Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[Vindex]

My reason for asking is that extra weight means more balance required for horse and rider so I tend to favour slightly lighter weapons for manouerability, but with the same "thrust" and impact coming from the momentum of the horse.

Horsemen stab down at their opponants though, a heavier spear head will give you a more powerful downwards thrust, the infantry man wants a lighter spear head because he's trying to hold the thing over his head in a formation for a long period of time, the cavalry man has the advantage of being able to engage, thrust, and disengage.

Thank you. As the cavalryman stabs downwards, how do you see the balance affecting the levelling of the weapon and the balance of horse and rider?

A good horse will try to balance itself underneath the centre of mass unless told otherwise by the rider's hands and leg which then makes the balance of the weapon very tiring for the rider, if it is particularly heavy.

[ArthuroftheBritons]

Also a heavy weapon kills more effectively than a good one. After all why make a bigger, wider, stronger sword if a smaler, thinner, lighter one does the same job. It's not because the guy would be any less dead, it's because the heavier the weapon (militaristically speaking and not refering to actual weight) typically it leaves a smaller chance of failure. A death blow from a light weapon is just as leathal as from a heavy one, it's just the heavy one smashes more of the important stuff on the way to killing the target.

[Medicus matt]

After all why make a bigger, wider, stronger sword if a smaler, thinner, lighter one does the same job.

Because you've got poor quality steel to work with and a thinner one would bend.
Or because your opponent is heavily armoured and you need to penetrate the armour.
Or because it's fashionable to do so.

[Ron Andrea]

Does anyone have a picture of this spear head?

[Paullus Scipio]

Matt wrote:

Well, they didn't really have *consistent* distinctive names for weapons, did they? "Spear" could be differentiated from "javelin", but a Latin word like "lancea" could mean either!

I don't believe this is true, Matt, as I've posted elsewhere. I think that names were given to quite distinct weapons, readily recognisable by their characteristics.

Thus 'javelins' had relatively small heads and thin shafts generally about 3-5 ft long, the 'lancea'(Greek 'longche') was a short dual-purpose throwing/ thrusting spear up to 5-7 ft long, and the 'Hasta' ( Greek 'Doru') or 'great spear' was the 8-9 ft thrusting only spear.......of course these are simplifications, and there was an infinite variety of spear-heads, for example, in an era before mass production, and I haven't referred to the 6-7 ft 'heavy throwing weapon' class whose primary function was as a thrown weapon, secondarily as a thrusting weapon, such as the 'pilum' and 'angon', nor the fact that the name of a weapon and its design could change over time......

[Ron Andrea]

On the other hand, if you're following the thread on the Roman forum ("Varro--leather armour"), even the names such as lorcia hamata have doubtful origins and associations. Vocabulary analysis at such a remove is tricky at best.

[Paullus Scipio]

But this is not 'vocabulary analysis' - i.e. trying to determine the origins of names,- for example 'lorica hamata' seems to mean 'hooked chest protection' = mail , no matter what the etymological origin of the two words that make up the expression.......

[Matthew Amt]

I have heard that Classical writers such as Tacitus were schooled to not use a word repeatedly, so they'd use other words. I remember looking up the original Latin for a certain passage to see what word was actually used for the translation of "javelin", and it was actually "tela", meaning just "weapons"! So they may not have swapped hasta and lancea, but they certainly got more vague at times.

But even if words were strictly used in the Classical era, we're talking about the 5th to 6th centuries, here, and I KNOW that Latin was getting sloppy at that point! Plus the growing number of people for whom Latin was a second language. And even if they were still pretty consistent with what they called things, *we* don't know what they may have called something like this, simply due to the lack of nicely labelled artwork, or labelled artifacts. So trying to decide what this particular weapon was called is pure speculation.

But a picture would be nice!

Matthew

[M. Demetrius]

*we* don't know what they may have called something like this

Except "dangerous" when used by a skilled wielder, of course. :wink:

[Paullus Scipio]

Sorry !.....I think we are at cross-purposes here. I was just trying to get across that the Romans ( and others) had very specific names for particular weapons, as well as generic terms, just as we do. Thus 'rifle' and 'Garand'- or 'AK47'; so 'telum' and 'pilum' or 'lancea'.

Telum incidently has two meanings, its original generic one ;armament,offensive arms, offensive weapon, spear ( as opposed to defensive arms = arma)....probably from a time when the spear was THE offensive weapon. Later it came to mean 'missile weapons' generally, - javelin, arrow, spear, bolt, dart - and is used in the sense of "when the weapons began to fly"......

As with most words in any language, the meaning evolved over time...Vegetius records that the 'pilum' later became known as the 'spiculum' ( and was known as the 'bebrae', and 'angon' by barbarians. As finds show, 'pila' could vary quite a lot!

I think you'll find we are in agreement....you certainly can't decide what type of spear a find is in general, because as I mentioned earlier, there was considerable variation in individual 'spearheads'....

The best clue, frustratingly seldom given, is the socket diameter ( but watch out for tapered weapons! ) which can often allow one to distinguish between, say, javelinheads and spearheads.....

[Ron Andrea]

Yes, comparison with similar finds is perhaps the best way to catalog these weapons.

The earlier point about classical writers intentionally varying their vocabulary is true--and still taught in some writing venues today, albeit frustrating to the modern researcher. :roll:

[ArthuroftheBritons]

Having done some reading I have heard that the spearhead in question could be tanged; I'm still checking though.

[Medicus matt]

Having done some reading I have heard that the spearhead in question could be tanged;

Instead of having a socket?

[ArthuroftheBritons]

Oops, no different spear from an earlier time. It was socketed, though it doesn't say how big the socket was.

[ArthuroftheBritons]

Tenth century Welsh havey horsemen were armed with swords and javelins, and protected by mail a medium-sized shield, and a helmet. Sounds similar to what we've been theorizing about. Is this a throwback to the fifth century? Was the early medevial cavalry of the Britons like this? Aparrently the favoured tunic colour of the welsh cavalry was red, does that mean anything?