An interesting tidbit about Spartan shield. The inverted V on the shied is actually the letter L, which stood for  Lacedaemonia, or the Lacedaemons, which is what the Spartans called themselves. These were all the peoples that lived in the Evrotas River Valley. Interestingly the inverted V wasn't used until later, so though as bad ass as it was, 300 gets their shields wrong. At Thermopylae we are pretty sure that htey had individualized shields.