The mechanism of Roman line relief

[aligern]

Can I just pop into this debate to say 'Certosa Situla'. That looks to me very like a mixed formation being portrayed. Would not some of the contradictions fall away if  the Romans had started with an Italian system of mixed spears and javelins in different units.
I might also suggest that Romans and Etruscans were never hoplites, that is a construction that we force upon them because the kit looks like hoplites kit and is adopted from Greek models. However, kit does not always determine tactics so it might not be correct or useful to call Italians hoplites with all the baggage that brings along in our concept of how warriors perform.

Alternately, Duncan is making a lot of sense by warning that Greek hoplites originally had a pair of spears, one or throwing and one or retaining in hand and that this might be he model that is transmitted to Italy via the Greek colonies and it most certainly accords with the timescale of the founding of those colonies.
Good heavens, if the Romans adopt two throwing spears fom the Greeks then what does that do for the conceptual tyranny of a Western Mediterranean way of war?.
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

But overall, I despair of the early Romans. Every statement in one ancient source is contradicted in another. For example, Patrick shows Dionysios describing pila being used as early as the 6th century; yet the Ineditum Vaticanum specifically says that the pilum was adopted during the Samnite wars. It's hard to see how they can both be right. And similar contradictions are everywhere.

I increasingly find myself believing nothing about early Roman history at all.

I know what you mean, Duncan - there seems to be a rule that if you have exactly two sources on a subject they will contradict each other.  Adding more sources gives a prepondrance of opinion which may or may not be a reportage of original fact.  Still, with the Ineditum Vaticanum vs Dionysius we can make a value judgement on the following basis:

Dionysius is working from other historians, or at least sources used by other historians.  He is somewhat eclectic and not especially discriminatory, but seems to be reasonably thorough in his gleanings.  The Ineditum quotes a single instance of ambassador-to-ambassador palaver in which effect was probably intended to be more important than history.  Battle descriptions of 5th century BC Roman engagements in Livy and Dionysius do fit a manipular system but do not fit a hoplite system.  Ergo, I assume the Ineditum excerpt involves simplification or mis-remembering on the part of the Roman ambassador, as the weight of course-of-battle narratives seems to be against it.

Roy - a mixed formation along Certosa Situla lines is tempting, but unlikely for Romans in the 5th century BC on the basis that one line being propped up with individual maniples from another line (as opposed to outright line relief) works best if both are similarly armed and equipped.  Matching the Situla to something resembling the original army of Servius Tullius, however, is very tempting.

I have some sympathy for the idea that Etruscans and Romans were never hoplites, but the battle between Tarquin and the new Republic in 509 BC looks suspiciously like a hoplite battle in its course and outcome.  While one might achieve a similar effect by different means, I prefer the simpler explanation - or at least deduction.

If some cultures in Italy adopted the Greek system as it was in the 8th-7th century BC, one might well expect them to follow the trend of losing the second spear at some point.  Servius Tullius however seems to have dispensed with it - or the Romans had done without it - before the Greeks themselves (Spartans excepted), while Etruscans under Lars Porsenna were still at least partly endowed with missiles while Horatius Cocles was defending his bridge.  (None of this is particularly supportive of a 'WMWW' hypothesis, and battle descriptions of the period seem even less so.    Rather, it suggests some common cross-cultural patterns but with an emphasis on different local techniques.)

[aligern]

I am no expert on this period so what I say here is interested comment rather than anything weighty.
It strikes me that labelling the Etruscans as a unity is  a little dangerous because of precisely the point that you make Patrick, they are separate cities and thus might have different traditions of warfare and different weaponry . However, it is hard not to  say Etruscan hoplite or Etruscan chariots.
I doubt that the Italian Greeks would just follow mainland Greece because their enemies are different. The big threat in Italy is Italians and generally Italians chuck stuff.

As to the Certosa Situla  it really fits in for me because it shows different classes of warrior and that is very Roman.  Why have the Romans evolve from a spear phalanx to a mixed weapon system when the mixed weapon system has such a long Italian pedigree in the area of  Rome's original rulers, Etruscans?  Much simpler to have always had different classes and weapon sets.
Roy

[Erpingham]

Just a point of clarification.  Patrick, you keep using the WMWW shorthand.  Now, I know far more about this theory than I want to, but not everyone will.  So, if we are to continue refering to it, we must have a (very) brief description.   As Western Mediterrenean Way of War is a theory of Paul Macdonald-Staff, who is not a member, he isn't here to make that definition but in brief it is the theory that all heavy infantry troops in the Western Mediterranean in the years 500-0BC (or thereabouts) fought with a long shield, two heavy throwing (or dual pupose throwing/thrusting ) spears and a sword as secondary weapon unless we are told differently (e.g. triarii with their long spears).  Paul would see the fact that throwing weapons are the primary armament leading to the idea that missile exchanges were an important part of combat.  There is much more to it than this but that is enough I think for those not scarred by the WMWW debate to get the gist.

On the situla question, is it due to Connolly that we see it as representing classes of troops with different armaments?  Can it not represent a "barbarian" army, with men equipped according to personal preference?

[Duncan Head]

On the situla question, is it due to Connolly that we see it as representing classes of troops with different armaments?  Can it not represent a "barbarian" army, with men equipped according to personal preference?

I think the fact that they are in groups each armed in a particular style, rather than a mix of single figures, argues against "personal preference".

Though I'm not sure that any of the other Venetian situla art shows anything similar, so could it be some sort of bizarre artistic one-off?

[Duncan Head]

Roy - a mixed formation along Certosa Situla lines is tempting, but unlikely for Romans in the 5th century BC on the basis that one line being propped up with individual maniples from another line (as opposed to outright line relief) works best if both are similarly armed and equipped.  Matching the Situla to something resembling the original army of Servius Tullius, however, is very tempting.

If you believe in the "original army of Servius Tullius", of course. Though you have to lose the property-qualifications in anachronistic currency, and many scholars don't believe in the "classes I-V" but only in a single classis-infra classem distinction. I'm not sure if there is anything else completely out of the question.

If some cultures in Italy adopted the Greek system as it was in the 8th-7th century BC, one might well expect them to follow the trend of losing the second spear at some point.  Servius Tullius however seems to have dispensed with it - or the Romans had done without it - before the Greeks themselves (Spartans excepted), while Etruscans under Lars Porsenna were still at least partly endowed with missiles while Horatius Cocles was defending his bridge.

Italian "hoplite" with two spears at http://www.antika.it/007812_popoli-italici-veneti.html.

If you recall Alexander Zhmodikov's interpretation of Livy, the "Servian" first class hoplites still do have throwing spears (as would the other heavy infantry, as Livy only lists changes in their defensive gear from class to class):

Livy himself tells us that the Romans used the phalanx-like formation and were armed with bronze shields (clipei),  but in his account of the Servian constitution he provides the Roman 'hoplite' with missiles in addition to a spear and a sword ('arma his imperata galea clipeum ocreae lorica, omnia ex aere; haec ut tegimenta corporis essent; tela in hostem hastaque et gladius' ('he ordered them to have helmets, shields, greaves, and cuirasses, all of bronze; [and] missiles against the enemy, and also a spear, and a sword') ), so certainly it was not a phalanx of the classical Greek type.

It involves reading tela as "missiles" - probably the commonest meaning of the word - rather than generically as "weapons".

If the Roman infantry were never armed solely with thrusting-spears, does this make their evolution easier to explain? We could certainly visualise some carrying early versions of the pilum alongside a thrusting-spear before the army standardised on a pair of pila in the 4th or 3rd century.

[aligern]

I think I am right in saying that early pila are not like the weighted long shanked things that are found on Roman imperial sites but might be just a spearhead that as an extra six inces to a foot of extra steel haft that adds weight to the point and helps it pass through a shield? That would make it much more of a heavy javelin and would make the weapon set much more like that found in some Anglo Saxon graves where there is a spear that looks right for throwing and one that looks better adapted for thrusting.
Roy

[Erpingham]

I think the fact that they are in groups each armed in a particular style, rather than a mix of single figures, argues against "personal preference".

Good point - I should have looked more closely.  However, I'm not entirely sure this is evidence of a class-based army.  One could suggest it represents an alliance of men in different conventional equipment of their tribe/grouping.  Perhaps the men with the Scutum and hoplite shield are different from the guys with the long oval shields (thureoi)?  The idea that you have a couple of different groups of etruscans and their northern allies might be a suggestion?

[aligern]

I think a couple of other situlae are possibly relevant. One is the Arnoaldi situla, it shows infantry with logg squared shields an cavalry with a round shield with no boss ans a rim. That shows,  I suggest, two types of shield in the same army?
There is also the Benvenuti situla that shows infantry with round shields, rimmed but no boss, with two spears.
I wouldn't like to say what all the above means, but it sort of fits in a context  in which groups have different kit that perhaps indicates varied function within an army.

Of course, a great way to develop tactics that involved using different weapon styles might ell be to have allies that work together and then are perhaps incorporated into the same orce as say the Etruscans come to dominate Venetic tribes?

Roy

[Erpingham]

I think a couple of other situlae are possibly relevant. One is the Arnoaldi situla, it shows infantry with logg squared shields an cavalry with a round shield with no boss ans a rim. That shows,  I suggest, two types of shield in the same army?

The Arnoaldi also has a foot figure in crested helmet, aspis-style shield and two spears - a hoplite or dismounted cavalryman?  He's two in front of the cavalryman.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:PSM_V55_D039_Arnoaldi_situla_from_bologna.png

Much as discussing the Etruscans is fascinating, are we in danger of getting off topic?

[Patrick Waterson]

If you believe in the "original army of Servius Tullius", of course. Though you have to lose the property-qualifications in anachronistic currency, and many scholars don't believe in the "classes I-V" but only in a single classis-infra classem distinction. I'm not sure if there is anything else completely out of the question.

...

If you recall Alexander Zhmodikov's interpretation of Livy, the "Servian" first class hoplites still do have throwing spears (as would the other heavy infantry, as Livy only lists changes in their defensive gear from class to class):

Livy himself tells us that the Romans used the phalanx-like formation and were armed with bronze shields (clipei),  but in his account of the Servian constitution he provides the Roman 'hoplite' with missiles in addition to a spear and a sword ('arma his imperata galea clipeum ocreae lorica, omnia ex aere; haec ut tegimenta corporis essent; tela in hostem hastaque et gladius' ('he ordered them to have helmets, shields, greaves, and cuirasses, all of bronze; [and] missiles against the enemy, and also a spear, and a sword') ), so certainly it was not a phalanx of the classical Greek type.

It involves reading tela as "missiles" - probably the commonest meaning of the word - rather than generically as "weapons".

If the Roman infantry were never armed solely with thrusting-spears, does this make their evolution easier to explain? We could certainly visualise some carrying early versions of the pilum alongside a thrusting-spear before the army standardised on a pair of pila in the 4th or 3rd century.

Rodger and I deliberately ducked the question of how Etruscans were armed and organised simply because there is so little to go on and what there is is rather open to interpretation.  However the question of the Servian army is another matter: both Livy and Dionysius quote it, but they have interesting detail differences which suggest each used sources of different origin.  I am familiar with the argument that the 'Servian centuriate' could not have existed in that period for various assumed social reasons, but believe that to be a misconception based au fond on misinterpeting the Fabii 'private war' against Veii as 'evidence' of a chaotic and unstructured society selon Christopher Smith et. al..

Property qualifications per se would not be a problem: I am not convinced the currency is anachronistic, though it may well be stated in later equivalents (e.g. I seriously doubt the 6th century Romans were using actual drachmae).  Currency existed in civilised societies long before coinage, so even if the early Romans had to use lumps of bronze of a given weight to express a value they could still express the value.

Zhmodikov's interpretation of tela in hostem may have merit, but Dionysius has no such weaponry so I took Livy to mean 'as weapons [tela] for use against the enemy', which leaves 'hastaque et gladius' in possession of an apparent redundancy (...que et, 'and ... and').  Were it not for Dionysius I would happily take 'tela' to mean 'missiles'.  However the only battle we have recorded for this force (509 BC) goes like a hoplite battle, missiles or no and Zhmodikov or no.

Two-weapon possibilities are hinted at when Livy refers to hastati and principes discharging hastae and pila at attacking Gauls, so we may be justified in assuming a pilum+hasta armament for hastati and principes for at least part of the period.  Good thought, Duncan. 

And now - where were we with respect to line relief?

Patrick

[aligern]

Excuse my ignorance here, but why is the 509 BC battle so very definitely a hoplites battle?


Roy

[Mark G]

Patrick, did either you or Rodge reference Cornell (The beginnings of ROme), as I understand that he makes a case against the 5 classes as per Livy - mostly on the grounds that they require the majority of fighting men to come from the smallest propertied class in Rome, which is difficult to believe.

If your case is that the 5 classses demonstrate a continum of Roman fighting in sucessive lines from the get-go, you will have to speak to that a little I think.

Secondly, you argument rests on Livy and Dionysius - or at least, that portion of it which you relate here does.

Both of these guys were writing in the empire.

that is a long time past the events, neither of them had access to anything new to base their conclusions from that I am aware of, and Polybius never touched on the detail which they offer.

The broad thrust of the criticism of Livy is that he is writing to support a view of the empire as it currently is.

Polybius only seemed to feel on safe ground defining the three line republican legion dating from around the Samnite wars.

Livy, writing over a hundred years later, delves further back to narate a servian legion which has the elites providing the bulk of the fighting men, and then also relates a Camillan legion which happens to have 5 lines - supporting the notion of their being 5 classes and a continum from one to the other.

Further, Livy has the two weakest classes sitting out the back as Rorarii and Accessni - that is, the plebs in the back watching the Patricians doing all the work, which fits with his definition of the trairii as camp guards and camp site diggers.

As I say, I doubt Livy on both of these points - the numbers of available propertied men to make the servian 5 classes work seems dubious to me.

And the Accensii and Rorarii seem like an equally dubious codification written in support of the 5 classes - a sort of Pilkdown Man linking something unknowable to the demonstrability of the three line manipular legion we have from Polybius.

Additionally, the unambiguously hoplite equipped is in fact quite ambiguous - not every long spear and large shield is a hoplite - there is a specific tactical doctrine and societal orgnaisation which is also required, and which there is little evidence for that which I am aware of (not that I am bothered weither way on that point).

And as I say, the use of the word triarii to define camp guards has no meaningful conneciton to the Triarii of the Republican legion, which were clearly long spear and large shield armed fighting men, not camp guards, diggers and hangers on.

the only link is a derivation from the word for third - camp guards as third rank is completley different from third line of fighting men (with camp guards back in camp).  One lot are little more than coolies, the other lot are actual fighting men in a three line system.

As Duncan notes, the existance of the 5 classes is doubted by many scholars, and I think it also casts a deal of doubt onto the Camillan 5 lines too.

So I am much more compfortable working with a single fighting line, preceeded by a large skirmish line (and with camp guards well behind) until the Samnite wars.

On your point of there being a case for Romans using Pila and Scutrum and swords from 500 b.c, if that were true, why did the original principes come equipped with long spear and not Pila, and why did the original Hastatii come with little armour?

Its an interesting thesis, but for me not at all a slam dunk, I am afraid.

[Patrick Waterson]

Roy, the battle in 509 BC saw each side's right defeat the other side's left while the action as a whole was indecisive.  I have not seen this in a non-hoplite infantry battle, which makes this particular fight look very hoplite-ish.

Mark, I put more trust in the basic consistency of Livy and Dionysius than in the inconsistencies of modern scholarship.  Tim Cornell, with all due respect (he is usually quite sensible), seems to me to be seriously underestimating the manpower available to a 7th-6th century Italian city-state, especially at the top.  Like most scholars , he seems to miss the basic point that Servius Tullius deliberately shifted the burden of military service squarely onto those who could afford it and away from those who could not.

Servius Tullius' five classes are not five lines; they are five property classes.  The actual battle lineup is not given, except that the most heavily armoured stood at the front and the least heavily armoured (fourth class) at the back.  The fifth class are hard to see as anything except skirmishers.  Whether this army drew up in one line or more than one (exclusive of skirmishers) is not stated, but the battle in 509 BC runs as if one line only were used (no reference to reserves, reinforcing trouble spots, etc. contrary to 5th century practice).

Polybius began his history with the First Punic War, so did not write about the rise of early Rome.  He begins with 264 BC, by which time the 'Polybian' legion seems already to have been established.

We can doubt Livy as much as we like, but the fact remains that he and Dionysius between them present a coherent and credible development of the Roman legion which it would be unwise to ignore.  Rather than dismissing them I would suggest trying to understand them.

Tell you a secret: when Rodger first mooted the idea that the Romans used a form of manipular legion long before 340 BC, I was not keen at all.  The best way to prove him wrong, thought I, was to go back and look at the original sources and let them speak for themselves.  That is when I got something of a surprise.  It was a bit disconcerting to find evidence of manipularity reaching back not just into the 5th century but as far back as 503 BC.  It was also somewhat humbling and an excellent illustration of the folly of taking for granted that a conventionally accepted scheme must be correct.

The skirmish lines in both the Tullian ('Servian') army and the 340 BC legion in Livy VIII.8 are noteworthy for their smallness.  From the Livian to the Polybian legion we see a fourfold expansion of the skirmisher arm (300 leves to 1200 velites).  No model involving a large skirmish line ahead of a single battle line for an early Roman army is sustainable from our sources (which is presumably why authorities advocating such a system are so keen to dispense with the original sources).

Mark, have you a reference for 'original principes' being 'equipped with long spear and not Pila', or 'original Hastatii' having 'little armour'?  I think I know whence you derive these, but would rather check to be sure we are both working from the same script.

Anthony - I am not detailing 'WMWW' here as we shall have ample explanation - and refutation - coming up in forthcoming Slingshots.  Mark G and Roy, take a bow. 

Patrick

[Erpingham]

Anthony - I am not detailing 'WMWW' here as we shall have ample explanation - and refutation - coming up in forthcoming Slingshots.  Mark G and Roy, take a bow. 

Patrick

We all look forward to it but for now a brief explanation of the four dread letters was necessary for the uninitiated.  While I'm not looking forward to revisiting all of the arguments, there was certainly plenty to interest fans of warfare in the time of the Roman Republic, as I'm sure Roy and Mark will bring out.