Roman Arms factories

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I recall that from somewhere Theo!

[Theodosius the Great]

It's on page 835, Gaius.

Or did you mean somewhere else on RAT ?


~Theo

[Robert]

From a purely pratical point of view, it could be considered unlikely/unwise to teach slaves the craft of manufacturing weapons. I am pretty confident they would have been employed in tasks like operating the bellows of the smithy or hammering billets into the right format or hotcutting blanks. Grueling work by the best of standards. The actual forging and shaping being the work of artisians and armourers. Making a helmet is a rather complicated craft, even now, and takes skill and feeling for the material only gained under good apprenticeship. Spearheads are a lot easier (he, even I can make those :lol: ), but still do require some skill.

[Robert Vermaat]

From a purely pratical point of view, it could be considered unlikely/unwise to teach slaves the craft of manufacturing weapons.

Agreed, but these were not that kind of slaves. More like skilled workers, unfree to choose to leave. Serfs-avant-la-lettre would be a better description. Very typically Late Roman.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

It's on page 835, Gaius.

Or did you mean somewhere else on RAT ?


~Theo

:lol:

Hmmmm, what is the name of his book? But more than likely somewhere
on RAT! :lol:

[Paullus Scipio]

The use of "Roman Arms Factories" was not restricted to the Late Roman period. During the second Punic War, Rome fought the Barcids in Spain, a long way from the arms workshops of Italy, with concurrent long supply lines, even by sea.

Scipio's master stroke was to seize the capital and supply base of the Barcids in Spain, Cartago(Cartagena) in 210 Bc after one of History's most famous forced marches ( see the 'Legionary feats of fitness thread'). With it came 120 catapults/Stone throwers of the largest sort, 281 smaller ones; 23 large,52 smaller balllistae; countless scorpions large and small; missiles and weapons of all sorts. There was also a considerable amount of treasure, and grain by the silo, 63 merchant vessels with their cargo......
More importantly, all the Spanish tribal Hostages to Carthage fell into his hands...... AND....
the vast Barcid Arsenal where weapons of all sorts were made, especially shields. The size of this can be gauged from the fact that the number of artisans came to 2,000 ( though not all of these may have worked in the arms industry), who as captives became public slaves of Rome, but to whom Scipio promised freedom at the end of the war, provided they worked well.......
(Polyb. X.17 ; Livy XXVI.48 )
Clearly, large Arsenals/factories had a history going back well before Late Roman times....

[Theodosius the Great]

It's on page 835, Gaius.

Or did you mean somewhere else on RAT ?


~Theo

:lol:

Hmmmm, what is the name of his book? But more than likely somewhere
on RAT! :lol:

It's his opus magnum, The Later Roman Empire 284-602.

A must have

~Theo

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Thanks!

[maarten]

There is a very good MA thesis and if I'm not mistaken a recent article (in the BAR?) about fabricae written by Bernard van Daele. He is a member of Legio XI from Belgium and also known as Quintus (Quintus project)

Maarten

[Theodosius the Great]

They had big families in those days :wink:

I accept it's likely they had slaves helping out. Can anyone point to a source text to confirm, or any research on the subject?

Otherwise, this is how theories become regurgitated as facts.

P. Berlin inv.6765 specifically mentions legionaries, immunes, cohortales, and galliarii, as well as civilians (B&C2 p.236) and lists what they made. There is no evidence I know of that just slaves made stuff.

Mike Bishop

According to Adrian Goldsworthy, the slaves under the command of Spartacus "established workshops to manufacture military equipment, trading the plunder they took from wealthy country estates for iron, bronze, and tin." Based on this quote it seems that at least slaves already had the skills necessary to create weapons. Of course, the quality may not have been high but they had captured hundreds (thousands ?) of swords from defeated Roman armies to model their creations on.

~Theo