Why didn't Romans and Greeks place spikes upon their shields?

[Caeser The III]

i was thinking this for a while.................real life question.any1 ever wonder why the romans,greeks, etc. why didnt they have spikes on the shields. it would cause more injuries ya'know?

[Moosemanmoo]

Extra weight and expense?

[Caeser The III]

eh, but still, the wealth of the rome and greece was so high you would think they could afford it

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Thread title changed to be more specific and moved to the Monastery - the more historical orientated peoples may be able to assist you more :burnout:

[Csargo]

I assume that it is because of the extra weight added to the shield not to mention the fact that it most likely wouldn't be extremely effective

[Peasant Phill]

Another question but relevant to the original one:
Were there instances in hystory where men fought in formation with spiked shields? I can't really picture this (although my experience counts for little on this matter)

[Innocentius]

i was thinking this for a while.................real life question.any1 ever wonder why the romans,greeks, etc. why didnt they have spikes on the shields. it would cause more injuries ya'know?

There's a reason why no army has ever used spiked shields: it's stupid. It's clumsy, expensive (no, Rome was never that rich), ineffective, dangerous (to the wielder) and generally just extremely ugly.

No, spiked shields remain an invention of Blizzard, and was never used in reality (thankfully).

[Fisherking]

Spiked edges would be a big problem in formations.

The only instances I can think of for arming shields as offensive weapons all seem to be in Gaelic cultures.

The Scottish Targ and references in Irish sagas of sharp edged shields.

The practical side of the issue is that it is a lot of trouble to handle a dangerous instrument like that when not in combat. They require special care and handling. It would be more of an individual warrior’s weapon and not one issued to solders.

Short heavy spikes would only serve to puncture another shield if everyone were using them and only make a flesh wound if striking an individual most of the time. The chances of loosing your shield might out weigh the benefit of using spikes.

We know human nature well enough to figure that if something like this could prove practical it likely would have been employed, barring cultural prohibitions, but we see few examples.

[Furious Mental]

Trying to stick someone with a spike on a shield as big as a hoplon or scutum and attached to one's forearm would just be awkward. Also, unless one actually charged someone with it one wouldn't get much force behind the blow. I think it was probably just considered that the best way to fight was to keep the shield facing the enemy and, when it comes to attacking, concentrate on getting at them with an actual weapon.

Spiked shields and combination weapon/ defences are not pure fantasy however. Examples include the celtic targe, which sometimes had a spike screwed into the boss (since it was a small shield held in the fist it was probably much easier to use), the Russian tarch (an apparatus consisting of a shield from which protruded a plate arm defence with an attached blade), and the Indian Patta (a plate-and-mail gauntlet with a blade extending from it).

[Ludens]

I'd hate to fight in a formation of men armed with spiked shields. If I got caught off-balance and my opponent pushed me back, I'd be impaled on the shield of the fellow behind me.

Also, if my opponent could hook his shield or weapon on the spike he could push my shield away, leaving me exposed.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The Romans, in particular, were trained to use their shields offensively. As a group, the massed shield push was a fair counter to a spear wall -- and any gaps that opened up were exactly what the gladii boys wanted.

Individually, the shield can be used to shove an opponent, the edge can be used to catch a weapon and push the opponent off balance, and the bottom edge could strike a devastating blow to anyone on the ground -- without the legio needing to bend over during a fight.

[Oaty]

Another reason is to keep the integrigy of the shield the spike would need to be breaken away easily. If it was renforced heavily not to break away the shield could be cracked in 2 much easier.

If the integruty of the shield was not lost the shield would be too heavy for combat

[Celt Centurion]

I do believe that Ludens said it best.

In a Greek Phalanx, the ranks literally pressed forward against the front rank's backs. In Steven Pressfield's "Gates of Fire", pages 82 and 83, he writes of a "possible" Spartan Drill called "tree f__king." Is there anyone here who would want a spike driven into his back or up his arse by a comrade?

But don't just read those two pages, enjoy the whole book.

While the Romans had bosses on their shields which would be great to clobber an enemy, they probably shunned spikes for the same reasons as I've described.

So should we.

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion

[Geoffrey S]

Most important is having as little as possible which enemy weapons can get caught on; it's meant to deflect enemy attacks, something getting caught would either drag the shield away from the wielder or wrench one's arm in a potentially painful way. Spikes would be a risk to the user more than the enemy.

Similar to the case of horned helmets, really.

[CountArach]

I don't know (Haven't read through the responses) if anyone has mentioned that the maniple was based on the phalanx at first. This meant that the pushing power of the formation was the primary concern, as well as tight ranks. Neither of these would be possible with spiked shields.

[Furious Mental]

I don't think the Romans fought in such close order unless there special reasons to do so, such as to resist a cavalry charge. If they locked shields to form a wall and push I don't see how they could have thrown their pila or used the gladius or any other weapon held underhand. Vegetius said

"No part of drill is more essential in action than for soldiers to keep their ranks with the greatest exactness, without opening or closing too much. Troops too much crowded can never fight as they ought, and only embarrass one another. If their order is too open and loose, they give the enemy an opportunity of penetrating. Whenever this happens and they are attacked in the rear, universal disorder and confusion are inevitable. Recruits should therefore be constantly in the field, drawn up by the roll and formed at first into a single rank. They should learn to dress in a straight line and to keep an equal and just distance between man and man."

Also I don't think that the Roman tactic of putting footsoldiers in relatively thin lines and having them periodically withdraw is in keeping with trying to break an enemy by physically pushing them. If an army is going to try that the only way to do it is to put everyone into an unbroken and deep line because the simple fact is that a think line is not going to get much momentum behind it, that is after all why even before they created the sloped phalanx the Thebans were such formidable hoplites; all they did was make their formation deeper than that of other Greeks. As individuals Romans obviously pushed with their shields since a good way to knock someone off balance is to bang them with a big piece of wood. But I don't think they generally fought in a shield wall when attacking; it seems to me that Romans relied more on wearing their enemies down than trying to overrun them. No doubt there were exceptions.

[macsen rufus]

Also you couldn't stack them up on a baggage wagon....

[CountArach]

I don't think the Romans fought in such close order unless there special reasons to do so, such as to resist a cavalry charge. If they locked shields to form a wall and push I don't see how they could have thrown their pila or used the gladius or any other weapon held underhand. Vegetius said
The point is that originally they did, until they stole the manipular formation, which in itself was an adaptation of the phalanx formation. It wasn't as tightly packed as a phalanx, but it still had the idea of tightly-grouped men working as one.

[Kraxis]

The point is that originally they did, until they stole the manipular formation, which in itself was an adaptation of the phalanx formation. It wasn't as tightly packed as a phalanx, but it still had the idea of tightly-grouped men working as one.
Well technically the Romans actually fought as hoplites prior to the manipular formations.

The maniple however was more of an adaptation to fightin the mountains, and seem to have been a copy of the Samnites' formations. They specifically fought in lighter equipment and in more open formations so as not to get broken up by the rugged ground that they called home. And not surprisingly the Romans did very well when they could face off against an enemy in dense formations who had to advance over broken terrain. The Romans (and Samnites) didn't lose cohesion and gained tactical adaptiveness (if the leaders were brave and intelligent enough). In essence there was not much that would make the phalanx and maniple look alike, aside from being drilled fromations with a specific position for each man.

In general the Roman legionary had about double the space a Hoplite had, making personal movements actually possible.

[Watchman]

Spiky shields existed well enough in history, in several different forms too. But they tended to accompany some fairly specific tactical systems and AFAIK were nigh invariably a feature of relatively small, maneuverable shields.

The Greeks and Romans employed big, very heavy shields and tactics that a spiky shield-boss was unsuitable and/or unnecessary for. Plus the big round aspis didn't have a boss to draw out into a spike to begin with anyway.

AFAIK the Graeco-Roman way to employ the shield offensively was to simply punch the other guy off-balance with the heavy thing and then gut him, and in the case of the aspis to smash it bodily into the enemy formation when the phalanx charged as a sort of giant human battering ram (apparently the witness accounts suggest the sheer force of phalanx collisions was such that even the heavy bronze-faced aspis often developed noticeable dents and splits). Not terribly sophisticated, but effective enough and given the sheer weight of the shields involved you can't really except much more.

Mind, one Byzantine military treatise I've seen referred suggested equipping most of the infantry with regular (round-bossed or boss-less) shields, but giving the front-rankers spiky ones. The idea being that the rear ranks would thus be able to "push" their compatriots without complications, but the front rank of the enemy would suffer from the shield-spikes in the crush of the shieldwall clash.

AFAIK the diverse "spiky" shields were normally rather from the opposite end of the scale, tending to be light, rather agile and at most medium-sized, and were used much more "actively" as "off hand" weapons. For example, around the so-called Dark Ages there was in rather widespread use (especially in northern Europe) a peculiar form of boss for the light round shield usually termed "cone and disk" - essentially a cone with the point flattened out into a small disk. These things seem to have been very common in Finnish grave-goods well into the "Viking Age", for example, and I've read they turn up quite often in Dark Ages Anglo-Saxon contexts. One theory I've seen is the idea was this device could be used to catch and "bind" the enemy's weapon making it that much easier to nail him. One would imagine getting the full benefit out of the things would require operating in relatively loose order, but I'd assume at least the first rank of a full-blown skaldborg (typically made up of the best warriors in any case) could use the things without much trouble, if not necessarily all that versatilely.
Might well have been pretty useful in the kinds of duels and raids endemic among the diverse Germanic peoples of the time, too.

Medieval and Early Modern small shields and bucklers also AFAIK often enough sported a full-blown spike (or, in the case of the small all-steel bucklers, were drawn out into one); such devices were already out of necessity employed in a very mobile and proactive fashion anyway, and furnishing them with a spike presumably just made them that much more versatile and dangerous tools. A kind of shield version of the off-hand dagger one would imagine.