Roman Legions or even Greek Phalanx and left handed

[Timotheus]

Thought came to mind while doing some writing. What happened when a new recruit shows up and turned out to be left handed? Holding the shield in the left hand and sword or spear in the right was how formations were built. If you are left handed you are more inclined to do things in reverse.

Were all soldiers just forced to work right handed with left handed soldiers having to overcome with extra practice the problems?

I can see this being the case for sure in a greek hoplite or phalanx formation where you are so packed in there that being turned the other way from everyone would cause problems.

I am not so sure about the Romans though. The legions fought in looser formations and its possible that someone could operate within them left handed and not impede themself or others around them.

Do we have any ideas or sources saying one way or another?

[Robert Vermaat]

Were all soldiers just forced to work right handed with left handed soldiers having to overcome with extra practice the problems?

Ideas yes, sources not known to me. But as every soldier is covered by the man to his right (and we know of whole formations tending to 'move' a bit because of that) it would cause chaos to suddenly have a man in the formation who used the sword with his left and the shield with his right hand. You get a gap in the formation, no matter how open or closed it is.

[jvrjenivs]

How do you define 'left-handed'. Isn't that something we look at now, when you first learn to use your hands for fine jobs? And don't we look for it, as we want to determine if someone is left-handed or not? So, if we don't look at "do you handle that sword better in the right or left hand' but just say 'use your scutum on your left and your gladius in the other hand' cause there isn't something like left-handed?

And yes, we know of left-handed gladiators, who were very special and dangerous, as they had their 'open' side on the opposite of the oppenent 'open' side, as you see what I mean.

[Dan Howard]

I am a left hander and fought "southpaw" before beginning serious martial arts training. After a year with an orthodox instructor I forgot how to fight left handed and now (years later) feel extremely uncomfortable in a left-handed stance. I now regret not spending equal time fighting in both stances. IMO there were no left handed fighters in any formation. Even a small amount of training will eliminate this undesirable trait. Being able to fight left handed might be useful to an individual martial artist (e.g. gladiators) but it is extremely unhelpful in any sort of formation. Formations work because everyone does the same thing.

[k8gladst1]

Ave!

Dan Howard dixit:

... IMO there were no left handed fighters in any Bronze Age, Classical, or Medieval formation. Even a small amount of training will eliminate this undesirable trait.

Not all Bronze Age peoples considered left-handedness an "undesirable trait" in a fighter: after all, Bronze Age people wrote the Biblical Book of Judges which refers to an army unit of 700 crack left-handed slingsmen in Judges 20:16 (apparently lefties who had learned to also sling right-handed without losing their left-hand skills)

Some modern armies (considering "modern" as "within the past 400 years") have placed their left-handers as the left-hand men of the line in a formation:
which keeps the left-handers' bayonets, rifles, or other weapons /a/ away from the other soldiers in the formation and /b/ arming the left edge of the formation) -- would this have worked with Roman weapons?

At least one modern army (the USA one) does not at all consider left-handedness an "undesirable trait" for hand-to-hand combat, if we can trust the material here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=405252
and here:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 844AAayPPh
and here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4533889/ARMY- ... and-Comabt
[yes, the link requires the typo "Comabt": programmed by a dyslexic?] -- at that last link, search "left-handed soldiers".

[Titvs Statilivs Castvs]

My mother is left-handed, but when she was at school she was forced to write with her right hand. Now she is "both-handed".
So I assume it's not that hard to learn it with your right hand, as long as you train it enough.

[MeinPanzer]

This is anecdotal evidence, but my friend's mother is lefthanded and she grew up in China. He told me that there chopsticks are always used with the right hand in order to avoid the awkward positioning of having two people using chopsticks on the same side (i.e. a right-hander sitting beside a left-hander and bumping arms with each other), and so she was forced to use her right hand to eat with but the left for everything else. So, for utilitarian purposes people can be forced to change hands even just for specific tasks.

A soldier in the Greek world would surely have been learned to use weapons right-handed while training as an ephebe, and would thus have done so whether he liked it or not.

[M. Demetrius]

after all, Bronze Age people wrote the Biblical Book of Judges which refers to an army unit of 700 crack left-handed slingsmen in Judges 20:16 (apparently lefties who had learned to also sling right-handed without losing their left-hand skills)

I've thought about why the mention of the left handed slingers, and come up with the thought that a slinger could then stand behind a man with a shield, and sling his stones while being guarded by the same shield. It makes sense, but I can't say that was truly the reason.

[PMBardunias]

I was born left-handed and retrained as a toddler. This was commonly done in Italian families of my generation. There is a reason why sinister is so sinister 8)

[Kate Gilliver]

Every string player in an orchestra plays the same way whether they are left or right-handed - the way the orchestra is organised means you can't not play the same way as everyone else. Armies that fought in such 'organised' formations as phalanxes and maniples / cohorts may well have required the same. The experiences recounted by some of the Forum members indicates that it's possible to adapt to a predominantly right-handed life (my grandmother was another left-hander made to write right-handed at school). Though one could have fun speculating about whether fighters and warriors in less 'organised' styles of fighting might fight left-handed....

[Narukami]

In fencing, left handers always have an advantage, even against other left handers, as most of your opponents fight right handed.

As my fencing instructor at the Modern Pentathlon Training Center told me: "You have three advantages -- you are tall, your are strong, and you are left handed. You do have one big disadvantage -- you're not very coordinated. But don't worry, we'll work on that."

And so he did.

:oops:

Narukami

[M. Demetrius]

In fencing, everything works or doesn't by the hand with the weapon. What should be the result is that the fighter who is using his dominant hand with the blade/foil should be superior to the one using his off hand...all other things being equal.

Sword and shield fighting really isn't the same as fencing, because both hands have a task, whether the fighter is right OR left handed. The left handed person fighting right handed would have an advantage in more skillful use of the shield, one would think, so it's really not a problem. There is much more required of the scutum than simple static defense, and the sword work with the gladius is not nearly as involved or subtle as with a sword-only fight. The big issue is that everyone be the same in the way they fight, so there is continuity down the line, as already stated.

[Dan Howard]

It is abundantly clear that the ability to fight left handed has many advantages for INDIVIDUAL COMBAT. It has no relevance at all for formation fighting such as in a phalanx. It is absolutely a disadvantage unless every single member of the formation fights left handed. "Left handedness" would have been trained out of any recruit very quickly.

[Narukami]

Quite right gentlemen.

Being left handed was an advantage in individual fighting with epee but gave me no advantage those few times I engaged in mock combat with sword and shield.

And indeed, in formation, one must fight as a team and being the single lefty in an all right unit would cause no end of problems.

:wink:

Narukami

[MeinPanzer]

It is abundantly clear that the ability to fight left handed has many advantages for INDIVIDUAL COMBAT. It has no relevance at all for formation fighting such as in a phalanx. It is absolutely a disadvantage unless every single member of the formation fights left handed. "Left handedness" would have been trained out of any recruit very quickly.

This appears in an interesting way in the Iliad, 21.161-68, where Asteropaios, being ambidextrous, throws two spears at once at Achilles.