10-15-2010, 08:51 AM
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What?! That's a pretty bold claim! If you look at the photo I posted, you will see that the shield *stopped* the falx. It did cut pretty deep, but in a combat situation that falx-man would be down with a gladius in his guts a second or two later. While I again agree that the falx is a nasty weapon, and probably more likely than most others to penetrate shields or armor, hundreds of years of battle descriptions involving various polearms never mention that they could "tear through armoured troops like they weren't there". In fact, a quote from the Battle of Flodden springs to mind, in which an English writer notes that the Scots were so heavily armored that they kept fighting even when several bills hit them at once. Do you have any evidence that the falx was THAT effective in battle?
But note that its use did NOT lead to victory over those armored troops!
Vale,
Matthew
Ofcourse that at least as much as weapon, but probably even more, counted the physical and especialy psichological abilities of the warrior who use that weapon. Since even if romans had numerical superiority in this wars (usualy was the other way around for them), quite a huge one in the second war, and had to go just some maybe 150 km from their border to the dacian capital, they need around a year each war to reach there (a roman legionar can march with all his equipment on him up to 40 km a day, maybe half the distance in this case, since was mountain terrain), so i think the Dacians and then their curved swords (Falx and even Sica) was pretty effective. It was said that during second battle of Tapae (101 AD) Traian himself rip off his toga to make bandages for wounded, and this after romans prepared few years for the war, including logistics ofcourse, and had more then probably numerical superiority on the battlefield too, so the loses was much more they where expected.
And yes, at the end Dacians lost the war, but who was able at that moment to win such a war with Romans, with or without falxes or any other swords?
Razvan A.
