Oh please. The reason you keep accusing me of smuggery is because you're an insecure twat unwilling to admit that study of ancient warfare is built on a lot of hocus pocus and very little real observation. Which is typical of the standard Western male who's spent a little too much time trying to memorize Discovery Channel shit instead of understanding how the actual historical method works.DSMatticus wrote:Zinegata, the transition away from Roman spear phalanxes to the weird sword-wielding quincunx happens both moderately early into the development of Rome, is incredibly enduring, and so well-documented you have to be one of those twats who goes around looking for obscure ways to be wrong simply because defending contrarian positions engorges your dick with unjustified smuggery. Which, to be fair, is exactly the type I've pegged you as from all of our other military history discussions, but goddamn.
There are only a few hundred military historians around the world, only a few dozen specializing on Rome specifically, and those Roman "historians" all tend to read from the same five sources and never bothered to go out into the field and test the damn weapons.
For instance, the pilum? Apparently it wasn't just an anti-shield weapon - it was powerful enough that it went right through the shield and murdered the guy right behind it. That's what they found when they actually found real evidence of pilums and tested them:
https://ospreypublishing.com/the-pilum
"A heavy javelin, normally used as a shock weapon immediately before contact, the pilum was designed with a particular speciality: it could penetrate a shield and carry on into the individual behind it. Relying on mass rather than velocity, at short range a volley of pila had much the same effect on a charging enemy as musketry would in later periods."
So far from your insipid assertion that spears were useless and thrown only in the beginning of the battle, the latest actual scientific testing and research is saying that these weapons were so fucking effective that they were basically as good as early Muskets in terms of effect. A full-strength legion with 12,000 pilum could basically wipe an entire army if they all hit.
But sure let's instead keep living in a world where we still pretend that the Earth is fucking flat because claiming otherwise makes you feel smaller and you have to accuse people smarter than you of smuggery.
Meanwhile your assertion that they move towards the sword "relatively early" is complete bonkers. The ancestor of the gladius is the Spanish sword - one they literally encounter in a big way only during the Punic Wars. And in this case we even have a very specific year on when the sword became standard kit - 107 BC - because that's when they were made mandatory (and state-provided) equipment as part of the Marian reforms. The Roman Republic, for reference, is generally considered to have been founded in 509 BC or 400 fucking years before the Marian reforms.
And guess who was born seven years after those reforms? Julius Caesar - where about half of the primary sources on Rome are focused on.
Yeah, about five sources worth - because that's all that actually survived since antiquity. Hilariously one of the most-quoted sources was Vegetius - who lived around four hundred years after Caesar and yet we take his word about the gladius and thrusting swords even though the Legions were literally abandoning the gladius at this point for the longer and more versatile Spatha during his day.We have a pretty solid collection of translated primary sources extolling the uses and virtues of the gladius.
Oh shut up with your pretense of knowing shit about Rome. If your argument were in any way consistent you'd realize the Hastati were abolished during the Marian reforms - so by definition the period before that was all-spear.The Romans had an actual fucking word for a thrusting spear separate from the word they used for their pilum (hasta), they had an actual fucking name for soldiers designated to use those thrusting spears as their primary weapon (hastati)
And the piece of kit they carried over from the Republican era to the Imperial one? The pilum. Again because that was much more likely to be the primary weapon rather than this stabby stabby silliness.
Lol, bullshit. Pilum is not a long spear for anti-cavalry work. The times when the Romans were documented as using pilums in melee was not even against specifically cavalry. Try again.Romans knew a row of pilum were an extraordinary counter to cavalry charges, and when dealing with that they'd keep their pilums in hand.
Let me fill in the blanks for you. The source is Gallic War Chronicles and you're referring to the Siege of Alesia. Again, Julius Caesar era; and a piece that was specifically meant to make him look good (meaning it was propaganda).There's at least one siege I can't remember off the top of my head where someone made the deliberate call for their soldiers to keep and use their pilum instead of their gladius, which is noteworthy in that a Roman historian thought it was worth noting as though it were unusual.
Way to go with proving my point you're myopically focused on the lifetime of one fucking Roman though.
Less stupid theorycrafting, more actual practice:That is... very dumb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8RWLxlzTiM
Two experts - one with a spear and the other with a sword. Spear pretty much consistently wins. And if you observe carefully, it's because the spear-wielder can generally stay on the offensive.
Indeed, the only way that they've found a sword-wielder to have a chance against the spear is to have a free hand for grabbing or deflecting the spear (at great risk to the hand in real combat of course), rather than trying any stupid attempt to "parry" with a sword. That's just for fat armchair generals who rely on overly narrow sources.
They "won their war" because they learned tactics like "flanking", not because of specific weaponry - and that was achieved through the use of more flexible formations.This is the perfect know-nothing moment to wrap up this conversation with. The Romans (~2m pilum, ~60cm sword) won their war with the Macedonians (~6m pike).
Moreover the Macedonian Wars occurred before the Marian reforms, so your assertion they won with 60cm swords in this era when they were still equipped with Hasta primarily and their most elite troops (The Triarii) were basically a pike block identical to the Macedons is just a demonstration of how you're projecting Julius Caesar era weaponry to earlier periods where they weren't standard kit.
Indeed, it's worth noting that when Polybius talk about Roman sword-use in this period, he specifically talks about how it horrified the Macedons because of all the hacked off heads and limbs - which is completely contrary to the "gladius is a thrusting sword!" narrative of later eras. And in any case such hacking (especially of heads) is unlikely unless the sword-wielder had additional momentum and height advantage to his side... because you know maybe the Romans had actual cavalry during this period and they were equipped with swords (particularly for pursuit of routed units)?
So really, jerk off somewhere else when you can't even get your simplest dates right and yet you think you can pick an Internet fight with somebody who actually understands how long, broad, and ill-understood Roman history actually is. Republican and Imperial periods are not interchangeable - and both lasted a fucking long time (around 500 years apiece) to the point that a "historian" from the late Republican period may as well be talking of myth and legend when he talks about events from the early Republic; much less the twats like you from 2017 who are quoting what could be fanfiction from those who lived in the early or late empire.