The plot thickens

I've been thinking of this scenario and the evidence behind the Gaesatae's appearance in Cisalpine Gaul. Why would the Celts spend huge sums of gold on guys from across the Alps that simply threw a javelin? That doesn't seem like a very sound investment as really anyone can be trained to do this with relative ease and marksmanship. Were their javelin skills so great as to others adopting the name Gaesatae to describe them? Telamon tells nothing of this. The Gaesum was something more than a glorified javelin and that the Gaesatae were more than naked skilled skirmishers I would conclude.

I've read that (and I wish I remember where) the gaesum wasn't the standard light weight spear or javelin but was sturdy enough to be both a melee spear and javelin, or a spear-javelin you could say. When it was carried the warrior's fingers could wrap around the shaft but his fingers could not overlap by a great amount.

If the above description was similar to what the Gaesatae carried at Telamon then I think we can reconstruct part of what happened at Telamon. The velites carried lighter javelins that were designed only to throw at a significant distance. This would have obviously given them an advantage at skirmishing and or the range at which they can hurl their javelins when compared to the than that of the Gaesatae. We are unsure who opened the battle by advancing first; the Gaesate or the velites. It probably doesn't matter though. Regardless if the Gaesate advanced or waited for the velites to come within range of their gaesum, they quickly realized their gaesum could not achieve the same range as that of the velites. Getting mauled by this, some warriors chose to run towards Roman lines and died a warrior's death, others fell back in confusion as the record states.

This is just conjecture, I've no solid proof to back much of this up but maybe it's a correct theory in some ways. The gaesum is defined as a lance, spear, and javelin so maybe the word gaesum was applied to a large variety of Gallic spear like weapons and what the Gaesatae carried was a spear-javelin type weapon suitable for all of the above throwing, being used on horseback, as well as melee.

What do I base all of this on? Well, its mainly tidbits here and there. Rather interesting is the Irish chronicle a king who reigned at the end of the 300's B.C. returned to Ireland with some warriors from the continent (Gauls?) whom he hired. These mercenaries carried spears with 'leaf shaped blades'. Apart from this we know that the name Gaesatae are thought to mean mercenary according to the Romans; we know they are mentioned as having to be hired to fight in both instances; maybe they carried spear-javelins with large leaf shaped heads to them. I admit that all that is a lot to connect but 2000+ years later such proof may not exist. Still the connection is quite strong, despite being pulled from the historian's ancient pen and not the dirt of an archaeologist.

Thats my 2 cents at last. Anyone feel free to poke holes in my idea here