Celtic Swordsmen

[Glaurung]

What has really surprised me playing celtic factions is the ability of heavy infantry like Bataroas to lauch a javelin before charge.
I thought it was a prerogative of heavy roman infantry like hastati, pricipes and late legionaries to throw the "pilum" before engaging enemies with the short sword "gladium".
I know that EB is a well historically sharp mod so I'm sure there are actual evidences of this, I ask if someone can help me finding them.
Thanks.

[Fluvius Camillus]

Well I think these are just javelins they carry to each fight.

[A Very Super Market]

Well, the Romans themselves were influenced by the Gauls at some point in their early history.

[Watchman]

Those days just about everybody and their dog regarded it as an excellent idea to toss a javelin or two at the enemy ranks before engaging. Why not, the things were cheap and easy to use. The practice persisted in Europe *at least* until the early Medieval times, and much longer in a limited form as well as elsewhere.

[satalexton]

*grins* :clown:

[Macilrille]

The Romans themselves got their Pilum from the Samnites. Romans were expert at adopting and adapting enemy tactics etc.

What the Pilae were though, was extraordinary lethal. The Romans also perfected volleys, which I am not certain others did, at least not barbarians, it takes a bit of discipline to use volleys.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

What has really surprised me playing celtic factions is the ability of heavy infantry like Bataroas to lauch a javelin before charge.
I thought it was a prerogative of heavy roman infantry like hastati, pricipes and late legionaries to throw the "pilum" before engaging enemies with the short sword "gladium".
I know that EB is a well historically sharp mod so I'm sure there are actual evidences of this, I ask if someone can help me finding them.
Thanks.

Just so you know, the correct term is "Gladius" plural "Gladii"

[Aemilius Paulus]

The Romans themselves got their Pilum from the Samnites. Romans were expert at adopting and adapting enemy tactics etc.
Actually the pilum was derived from the Etruscans, but the history is quite hazy. In the beginning, the pilum was not much different from a normal throwing spear, as it was Marius who was the one who made it unique and at the same time iconic.

[Watchman]

Though the "very heavy, short-ranged, and killy" bit was there from the beginning AFAIK. Apparently the early types sometimes had huge-ass barbs at the tip...

[Ibrahim]

bah! who needs javelins when you have long wobbly cane spears to poke at the enemy with:clown:

but yes, Aemilius did post pictures of early roman pila-they did evidently have big-assed barbs. If those pictures are true to form, the barbs were originally more dart or leaf shaped, and very large, and then start to grow smaller and more pyramidal, and the iron shaft, with was thick and relatively short, got longer and longer. I suspect that this was an adaptation to facilitate bending and redering the javelin useless.

now to link to the pictures..

EDIT: try around here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=113556&highlight=%26%237779%3B%26%23363%3Bdir).

[Watchman]

I doubt it. Removing javelins from shields was a pain at the best of times, nevermind now if they were barbed and iron-shafted (so you couldn't even chop them off very well; more mundane types apparently sometimes had leather cord wrapped around the shaft as a cheap and easy way to make such efforts difficult, too). My hunch is the operative point of the narrow tip and very long shank was simply for the thing to penetrate far enough through the shield to hopefully reach the man behind it - even if he was holding the shield some ways off his body. And, of course, the pointy thing sticking like a meter out to his side of the shield made the device that much more useless as a protective measure...

Dunno 'bout you, but I for one can't help but be rather impressed by this kind of sheer malign creativity people throughout the world have put into doing harm to their fellow man. :beam:

[satalexton]

what man? they're barbaroi!

[Cyclops]

I guess lots of folks used a javelin/shield/other h-t-h weapon combo, I've seen films of mock battles among just-contacted (1930's) new Guinean Highlanders who used a javelin/shield/club warkit. I guess they fought in the style of archaic Thracian Peltasts.

The Romans were very willing to accept suggestions from their enemies, or at least respond constructively. Keltic armour with anti-drapani mods, spanish swords, javelins, the classic legionary kit is a hodgepodge of different influences. No doubt they learned a heap from the Greeks (some of which was later dropped eg Camillan triarrii) and the Carthaginians (err..can't think of any atm but I bet there's something). They invented the corvus to beat the Punic ships ao there's a constructive response.

Did the Romans get their helmet design from the Gauls? I think it says so in the EB loading screens. The javelin might've been learned from the Etruscans? I'm not surprised.

I wonder if exposure to the Iberian soliferum influenced the Marian decision to go for a longer metal shaft on the pilum? It'd pack more mass than wood in a narrower vector (would that help with armour piercing?), and as pointed out it might bend once it penetrated, seriously encumbering the shield/thorax/skull/whatever.

Of course its possible the longer metal shaft was just introduced accidently or by a bureaucratic bungle. "Hmm, our contractor has delivered a pile of short shafts for the pilae, should we use 'em anyway?" "But Marius wants his pilae the standard length Jovedammit!" "Alright boss, howsabout we just stretch out the metal bit" "Thats just crazy enough to work!"

[satalexton]

no, it's more a matter of when the barbaroi finds a particular shape or design more choppy or more shooty or more dakka than the other, they make more of it. It's called evolushun.

[Glaurung]

Just so you know, the correct term is "Gladius" plural "Gladii"

thanks for the correction herr professor

[Nachtmeister]

no, it's more a matter of when the barbaroi finds a particular shape or design more choppy or more shooty or more dakka than the other, they make more of it. It's called evolushun.

:laugh4:
LMAO, nearly fell off my chair when I read that.

I remember being taught in Latin classes back at school that the iron shaft of marian pila was in fact made of rather soft iron, intended to bend upon impact. This had two effects:
1.) The javelin was useless after initial use, thereby preventing the enemy from throwing it back at the Romans
2.) The javelin was more difficult to remove from the shield if it was successfully "blocked", thus even rendering the shield at least much heavier, if not entirely useless.
The initial cause for this development could still have been bureaucracy... But I believe there are no sources on the precise events around it's "invention" of it so far.

[Glaurung]

:laugh4:
LMAO, nearly fell off my chair when I read that.

I remember being taught in Latin classes back at school that the iron shaft of marian pila was in fact made of rather soft iron, intended to bend upon impact. This had two effects:
1.) The javelin was useless after initial use, thereby preventing the enemy from throwing it back at the Romans
2.) The javelin was more difficult to remove from the shield if it was successfully "blocked", thus even rendering the shield at least much heavier, if not entirely useless.
The initial cause for this development could still have been bureaucracy... But I believe there are no sources on the precise events around it's "invention" of it so far.

Bureaucracy? In my opinion is much more experience on the battlefields, particulary in the first wars of the republican period against italic neighbours.

[Nachtmeister]

Bureaucracy? In my opinion is much more experience on the battlefields, particulary in the first wars of the republican period against italic neighbours.

To clarify:
This is not about "Roman use of javelins", but the specific, "epic" pila that no longer consist of a stick with a leaf-blade attached to it but instead of a lance with a catch on the front end ("handgrip") and a long iron shaft protruding from it, with a barbed tip at the end.

This type of pila was rather marian than early city-state republican IIRC...
So "Italic wars" would not be such a plausible source of inspiration.

The first ever use of any javelins is something that can so far not be precisely dated to one particular millenium... AFAIK Cro-Magnons used javelins for hunting mammoths. So we're limited to saying "they existed since the stone age, possibly even before it", right?

[Sarcasm]

Those days just about everybody and their dog regarded it as an excellent idea to toss a javelin or two at the enemy ranks before engaging. Why not, the things were cheap and easy to use. The practice persisted in Europe *at least* until the early Medieval times, and much longer in a limited form as well as elsewhere.

On Europeans, Portuguese soldiers, at least, were still carrying javelins into their North African fortresses, at the very least up to the 1580's, that I know of. In this particular example, a soldier from Mazagão (modern El Jadida) that was armed with an arquebus, a sword, a dagger, an "adarga" (leather, Moorish-like shield), a spear and 2 javelins - helping him carry all this, a slave or servant. The weapon reappears during the Peninsular war in the hands of militias and guerrillas, along with older equipment, like pikes - some no doubt home-made.

Other people, like Indians and Moroccans and Mauritanians were still using them well into the 1700's.

[Cyclops]

On Europeans, Portuguese soldiers, at least, were still carrying javelins into their North African fortresses, at the very least up to the 1580's, that I know of. In this particular example, a soldier from Mazagão (modern El Jadida) that was armed with an arquebus, a sword, a dagger, an "adarga" (leather, Moorish-like shield), a spear and 2 javelins - helping him carry all this, a slave or servant. The weapon reappears during the Peninsular war in the hands of militias and guerrillas, along with older equipment, like pikes - some no doubt home-made.

Other people, like Indians and Moroccans and Mauritanians were still using them well into the 1700's.

Sarcasm, you seem to know a lot particularly about the Iberian/Lussotannan bits of EB (IIRC you're one of the faction honchos?). Is there any credible link between the soliferum and the development of the metal hafted pilum? I'm just speculating in a most ignorant and uniformed way but it has caught my imagination.

Is it possible the soliferum bent on impact like a pilum? Were they both usable h-t-h as well as ranged? The Romans often adapted their enemies ideas into their own way of fighting so i wouldn't be surprised at all if there was Iberian inspiration in their pilum.

[Glaurung]

To clarify:
This is not about "Roman use of javelins", but the specific, "epic" pila that no longer consist of a stick with a leaf-blade attached to it but instead of a lance with a catch on the front end ("handgrip") and a long iron shaft protruding from it, with a barbed tip at the end.

This type of pila was rather marian than early city-state republican IIRC...
So "Italic wars" would not be such a plausible source of inspiration.

The first ever use of any javelins is something that can so far not be precisely dated to one particular millenium... AFAIK Cro-Magnons used javelins for hunting mammoths. So we're limited to saying "they existed since the stone age, possibly even before it", right?

To clarify:
I was referring to the adoption of a soft iron shaft.
IMO this craft technology isn't attributable to bureacracy but to mere experience on the battlefields.

[Sarcasm]

Sarcasm, you seem to know a lot particularly about the Iberian/Lussotannan bits of EB (IIRC you're one of the faction honchos?). Is there any credible link between the soliferum and the development of the metal hafted pilum? I'm just speculating in a most ignorant and uniformed way but it has caught my imagination.

Is it possible the soliferum bent on impact like a pilum? Were they both usable h-t-h as well as ranged? The Romans often adapted their enemies ideas into their own way of fighting so i wouldn't be surprised at all if there was Iberian inspiration in their pilum.

Hey, I'm no archaeologist but I do try to inform myself as best as I can.

Anyway, I don't think there's much evidence for a link between both weapons (and I assume you're talking of the classic pilum, from the left the first and second, weighted)...

http://cf.geocities.com/legioqc/pilum.jpg

...as for the third type, I don't think so either. There were similar weapons in Etruria; Samnites and Lucanians used them for sure - the last ones, heavier versions aparently; In Aquitania, I know of a few examples from pre-Roman times as well, besides some soliferra ancestors; In Celtiberian and Iberian lands, you got some weapons that are pretty much identical - the saunion and the falarica - besides the soliferrum; In Lusitania, there's the same situation, though the soliferrum here was considered their trademark.

The soliferrum was basically a large (incredibly some examples are thought to have been almost 2m in length, but most are naturally smaller) all-metal javelin, with grooves in the middle for gripping the weapon when throwing. They're usually between 1-1.5 cm in diameter, and all the analyses that I've seen have shown that they were not of soft iron...indeed I believe the objective was not for it to bend on impact, rather penetrate the shield and the person behind it due to it's extremely narrow profile. Even if you were not able to hit the guy behind the shield, most of these things had barbed heads, much like harpoons, with 2,3,4 sometimes 5 barbs, that would have made it hell for someone to remove it from the laminated wood of a shield. Imagine what it could do to human flesh...now propose yourself to remove it...vicious, nasty things.

As for its use, yes it could have probably served as a hand-to-hand weapon in a tight situation, but its design leads me to believe it was made as a ranged weapon (narrow, bodkin-like profile, difficult to recover once you hit an enemy shield with a barb). Indeed the Romans refer to it only as a ranged weapon, as do to the rest of the Iberian weapons I referred here.

Oh, some authors believe solifferum to be the Roman name for the saunion. Plausible.