High Imperial Roman army vs Late Roman army

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Hi Adrian,

Vegetius again? He also said that the army dropped the use of armour, didn't he? Despite what vegetius says, today the common view seems to be that the pilum was phased out long before the end of the 4th century.
Actually, Vegetius writes how the spiculum was the successor of the Pilum (arguing that the pilum itself was no longer used) and had the same characteristics as the pilum. The spiculum, therefore, was a heaving throwing spear and no thrusting spear - as the pilum had not been that.

Ammianus' use of the generic word 'pili' tells us nothing, he also uses words like 'gladius' for sword and 'Parthians' for Persians. that's no problem, but it's no proof that the Rom,ans actually fought Parthians by. 367 with the gladius and the pilum.

I cannot agree with you on this Robert.

Vegetius was using a mixture of older military manuals and current practice when he wrote his Epitome, which he admits in his text. He may well have only seen unarmoured Gothic troops where he lived, they were stationed all over the Empire between 390 and 420AD which is the date range historians place his book. The Gothic infantry on the pen and ink drawings of the Column of Arcadius and the Column of Theodosius show the Goths as mostly unarmoured.

He does not say the pilum was no longer in use, he stated that it was rarely used, the troops instead using the Spiculum, which was a spear of over six feet in lenth..

Many people point to the use of words such as Gladius, Parthian etc within Ammianus as 'evidence' of 'classising'. I would dispute this claim. He only u ses 'pilis' twice in the entire surviving books, yet there are many more references to contemporary weapons such as Spiculum and Veruta. How do we know that the troops still did not refer to their swords as the older 'gladius', are there not modern examples of this even today? (some pilots still refer to their aircraft as 'kites', which is a reference to the old 'string bag' aircraft of WW1 for example). As to the term 'Parthian', are there no modern examples where people are still referred to by a much older name? I can think of Iranian people who still refer to themselves as 'Persians' being a prime example (I have Iranian friends who go to great lengths to make sure I call them Persian).

The depictions of what I assume to be the Spiculum I have seen on Late Roman monumental works, artworks, mosaics shows a spear about six and a half feet long thatlooks equally able to be thrust as to be thrown, which would back up Ammianus stating that the Infantry at Adrianopolis retaining them in combat for so long that '...they became shattered through repeated blows'.

I have to agree with VV here, all the depictions I've seen of the Spiculum show it was like a Pilum in that it had a steel shaft, but had a leaf bladed head and was rigid. Althouhg I think that it was replaced by a shorter (8-foot maybe) version of the Contus in the 4th/5th centuries.

I think I saw a reference to darts in Ammianus, but I'd have to check the original latin text and my translated copy.