dory

[Paullus Scipio]

A good simple explanation, but one that places a great deal of trust on iconography. Paul, are you turning into D'Amato? :lol:
Very droll John! :lol: Well, unfortunately we have very little BUT iconography to go on - and the distance between spearhead and butt occasionally found in tombs - which isn't always helpful if the weapon has been either ritually 'killed' or simply broken to fit the tomb/grave!! ....And what, pray, is wrong with a possible 'simple' explanation? Are you a great doubter of the "Occam's razor" principle? ( which of course doesn't always hold true :wink: )

I appreciate the artist could sometimes get a great deal of detail into a piece of work, but sometimes he must have lacked the capacity or the required space etc.. The artist doing the relief of Panaitios at least had a good deal of surface to work with to show the 3m long tapered weapon. But laying the aside the intepretation of iconography.......
Phew !! .....glad of that, because 'interpreting' the iconography is fraught with difficulties, beginning with that favourite, the artist got it wrong, or was using artistic licence etc, which unless supported by something else, I'm always inclined to take with a pinch of salt....

You seem to be suggesting the development of tapered spearshafts go hand in hand with coppicing starting in the 5th century? Really? Did no body use coppicing until then? Where not spears used in great numbers before then? Hmmmm.......
Oh, dear, not at all! Coppicing goes back to neolithic times ( there is evidence in England from 3,000 BC!!) and appears to have been widespread in ancient Greece. It's main purpose seems to have been, as elsewhere, to provide charcoal ( and also many other things) and the type of wood most commonly coppiced Europe-wide was Ash - said to be ideal for spear-shafts and poles generally. My point was simply that whilst some of these, cut from billets, would be parallel sided, others, particularly those harvested 'early' from younger sprouts in times of military emergency, would have a slight natural taper, and it would be a short leap from that to deliberate use of tapered shafts - but WHEN that occurred one cannot say, perhaps Mycenaean times or before.....OTOH, in ancient cultures the 'rightness' of an object tends to inhibit change or innovation - for example features of the Illyrian helmet such as the parallel ridges over the skull were continued long after their original purpose ( to re-inforce the cranial centreline join when the helmets were originally made in parts) had disappeared and one-piece helmets were the norm - so perhaps it was not until quite late that tapered spears became acceptable practice......

I think I would suggest that if I was to stand face to face to someone, largely covered in "copper-alloy", I would want a heavy short spear I would need to hold at the balance point. If I was engaged in a more flexible style of warfare, sometimes facing cavalry, I would want a longer more responsive weapon. A simple case of form dictating function. No more than that. Certainly an explanation not reliant on the development of coppicing or artistic interpretation.
....And with this I would whole-heartedly agree ( or as a cavalryman might put it; "Horses for courses" :wink: ) - factors such as shield or armour penetration would favour a heavy, stiff, parallel sided shaft for strength - which is what the 'Dory/Great spear' has - but not shortness, for it seems to have had the longest non-tapered length practical for a man on foot to wield....; but reach, relative lightness and 'pointability' might make a tapered 'kamax' more suitable for a horseman.
[ digression: as a young man in army service I joined a display tent-pegging team, and had no difficulty in accurately pointing a non-tapered 9 ft lance shaft, probably because being held in the middle it was relatively short and hence little 'wobble' factor, ( we also used sabres) and a miss was a rarity, but I wouldn't fancy my chances against another horseman armed with a 'kamax'].

I don't think it is co-incidence that we only see the 'kamax' and tapered spears generally depicted after the second half of the 5 C BC introduction of true cavalry into southern Greece

[John Conyard]

As ever an excellent post, I really do enjoy reading what you have to say.

Before we leave iconography altogether, why did no fashion conscious 5th century Athenian pot painter specialise in military subjects to the greater glory of the state? We could call him the “Osprey painter”. He could have done a whole series of military subjects, especially popular amongst those citizens who had served on campaign or those who enjoyed talking about the army.

His factory, which would surely have been very successful, could have still been working when the Macedonians take over. They could have then specialised in painting anatomically accurate pikemen holding 6m long sarrissas painted several times around the rim of wine cups. Such a style could have been related to the Mycenaean pottery with concentric bands from around 1300-1200 B.C. If only...............

Razor, or the lex parsimoniae can be translated as the law of succinctness, which I admire, but it is generally misunderstood. Rather than the principle being the simplest explanation is more likely the correct one, the Razor principle suggests we should move towards simpler answers until we can move from simplicity towards greater understanding.

And some of that understanding comes from experimentation. When archaeological evidence is not what it could be, and when the written evidence leaves so much unanswered. When the iconographic evidence is open to interpretation then we must place some trust in practical experimentation as an aid to greater understanding.

So if a 5th century Athenian hoplite came to my spear making shop, just around the corner from the “Osprey painter”, and asked for a Spartan splitting heavy spear, I would lay before him a selection of large heavy iron heads. I would explain I could give him a heavy, stiff parallel sided untapered shaft, but it would be as hard to make as a tapered shaft and would actually be lighter. If the gentleman insisted and said he had read that an untapered shaft was heavier, I would have to explain that if the spear head has an external diameter of 25mm, I could tamper the shaft to around 30mm towards the butt. The extra wood at the butt end would help the balance and add a little weight. But the real weight of the weapon would come from the spearhead. If he didn’t go to the gymnasium enough, he would have to hold it around the point of balance, about half way up the shaft.

Having sold him the weapon I would immediately send him around the corner to get his likeness painted on the first kylix the “Osprey painter” had available. :wink:

Happy Christmas.

[PMBardunias]

I think I would suggest that if I was to stand face to face to someone, largely covered in "copper-alloy", I would want a heavy short spear I would need to hold at the balance point.

I might wish for more length if fighting in a line with overlapping reach of spears and at least a second rank of possible impalers. Taken to its limit we end up with sarissa, but in such formations, reach can be an advantage with the right tactics- just as short weapons can with very different tactics.

I would explain I could give him a heavy, stiff parallel sided untapered shaft, but it would be as hard to make as a tapered shaft and would actually be lighter. If the gentleman insisted and said he had read that an untapered shaft was heavier, I would have to explain that if the spear head has an external diameter of 25mm, I could tamper the shaft to around 30mm towards the butt. The extra wood at the butt end would help the balance and add a little weight.

Two things are getting mixed up here I think that may confuse some readers. A tapered shaft is always lighter for any given strength along the long axis. That is why it is a tapered cone, distributing force back and not simply an abrupt change in diameter- like a pilum made of wood. Tapers suffer from lateral stress though. But the second reason for a taper is balance as you suggest above. Thus, given the same spearhead, your tapered shaft is heavier (the diameter starts out equal to the parallel shaft at the socket, then widens) but the balance point is moved rearward. In this function it is simply a proxy for rear weighting with a counterweight.

[hoplite14gr]

And to make things worse:

From experimentation

Spear un-tappered shaft with:
a) Bronze spear-blade with bronze butt-spike. Terribly difficult to handle!
b) Iron spear-blade with bronze butt-spike. Quite an improvement although far from perfect

Could lead by used in the butts-pike? Controversial hypothesis - no opinion on that yet as I know of no evidence.

All tappered spear-shafts are believed to be easier to handle and most likely are in my opinion

Hydriae from cemetries (in National Myseum Athens) depictin cavalryman show the kamax always tappered.

Kind regards

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

There certainly are bronze and iron spear butts reinforced with lead weights. One of them is in the National Museum.
Unfortunately one can't take photos in Vergina. But there was a spear in there,that was completely covered in pure gold leaf! Of course the shaft issappeared but the cover remained and gives an accurate lenght of the spear. I don't remember exactly how tall it was. I think over my height,perhaps about 2 m. so it could be around 2,5m with the points. It was untappered,and it looked quite wide. Probably it wasn't very tightly fitted to the sgaft because i can't imagine it being functional! I guess they just covered it for the funeral. I wish i could have taken photos of all those interesting objects in Vergina. And books about the finds usually don't have the interesting stuff. Always the same old wreaths and larnaxes and cuirass...
Khairete
Giannis