questions on 2nd Punic War Roman army

[Aryaman2]

1) What was the equipment of Roman cavalry?

2) Was there any difference between Hastati and Principes?

3) How spread was the use of mail armour?

Thanks

[philsidnell]

That's a tricky question as it is only really from the 2nd century BC that we have clear artistic representations of them and the literary evidence is ambiguous. The most crucial and detailed passage is this, from Polybius, and much depends on how you interpret it:

'The armour worn by the cavalry is now very similar to that which is used in Greece. In earlier times they had no breast plates, and fought in tunics which allowed great ease and agility in mounting and dismounting, but exposed them to great danger in hand to hand fighting, as their bodies were almost completely unprotected. Besides these disadvantages their lances were unserviceable in two ways. In the first place they made them so slender and pliant that it was impossible to take a steady aim, and the shaking of the weapon from the motion of the horse caused many of them to break before the tip could become fixed in anything. Secondly, the butt end was not fitted with a spike, so they could only deliver the first thrust with the point, and if the weapon broke it became quite useless. The cavalry shield was made of oxhide and was somewhat similar in shape to those round cakes with a boss in the middle which are used at sacrifices. These shields were of little value in attack as they were not hard enough, and when the leather cover peeled off and rotted after exposure to rain they became not merely awkward, as they had been before, but quite useless. Since this equipment proved so unsatisfactory in use the Romans lost no time in changing over to the Greek type. The advantage of this was that in the case of the lance the horseman could deliver the first thrust with a sure and accurate aim, since the weapon was designed to remain steady and not quiver in the hand, and also that it could be used to deliver a hard blow by reversing it and striking with the spike at the butt end. The same may be said of the Greek shields, which, since they were firmly and solidly made, render good service against both attack and assualt [probably meaning both missile attack and blows landed in close combat]. As soon as they made these discoveries the Romans began to copy Greek arms...'
[Polybius, Histories, vi. 25]

The problem is deciding when Polybius thought this change occurred and what he meant by 'in earlier times'. He wrote this in the mid 2nd century BC, but it is a digression upon the Roman military system in the middle of his narrative of the Second Punic War and some writers have suggested that it was in that war that the change was made, others that it was during the wars with Pyrrhus, but it could have been at any point with the Greek cities in Southern Italy providing the Greek influence.

Whenever you think he meant, we should not perhaps take it too literally. Did early Roman cavalry really go into battle with no body armour? These were the wealthiest citizens and could afford the best equipment around, including Greek style cuirasses. There is a small terracotta figurine of a horseman dated to the late 4th or early 3rd century BC, depicted wearing a muscled cuirass and open-faced helmet. It was found at Canosa in Apulia, about 200 miles from Rome as the crow flies, so probably depicts one of the nobility of an as-yet-unconquered Apulia, but he may not have differed at all from his Roman contemporaries. Or they could at least have had the simpler breastplates shown in paintings of Samnite horsemen or the cardiophylax 'heart protector' Polybius tells us was worn even by the lowliest infantrymen in his own time.

Some could already have had chainmail, and it is chainmail after all that Roman cavalry are wearing in the first clear artistic evidence on the Aemilius Paullus Monument commemorating the Roman victory at Pydna.

Of course, regardless of availability Roman equites may have gone into battle without body armour for cultural reasons and bravado, as did that minority of Gallic warriors who went into battle naked. The equites shared the Gallic warriors' thirst for individual glory and single combat, and proudly exposed the battle scars on their bodies, so why not their disdain for armour. Plutarch relates how they would walk in the forum wearing togas but no tunics beneath in order to show their battle scars.

Personally I think their would have been a lot of variation both within a given levy and across the vague period encapsulated by Polybius' phrase 'earlier times'. Given that equites provided their own armour and equipment (although there is an ongoing debate elsewhere in this forum about the degree of state intervention), the exact extent of individual wealth, personal attitude to physical risk and the trade off between protection and encumbrance/balance would all have played their part alongside questions of taste and fashion. Polybius was probably oversimplifying a general trend toward a more universal adoption of body armour, which was intensified by the major military challenges faced in the third century BC.

The Greek style spears Polybius says were adopted were probably like the traditional hoplite spear, about 8 feet long with a butt spike, not the longer Macedonian lance, since he suggests they were used in conjunction with shields and no representation of the longer lance in combination with a shield exists in Hellenistic art.

Hope this helps more than it confuses

Phil Sidnell

p.s Here I have paraphrased my book Warhorse: Cavalry in Ancient Warfare, the paperback is out now if you want to a fuller and more coherent discussion. [/i]

[philsidnell]

Sorry I only answered your first question. I will leave it to many more knowledgeable than I to answer the infantry oriented ones, but Polybius does say that the Hastati wore the simple 'heart protector', a breast-plate 'a span square', but those rated at a property qualification of above 10,000 drachmae wear a coat of mail instead - but I couldn't tell you what proportion of the Hastati this applied to. Presumably more of the principes (and triarii), being older, would have the wealth to provide themselves with the chain mail. Otherwise, the only distinction Polybius gives between hastati and principes that I can see from this passage, is that of age, the principes being older. The triarii differed from both in having thrusting spears instead of pila.

Phil

[Aryaman2]

Thanks for your answer. I understand it would not be to far fetched to portray Roman cavalry at the time as lightly armoured, at least lighter than contemporary Hellenistic or Gallic heavy cavalry, right?

[philsidnell]

No, it would not be too far-fetched at all as their is plenty of room for more than one interpretation. But although they may (or may not) have been lightly armoured, I don't believe they were used as 'light' cavalry. They had no answer to the Numidian light cavalry, but did manage to route Celtic forces through shock action at Telamon and Clastidium just a few years before (225 and 222BC). Personally, and I'm sorry if I didn't make my position clear in my long-winded previous answer, I think a good many of them, perhaps most, would have worn body armour by the Second Punic War, and be armed with decent spears, shield and sword. Hellenistic armies contained a wider range of specialist types - the Republican Roman cavalry was never as heavily equipped as the heaviest of these.

Phil

[Paullus Scipio]

John said:-

I was curious about the appearance of auxilla on the Roman/Carthaginian side...Did they wear Native dress?

The short answer is Yes. There is some iconographic evidence, and descriptions in the sources, all of which seem to paint a consistent picture of Numidians, Spaniards, Gauls, Etruscans, Samnites, Apulians Bruttians et al in their Native dress - certainly no indication of systematic issue of uniforms by either side, though at times, as in all wars, each army could look like the other - Hannibal's Africans after Trasimene'equipped in the choicest Roman arms', Scipio's sailors, hastily equipped from the Carthaginian arsenal in Spain, or Rome's slave 'volones' after Cannae equipped in captured trophy Gallic equipment from the Temples after Cannae....spring to mind. :? )