very different ecological and morphological characteristics and appear to comprise at least three phylogenetic lineages. [2] As its name implies, it is found in Tunisia and nearby Algeria.
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