When to use your pugio

[Crispvs]

"I think the pugio got used most often for mugging civilians and winning bar fights."

Why does this always come up? :evil: :evil:

Please put your hands high in the air all those who think that the army issued kit to soldiers or soldiers spent considerable amounts on kit for themselves which was primarily for the purpose of mugging civilians rather than simply using the cheap and reliable wooden clubs they were all supposed to have anyway!

Right, hopefully that is out of the way and I can continue.

It is obvious that pugiones were valued as pieces of military hardware. Far too many representations of soldiers on funerary stelae show them for them to have been little more than playthings for the night off. It should also be noted that considerable money was obviously spent on many pugiones, pointing to them as items of some status. Tarbicus is probably right when he says that the pugio, being attached to the balteus went everywhere with the soldier. This may be a clue to the amount of intricate (and no doubt expensive) silver and enamel inlay found on many sheaths and some dagger handles. The balteus militare, that very symbol of a military man, was probably a highly fashionable item (in terms of being in an up to date style) for a soldier and it might make sense to lavish equal attention to the item attached to it (although the nicest surviving sheath of all, the example from Velson, was accompanied by a second hand and quite substandard set of belt plates).

This is not to say that pugiones never found their way out of their sheaths during tavern brawls. It is scarcely feasible that no one was ever killed or injurred in a brawl with a pugio. My point is that soldiers clearly did not see their pugiones as simple tools for use in a brawl or mugging. They had fusti for this anyway, which were presumably quite cheap by comparison and quite effective in either a brawl or a mugging.

We cannot say how Roman soldiers actually did see their pugiones but the military aspect of them is underlined by their presence along with swords and belts on stelae. As far as I know, no soldier below the rank of centurio is shown on his stele with a cudgel by comparison. Standing soldier type stelae, unlike totenmahl type stelae, do not show wine cups either. Soldiers are depicted in their stelae as soldiers, not men on their night off. Every item depicted on these stelae must have military significance to be included.
We can only guess at the exact function of the pugio, but we can be sure that soldiers thought of it as an important piece of kit at least until the Flavian period. It is almost certainly very significant that when the Romans adopted the Spanish sword, they also seem to have adopted the Spanish dagger along with it, which suggests that the two weapons complimented each other in some way on the field of battle. As I have said before, pugiones are not normally small items. They reflect the shapes of swords and can be nearly a foot in length. They are not utility knives - they are battlefield weapons, but how they were used in battle is open to question. Certainly, if a battle did involve any grappling actions then a pugio would have come into its own as the gladius (and especially the true gladius hispaniensis) would be rather too long for this. As I have also said before, they are also a much better size than a sword for rifling dead bodies for valuables whilst still being able to dispach one which still squirms with little trouble, although here too, I doubt that the army would have issued a weapon purely for this task. I doubt that it was issued as a deperation weapon either - surely that is where fists and teeth come to be mentioned in accounts of battles.

As to the issue of dropping your sword to draw your dagger, I can boast of being able to draw my gladius and bring it to a horizontal position in under a second. I can sheath it again nearly as fast. I do not train at Roman army drill for three to six hours every day. I wonder how long it would have taken the professional Roman soldier to do what I can achieve in under a second when I only do it sixty or eighty times a year.
It worth noting here that the pugio always seems to have been worn where it could be drawn in a hurry. There are indications that the ancient Spaniards wore their daggers on crossbelts on their chests. The earliest reprsentation I am aware of of a Roman dagger being worn shows the centurio Minucius Lorianus wearing his dagger horizontally at the front of his belt. Years of fighting with axe, shield and seax when I was an eleventh century re-enactor taught me that a large knife worn horizontally at the front could be employed startlingly quickly. On the first century AD Rhineland stelae, pugiones are worn not on the hip, where most re-enactors wear them, but on the left at the front, where again they would no doubt have been easy of access and would not require the right hand to pass all the way round to the soldier's left side.
Given then, that the gladius can be sheathed quickly and the pugio was positioned for quick access, perhaps we should be asking ourselves precisely how long it would take a trained professional to sheath his sword and draw his dagger, and vice versa. If I can draw my sword in under a second and sheath it again in around a second, I suspect that the Roman soldier could have sheathed one weapon and employed the other in the same time. It is likely that sword and dagger (and shield) complimented each other and could be used as and when needed. The legionary was not a member of a Greek phalanx he (and no doubt his auxiliary compatriots) fought in a dynamic style in a much more dynamic unit (the century or cohort) than the phalanx.

Whatever the truth about the battlefield use of the pugio, is was obviously a valued part of military hardware as well as an item which soldiers felt worthy of heavy expenditure. By contract, they were issued with wooden cudgels for crowd control. Let's not confuse the two too much.

Crispvs