Roman Pilum Throwing - Javelin & Shield Roman Army Style

[Andreas Johansson]

BTW, the Klejnowski paper I mentioned above may have another bendy javelin reference

Lucan Pharsalia 7. 140

This revolves around how one translates "tunc omnis lancea saxo erigitur".  Klejnowski sees this as a reference to straightening with stones whereas the Loeb thinks it refers to sharpening on a stone.  Over to the latin speakers .....

Literally, "then every lancea was erected with (a) stone". I guess an erect spear is a straight one but not necessarily a sharp one.

[RichT]

If the pilum remains straight, the weight of the haft would tend to make the point rotate upwards, from which position it should relatively easily drop out. If the pilum bends, the point would tend to remain roughly horizontal, and gravity pulls laterally rather than outwards.

Yes I see that would be so - though in the case of sticking into a person or horse, the effect of the point rotating upwards would surely be a greater inconvenience than whether or not it drops out. I still don't see what forces could cause such bending on armour or body penetration (though, I'm happy to say, I haven't thought about it very deeply).

tunc omnis lancea saxo erigitur

LSJ offers all sorts of 'raising, erecting' meanings for erigitur. From the context (battle preparation):

They trust no sword until its deadly point
Glows on the sharpening stone; no lance will serve
Till straightened for the fray; each bow is strung
Anew, and arrows chosen for their work
Fill all the quivers;

straightening and sharpening would both work. But note this is the lancea (longche) not the pilum (hussos, xuston, kontos?). Plus, it's poetry...

[Erpingham]

But note this is the lancea (longche) not the pilum (hussos, xuston, kontos?). Plus, it's poetry...

Indeed and. in fairness, the author was applying it to the hasta velitaris, which was apparently a grosphos, which we know bent.  But, for completeness, thought it was worth a mention.

[Andreas Johansson]

From a poetical perspective, one might think it'd be more appropriate if four different weapons were readied for battle in four different ways than if spears and swords were both sharpened. But maybe our poet was a dullard who couldn't think of anything else.

[aligern]

Re the sources mentioning the 'unusual rather than the mundane' I don't agree. There are mentions of tactics and weaponry in Roman sources that are very likely there because they are reassuringly ' usual' Marius with his men pushing the Teutones down the slope. They do not need  to be the told this, it is a matter of the barbarians coming on in the same old way . Thus Caesar mentions the shields of the Helvetii being pinned together by pila, whereas he does not do the sane for the action against  Ariovistus Why? well because in the first instance it is a matter of telling his militarily educated audience something comfortingly familiar, whereas to repeat this for  other battles would be poor style and declaimed classical histories are very concerned about style. 
So, often the mundane statement is there to how traditional, correct and bathed in virtus the writer is.

A while ago someone listed in Slingshot the casualties on either side in ancient battles . It was striking that the claimed kills in Roman  versus Roman  battles were generally light on the winning side . Now both sides will have been throwing pila , so if the pilum was a devastating weapon that punched through the shield and into the man then wouldn't the winner suffer equally in the interchange because it occurs before hand to hand and pursuit? These pila are about as effective as Richard's favourite  small furry animals. Of course, if the opponent is Roman and you destroy his shield then he is going to be replaced, (harder for a Gaul) , but if the pilum is really a killer and a legion is throwing 8000 of them one expects to see a lot more dead than one does.
Roy

[aligern]

Ih, and if the point of the sword glows on the grinding  wheel tgen it will lose its temper and curl over when it meets steel. Or maybe Romans did not temper swords??
Roy

[RichT]

Roy - I expect we are just talking past each other.

so if the pilum was a devastating weapon that punched through the shield and into the man then wouldn't the winner suffer equally in the interchange

I don't think anyone is proposing that the pilum is more or less devastating than other weapons, except to a small degree. All that I have been questioning is the oft-repeated claim that the pilum was deliberately made with a soft iron shank SO THAT it would bend on impact (with enemy shield or body) SO THAT it would hang down and cause an encumbrance and ALSO SO THAT it couldn't be thrown back.

I think it is more likely that the pilum was designed the way it was in order to penetrate shields and armour and kill the man. This doesn't mean it did so every time - no weapon is perfect. If it just penetrated the shield but not the man, but encumbered the shield and perhaps made it useless, so much the better. If it hung down after penetrating the shield, either under its own weight, or because it had a breakable joint (after Marius), so much the even better.

Re the sources mentioning the 'unusual rather than the mundane' I don't agree.

Well I strongly disagree with your disagreement.   All the 'mechanics of combat' discussions we have here, and like-minded saddos have elsewhere, about flank attacks and cavalry charges and line relief and durations of combat and othismos and all the rest, we would not need to have if any ancient source ever spelled these things out clearly.

[Imperial Dave]

A while ago someone listed in Slingshot the casualties on either side in ancient battles . It was striking that the claimed kills in Roman  versus Roman  battles were generally light on the winning side . Now both sides will have been throwing pila , so if the pilum was a devastating weapon that punched through the shield and into the man then wouldn't the winner suffer equally in the interchange because it occurs before hand to hand and pursuit? These pila are about as effective as Richard's favourite  small furry animals. Of course, if the opponent is Roman and you destroy his shield then he is going to be replaced, (harder for a Gaul) , but if the pilum is really a killer and a legion is throwing 8000 of them one expects to see a lot more dead than one does.
Roy

so are you saying the Romans developed a weapon that was primarily used to disable an opponent and not kill him? That doesnt sound right if I'm honest. The primary role of a weapon (in this case a type of javelin) is to kill/maim an opponent so it would be designed to do so. Any claimed (sub) benefit of mangling an opponents shield is very much lower down the scale of importance. Low (reported) figures for Roman v Roman casualties could be attributed to a desire NOT to overstate Roman loses in a civil war (which is bad for morale anyway) 

[Andreas Johansson]

There is, of course, a school of thought that wounding an enemy is better than killing him, because an injured man is more of an encumbrance to his side than a dead one. This could be an argument for minimizing the amount of rotation inside the wound of a javelin head.

I doubt the Romans practiced this particular species of ruthlessness however; it's a bureaucrat's rationality rather than that of a soldier (who'd be more interested in the enemy being definitely unable to hit back right now), and I don't think bureaucrats had very much say about the design of legionary equipment.

Low casualty numbers are I think beside the point. Winners' (reported) losses in ancient battle are almost always very low*, no matter what the losers were armed with; the conclusion can hardly be that no ancient weapon was designed to be a "killer".

* One exception would be Thermopylae 480 BC, where Herodotus claims 20,000 Persian dead. But even this is low compared to the claimed size of the army; about 1%.

[Mark G]

I have to disagree Dave.

You are treating each piece as a full stop.  If you consider the entire Roman equipment as a package, it becomes clearly greater then the sum of its parts.

The large shield with unusual grip and the shorter sword with unusual position and draw and the unusual heavy spear and the distinctive narrates all make more sense as a full package designed to deliver a short range volley quickly followed up by the shout and the formation charge and the short sword to the belly as a single piece of combat.
Reduce shield effect, add noise shock to increase discomfort, and charge and then sword to belly with shield bash that helps expose that target of the penetrative pila didn't expose enough.

Throwing a longer range spear has less value because not only is it less likely to travel with enough penetration power, and is more easy to deflect, but there is also more time to recover before a follow up charge hits.

Throwing to kill is much harder anyway, as shields basically work. 

It's comparable to discussing Zulu spears without reference to the shield bash they were designed to work with... missing the whole by only looking at the part.

[Erpingham]

Roy's comments of course open us to a whole lot of discussions about what we really know about casualty causation or even in tactical use (was every available pilum thrown - the cunning strategem of getting ranks to kneel after throwing so they can throw from all four ranks suggests not in normal circumstances).  At one of the Cremona battles in 69AD, two legions didn't even throw pila at each other - they just closed with swords.

I will mention again that some well-known authors think pila were used for skirmishing and softening up.  I don't know whether I believe this was the standard tactic (back to whether the ordinary or extraordinary gets mentioned in Roman history) but here Roy's comments about professional regular Romans would come into its own - Cassius gets pilum through shield, centurion hits him with vine stick, tells him to (expeletive deleted) fall out and get it (even more colourful expletive deleted) sorted and tells Brutus to take his place.  This swap over is not going to happen if a barrage of pila is followed by a rampaging mass of swordsmen.  The barbarians aren't organised in a way that would expedite this (a front rank warrior doesn't yield his place over the trivial matter of losing a shield, even if it kills him).

Another possibility is Romans, knowing how to use pila to kill people, also had a better idea of how to avoid being killed by them.  All that armour may have helped, as may dynamic use of that big shield.   

[Imperial Dave]

Roy's comments of course open us to a whole lot of discussions about what we really know about casualty causation or even in tactical use (was every available pilum thrown - the cunning strategem of getting ranks to kneel after throwing so they can throw from all four ranks suggests not in normal circumstances).  At one of the Cremona battles in 69AD, two legions didn't even throw pila at each other - they just closed with swords.

I will mention again that some well-known authors think pila were used for skirmishing and softening up.  I don't know whether I believe this was the standard tactic (back to whether the ordinary or extraordinary gets mentioned in Roman history) but here Roy's comments about professional regular Romans would come into its own - Cassius gets pilum through shield, centurion hits him with vine stick, tells him to (expeletive deleted) fall out and get it (even more colourful expletive deleted) sorted and tells Brutus to take his place.  This swap over is not going to happen if a barrage of pila is followed by a rampaging mass of swordsmen.  The barbarians aren't organised in a way that would expedite this (a front rank warrior doesn't yield his place over the trivial matter of losing a shield, even if it kills him).

Another possibility is Romans, knowing how to use pila to kill people, also had a better idea of how to avoid being killed by them.  All that armour may have helped, as may dynamic use of that big shield.   

I concur and also recognise the good points made by Mark. as well previously.

[RichT]

Also if the pilum was (exclusively?) used for a last minute throw before charging in with the sword, then the whole 'throwing it back' thing is even more moot (which makes it very moot indeed).

I can't offhand think of any weapon (edit: pre-20th C) that is designed to be non-lethal (maybe caltrops and things like that, though arguably they aren't weapons as such). Clearly encumbering the shield was a highly desirable effect but I still think it's an added bonus.

Nobody knows (because nobody ever saw fit to write it down) exactly how Romans used their pila, or whether they did it the same way every time, or what.

[Imperial Dave]

correct and astutely put Rich. We can only surmise and hypothesise and use the rule of probability ie is it more or less likely on balance to be true 

[Imperial Dave]

another useful few videos on the subject

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvOmttn0bU8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h8UyLF2oWE