08-06-2010, 01:16 PM
Quote:but if each century or cohort was formed up in a wedge formation, there you have your saw-tooth formation....
This does seem to be going in circles now! I don't think anyone has yet given any proof that this 'sawtooth' thing actually existed - in the battle against Boudicca the word is 'wedge', which is a well known formation - Vegetius implies it was rather blunt-tipped and more of a mass of charging men ('boar's head'), but there are various theories about that.
However, the 'sawtooth' thing does turn up in a few latin dictionaries, with serra or serrata as a 'formation in the shape of the saw'. Trouble is, none of them give any source for this. Only Roman Antiquities of 1835 provides any help: "When they (Roman soldiers) advanced or retreated in separate parties, without remaining in any fixed position, it was called SERRA" - the reference is just 'Festus'. This is probably the Roman grammarian Festus - so probably the note is part of some etymological point about the different uses of the word 'saw' or something. But Festus wasn't a military man, and since no military writers mention it we might regard it as dubious at best. Anyway, it doesn't seem to have much connection with the 'wedge' - instead it's a sort of mobile broken-up battle line, perhaps, with the word describing more the motion of a saw cutting wood than the actual shape of the formation. How this got conflated with the 'wedge', and applied to the Boudicca battle, I don't know. :o
- Nathan
Nathan Ross
