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Rhomphaia
#31
Our studies on the romphaia.
Thanks Dan very informative.

From our attempt we found that best results come in a duel or open order
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koryvantes ... 492009783/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koryvantes ... 492009783/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koryvantes ... 492009783/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koryvantes ... 311157560/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koryvantes ... 142894653/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koryvantes ... 142894653/

Against formed heavy infantry works better in flank attacks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koryvantes ... 425694481/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koryvantes ... 964350309/

So we strongly believe that it was a weapon of open order infantry

Kind regards
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#32
Purely by anachronistic analogy, I have always wondered if they could be used to lop off sarissa heads. There is a reference to Thracians knocking the heads off of sarissa (could be dory) with clubs, some of which seem to have an oddly "sickle-shaped" curve.
Paul M. Bardunias
MODERATOR: [url:2dqwu8yc]http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/viewtopic.php?t=4100[/url]
A Spartan, being asked a question, answered "No." And when the questioner said, "You lie," the Spartan said, "You see, then, that it is stupid of you to ask questions to which you already know the answer!"
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#33
Quote:Nearly all the rhomphaias found come from in or near the Rhodopes Mountains - the furthest away being the one found near Kabyle .

It is interesting that the weapon should be confined so such a small area. Is there anything specific to the people there that might explain its origin. Were they head hunters for example?
Paul M. Bardunias
MODERATOR: [url:2dqwu8yc]http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/viewtopic.php?t=4100[/url]
A Spartan, being asked a question, answered "No." And when the questioner said, "You lie," the Spartan said, "You see, then, that it is stupid of you to ask questions to which you already know the answer!"
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#34
In the area between the two places described were the (constantly shifting) limits of Odryssae, Dioi and Bistones
Under the assumption that you drive away the enemy light troops and attack from the flank you might attempt a go at the sarissae.
I have reservations if you could cut the reconstructed thick shaft of the sarissa that I have used.
Why waste a blow when the pikeman's stance offer good targets to the neck or you can cleave limps instead.

Against spear infantry we believe after our experiment that its better to go for the limbs.

Kind regards
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#35
Quote:Under the assumption that you drive away the enemy light troops and attack from the flank you might attempt a go at the sarissae.I have reservations if you could cut the reconstructed thick shaft of the sarissa that I have used.Why waste a blow when the pikeman's stance offer good targets to the neck or you can cleave limps instead.

That's the way I'd see it. Operating on the flank - likely in concert with cavalry - and creating mayhem in the more "open field" nature of a broken flank against the ememy's light infantry. The obvious attack route would be the phalanx's exposed flank after its suppport infantry had been broken open or cleared.

Again, a great weapon for the "hamstringing" of enemy cavalry one might think.
Paralus|Michael Park

Ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας, ὦ κακαὶ κεφαλαί, τοὺς μετὰ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τὰ ὅλα κατειργασμένους

Wicked men, you are sinning against your fathers, who conquered the whole world under Philip and Alexander!

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#36
Quote:It is interesting that the weapon should be confined so such a small area. Is there anything specific to the people there that might explain its origin. Were they head hunters for example?

The usual explanation is that the iron was readily available in that region and the Bessi were particularly good at working iron. Compare the rhomphaia with the falx, the latter has half as much iron in it. None of the Thracians were head hunters, but the Bessi was one of the tribes said to be the fiercest fighters (the Dii were one of their clans and Thucydides names the Dii as the best in Sitalkes army of supposedly 150,000). It may be that there is more opportunity to use a hand-to-hand weapon in heavily wooded and mountainous country than in the plains, and that since the alternative (forming ranks of spearmen) in that terrain is not so easy a weapon suited to loose, individualist fighting would be useful.

Although the rhomphaia has been found only in those areas, in those areas and all over Thrace there are all sorts of variants on the theme of the curved knife/sword, some very crude and others beautifully done. Some of the curved swords are very large, though they are simply scaled up versions of other swords, not rhomphaias. It is evident that there was a cultural preference for that type of sword, and there was widespread experimentation on its shape.
Christopher Webber

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#37
Quote:Again, a great weapon for the "hamstringing" of enemy cavalry one might think.
One interpretation of the action at the Kallinikos (171 BC) is that this is exactly how they were used by Thracian infantry
Christopher Webber

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#38
Quote: It may be that there is more opportunity to use a hand-to-hand weapon in heavily wooded and mountainous country than in the plains, and that since the alternative (forming ranks of spearmen) in that terrain is not so easy a weapon suited to loose, individualist fighting would be useful.

This hardly makes sense, though, given the fact that Livy explicitly tells us that at Cynoscephalae the Thracians' rhomphaiai were too long to be of use in woods!
Ruben

He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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#39
Woods like North American very thick woods would cause problems but
broken terrain with shrubs and loosely placed trees its no big problem.
Terrain types like that exist near Kallinicon.
In Mesogeia where we did our tests some olive groves did not cause problems while others did.
But Ruben is right in thinking that romphaia in woods would probably be "dire straits" use in most cases
but other types of broken terrain cause no problems.

Kind regards
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#40
Quote:Again, a great weapon for the "hamstringing" of enemy cavalry one might think.

After the aptly named Diitrephes led a force of some 1,300 Dii to slaughter all of the inabitants of Mycallessus with a "barbarism" worthy of their employers on Melos, the Dii faced off some Theban cavalry (Thuc. 7.30.2):

Quote:Thracians made a very respectable defence against the Theban horse, by which they were first attacked, dashing out and closing their ranks according to the tactics of their country, and lost only a few men in that part of the affair.

If they had them, the Romphaia might be as effective against horse as you suggest, while also being long enough to form a hedge against cavalry- about as long as a musket and bayonette. This use might explain the straight shape.


They were being paid a Drachma a day. Is a Drachma a day inordinately high for this period?
Paul M. Bardunias
MODERATOR: [url:2dqwu8yc]http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/viewtopic.php?t=4100[/url]
A Spartan, being asked a question, answered "No." And when the questioner said, "You lie," the Spartan said, "You see, then, that it is stupid of you to ask questions to which you already know the answer!"
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#41
Quote:They were being paid a Drachma a day. Is a Drachma a day inordinately high for this period?

It's relatively high for non-hoplite mercenaries during the Peloponnesian war. The average pay of a hoplite during that period was about a drachma a day. Griffith postulates that this may include both misthos and sitos/siterion (the two components of a mercenary's pay: payment in kind and in cash), which would make their pay about two-thirds that of the average hoplite.
Ruben

He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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#42
....to which it should be pointed out that a 'Hoplites' pay was meant to cover himself and his servant , while, AFIK, tribal Thracian peltasts did not come with, nor need, a servant/ baggage carrier/'skouraphos'
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)

"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
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#43
Quote:....to which it should be pointed out that a 'Hoplites' pay was meant to cover himself and his servant , while, AFIK, tribal Thracian peltasts did not come with, nor need, a servant/ baggage carrier/'skouraphos'

No, that rate I posted does not include payment for skeuophoroi - another drachma a day was thrown it to cover their costs, so that in reality the hoplites received 2 drachmas a day.
Ruben

He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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#44
Quote:
Paullus Scipio:1pj6fugy Wrote:....to which it should be pointed out that a 'Hoplites' pay was meant to cover himself and his servant , while, AFIK, tribal Thracian peltasts did not come with, nor need, a servant/ baggage carrier/'skouraphos'

No, that rate I posted does not include payment for skeuophoroi - another drachma a day was thrown it to cover their costs, so that in reality the hoplites received 2 drachmas a day.

Ah, OK, I see.....you are quoting the 'citizen' pay rate, at the time of Potidaea. In 5C Athens , a hoplite, rower, and laborer (free or slave) all received a daily wage, of 1 Attic drachma - more a 'maintenance allowance' for a Hoplite. In 400-320 B.C. this daily wage rose to 1.5 Attic drachmae.

Of course, taken in isolation, this figure means little, so for comparison.....

In Athens 6,000 jurors received each a daily wage (opsonion) sufficient to purchase the minimum subsistence. In 460 B.C. this was 2 obols (1/3 drachma); in 408 B.C. it was raised to 3 obols (1/2 drachma). Craftsmen and masons working on public projects in 447-408 B.C. received daily wages from 2 to 2.5 drachmae.

At the siege of Potidaea (432-429 B.C.), each hoplite received 2 drachmae per day (one for himself, one for his servant); each cavalryman received double this rate (Thuc. III. 17. 4). An Athenian trireme, manned by 170 rowers and 30 officers and marines, cost 200 drachmae per day in wages or 1 talent per month.

But Athens paid her citizens well. In 420 B.C. Athens agreed to a treaty whereby Argos agreed to pay each Athenian hoplite, archer, or peltast 3 Aeginetic obols per day and each cavalryman 1 Aeginetic drachma, which was equivalent to only two-thirds of their usual pay, and was perhaps more typical for other Cities' Hoplites.(Thuc.V.47.6)

Notice that the 'pay' was the same for the lowest (psiloi) and the highest (hoplites) indicating that this was considered 'subsistence level' for all ( unlike the more generous citizen's pay of a drachma a day.)

Pay for mercenaries, however, was generally lower than for citizens - generally always around subsistence level. Indeed the word 'mistophoroi' for mercenaries, often translated as 'wage -earners' is slightly misleading', for it derives from the term for the 'State Dole' which indicates its minimal level.
Mercenaries were expected to 'pay' themselves from loot.

Xenophon (Hellenica V.ii.21) tells us the wage in the Peloponnese for a mercenary Hoplite was 4.5 obols a day - roughly the same as 40 years before (Thuc.V.47.6 - referred to above) for a citizen hoplite's subsistence, but since prices/cost of living had risen significantly, in real terms it was much less even than the wage the allies agreed to pay Athenian troops in 420 BC.

At Thuc VII.27.2, Athens hired 1,300 'Dii' tribesmen, "...one of the Thracian tribes who are armed with machaira..." and this is how I illustrated one on P.51 of "Warfare in the Classical World", taking the term literally. That a drachma a day WAS considered expensive can be gathered from the above, and also the fact that "...the Athenians resolved to send them back to Thrace, where they came from, since it seemed too expensive - each man was paid a drachma a day - to retain their services for dealing with the attacks made on them from Decelea." ( a border fortress held by the Pelponnesians).

In the action Paul B. describes/refers to above (Thuc VII.27.2), these same tribesmen carry out a massacre and sacking the small city of Mycalessus, on their way home (under Athenian command...obviously looking to get some 'value' from their expensive hirelings!), and retribution in the form of Theban cavalry and hoplites follows.

The description of them of them 'discomfiting' the cavalry "....the Thracians did very creditably against the Theban cavalry, which attacked them first and put up a good defence by adopting the tactics of their country, that is to say by charging out in detachments and then falling back again......Of the Thebans and others who were in the relief force, about 20 cavalry and hoplites were killed, including Scirphondas, who was one of the Boetarchs...."
does not sound as if they achieved this with merely javelins, and as secondary armament, a 'kopis/machaira', and I think there is a distinct possibility that these 'swords/machaira' as Thucydides calls them could well be a reference to 'rhomphaia' - a word not used 'til much later....
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)

"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
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#45
Quote:The description of them of them 'discomfiting' the cavalry "[color=#0000FF]....the Thracians did very creditably against the Theban cavalry, which attacked them first and put up a good defence by adopting the tactics of their country, that is to say by charging out in detachments and then falling back again......

I find this sort of action hard to attribute to swordsmen or men equipped with rhomphaias - the "tactics of their country" were to charge out in detachments, throw javelins, then fall back again. That's not usually a successful tactic against cavalry. I think the Theban cavalry were light cavalry in inferior numbers, and this explains their relative lack of success, although they did inflict casualties on the Thracians and drove them off so they won the engagement.
Christopher Webber

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