Chucking the pilum!

[Chilliarch]

Rather a good video here from Tod of Tod's Workshop. Give an Under 20s England javelin thrower a pair of pila and see how far he can throw them!

[Mark G]

Fun, but as he says, it's part 2 that counts.
Distance is nothing without penetration.

[Imperial Dave]

short range - flat throw
long range - arc'd throw

[lionheartrjc]

Excellent stuff, but it poses more questions than it answers.

As pointed out on Facebook, how does carrying a shield and wearing armour affect the throw?  Is a running throw realistic (or even necessary) in battlefield conditions? In ideal conditions a 40+ metre throw is clearly possible. On the battlefield did they need to throw them more than 20? 

If you were faced with some skirmishers, my guess is you don't throw the pilum, you take a few guys with slings (we know legionaries were trained how to use the sling) and have them shooting back from behind the legionaries.

The other bit I was interested in was the bending of the iron shaft being a side effect of the function to pierce shield and armour. Clearly a pilum with a bent shaft can be thrown back (albeit not if it is stuck in a shield).

Richard 

[Imperial Dave]

I think we covered this elsewhere but will have a shufties

[RichT]

Bendiness of pila - long discussion here:

http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=4298.0

[Imperial Dave]

That's the one

[PMBardunias]

Excellent stuff, but it poses more questions than it answers.

As pointed out on Facebook, how does carrying a shield and wearing armour affect the throw? 

Richard 

In throwing spears with an aspis I have found that it actually helps to have the counterweight to pull against during a stationary or stepping throw. It does make the whole running, chewing gum, and throwing at the same time coordination more difficult for running throws, but I suppose one would adapt with practice.

[Mark G]

One thing I noticed on the bendy throws at the end, which the team didn't.

Neither hit the ground with the tip.

I.e. the point of bending (if true) was not that it was unthrowable, but that it was impossible to use to penetrate whatever it did hit.

[aligern]

The key piece of evidence on running and throwing is Pharsalus. Pompey's men halt prematurely, hoping that Caesar's legionaries will launch their pila into empty ground and then the  Pompeians can advance and launch pila without there being any Caesarian response. The tactic fails because, when Pompey's soldiers stop Causar's men also pause and do not throw.
This tells us a number of things.
1) The pilum is thrown whilst moving forward.
2) The drill is so universal that an opposing Roman force can build a tactic around its predictability, because the Caesarians are noted as taking extraordinary action in response to the Pompeians' sudden halt.

I rather imagine that the legionaries used a chant or count to control the timing of mass release . There would be an initial shout from the centurions and then a series of words to end in a timed release, something like the landsknechts Hut, Dich, Baur, I, Komm! as they advanced.
The timing of the throw has to be right because the objective is to throw, for many at an unseen target and hit the shields of the front rank.  There is then a space to space to draw the gladius and a set to. I don't, of course think that the Roman line crashed into the opponent, but continued a steady advance to contact.
Tgat the Pompeians hoped that their opponents would be disordered by their tactic does imply that  , although the distance moved in the run up was short, it was long enough to disadvantage soldiers who had to do double the length.
Roy

[Erpingham]

I suspect that, like many of Tod's videos, this will provide us with some interesting parameters for discussion of the weapon in hand but it will be risky to read too much about battlefield use into them.  So, we know that a competent spear thrower can get 30m or so range standing and over forty with a short run up (what the Tod refers to as an amble).  It doesn't tell us which of these methods was used.  Perhaps they practised both to give themselves options - a missile exchange, a stand on the defensive, a rapid "chuck and charge"? 

[Mark G]

Until part 2 where he does penetration, all conclusions are pointless, as the range debate is entirely about what penetration pila offered and at what range it worked at.

[Imperial Dave]

I'd want to chuck mine just prior to contact

[Erpingham]

I'd want to chuck mine just prior to contact

I doubt if the centurion would give you a choice in the matter 

You do, of course, need to give yourself a chance to draw your sword and adjust your stance behind your shield, which may also affect your minimum engagement range.

[Imperial Dave]

about 2 seconds