Roman swordsmanship

[Paul Baker]

I know this may seem like a dumb question, what with ARMA specialising in Renaissance and Medieval fighting, but does anybody know of any books or websites that deal with Roman fighting techniques? I've just bought a gladius and have no clue how to use/train with it to maximum effect. (It does look cool tho!!!)

Thanks for your help!

[Matt Haupt]

From what I've read and researched - the gladius was primarily a stabbing weapon. The Roman soldiers would march on the enemy in a line with their huge shields and their little swords. If they were able to stay in formation, and it seems like most of the time they were, they could defend themselves and each other from most weapons with the huge shields, and just march over anyone in their path with their quick stabbing attacks to the body or head.

I guess thats why the gladius doesn't have much of a guard- not intended for a lot of fencing use? But the shortness would be great in a crowded fight, make it very maneuverable when there's lots of bodies around, and your enemy may have something heavier and longer and slower.

[Erich Wagner]

"the gladius was primarily a stabbing weapon"

And yet it still has two edges. I'm dure a little bit of cutting was done. I know that Gene Tausk has done a lot of research on the gladius and Roman gladiatorial combat in general. I'm sure he'll have something to say when he gets online.

[Alex Kurtzman]

I agree that the gladius was most definitely primarily a stabbing weapon. There are some illustrations that can be found of romans training different stances, and some mention is made of the use of the gladius use in various histories. One stance I have seen is of a roman soldier crouched in a low stance and using his sheld to block a downward slash (or perhaps to get under his enemy's guard) and then using the gladius to stab towards the stomach area. I've also read descriptions of the face wounds caused by the gladius, so it was probably also used to stab over the shield. Overall most of the close combat seems to revolve around the scutum (shield) and maintaining their formation. If you look at gladiator swords, most of them have a much moresignificant guard than that of the military gladius, with the exception of that of the myrmillo (sp?) who fought with military gladius and shield. So, as previously stated, there probably wasn't a lot of real "fencing" expected of a soldier in battle.

[Randall Pleasant]

Alex Kurtzman wrote:
...there probably wasn't a lot of real "fencing" expected of a soldier in battle.

When men put their lives on the line there is a lot expected of them, not only by their society but also by themselves. I think every Roman on the line would have expected a lot of real fencing by his buddies.

[Gene Tausk]

Oh boy, one of my favorite subjects!

First, there are no dumb questions. Not asking a question is dumb.

From my work with gladii, they are excellent thrusting swords and work well with lunges and point work, which is to be expected. Romans scoffed at the "barbarians" who crudely slashed instead of using the point.

However, they are also excellent cutting tools. In fact, I have adopted Joachim Meyer's work to the gladius, IMHO, very successfully.

I believe the gladius works well with the long shield, but works quite well with a buckler also. Sources which discuss C&T swords and buckler work also can be used with gladii, as well as the aforementioned Meyer work.

If you want to write me, I'll share some of the techniques I have developed.


----------->>>>>>>>>>>>gene

[John Nipert]

When men put their lives on the line there is a lot expected of them, not only by their society but also by themselves. I think every Roman on the line would have expected a lot of real fencing by his buddies.

I would actually suggest that it is much more likely that the Romans practiced a formation that took advantage of their weapons and equipment. You effectively can create a wall of tower shields. Why expose yourself like you do in fencing, when you can march along like this, your shield guarding half of your body, and the gladius protecting the other half.

Fencing is far too fluid of a fight, and I would suspect that the Romans who considered themselves civilized and organized. Not to mention that I think they would have abhored how broken their formations would have become if everybody was dancing around. If you remember, that formation was a huge asset to them in the wars against the Goths. The Romans are tightly packed, while the Goths have to be loosely packed because of their weapons and their fighting style. And the Romans had a solid victory.

[Randall Pleasant]

John

Why do you consider the Roman soldiers fighting in a formation to not be fencing? Fencing is the art of killing other human beings with a sword. Regardless of if the fighting is in formation or one-on-one, it is all fencing. Following the teachings of our ancesters, we in ARMA learned and practice many techniques beyound just cutting, slicing, and thrusting. Half sword, using the sword as a level to throw a adversary to the ground, or using the sword as a club, is all fencing.

[Lenny Dick]

Finally a subject I feel at least marginally able to discuss in this forum. I have to agree with Randall, the Roman soldier of the Republic and early Empire era was definitely skilled in the use of his sword.

In order to understand the development of Roman swordsmanship, its origination during the Second Punic war must be understood. Originally the Roman legions fought in the Greek hoplite phalanx formation, armed with long spears (sarissa) in very close formations (less than 3 feet between men). Although the hoplite phalanx is practically invincible against a frontal assault, the hoplite could not fight as individuals and the formation is vulnerable to flank attacks. During the lengthy Second Punic war fought first in Spain, then in Italy, and finally in Africa the Roman Legions made a military transformation which allowed them to dominate the world for 600 years.

They exchanged their spears for the Spanish gladius Hispanus (short sword) and two pilums (javelins). The transformation in tactics included Scipio’s technique of articulating the rigid phalanx formation with maniples, which evolving into later true echelon tactics. Marius further reformed these formations with cohort tactics.

This evolution in military tactics could have only come about with the use of a professional soldier core, as the citizen soldiers of the day did not have the discipline or training to execute these formation changes during battle. These soldiers required extensive training with their weapons prior to being ready for combat. The formation spacing was opened up to nearly 6 feet per soldier, in order to use the gladius as a true sword. Although primarily a thrusting weapon, the Roman formations would have remained near the three feet spacing if only thrusting were used. Roman’s were using their gladius as a true sword with an apparent preference for stabbing around their large shields.

Lenny Dick
ARMA DFW

[Matt Easton]

Unless I am mistaken, Vegetius describes how Roman soldiers must train at the wooden stake (pell), giving cuts and thrusts. Either him, Josephus or Tacitus also say that soldiers should favour the thrust, but certainly cutting was practiced and inevitably done.
Most (maybe all?) of the medieval images of men chopping at wooden stakes with swords come from medieval copies of Vegetius' treatise, and therefore it may be unsafe to assume that pell training was actually done in medieval times (I don't know a reference to it that is not linked to Vegetius, though that may be due to my ignorance). However, logical thought suggests that pell training probably was done in the medieval period, whether inspired by Vegetius or not.

Matt

[Alex Kurtzman]

I do agree, that any handling of a sword, especially in combat, is considered fencing, what I meant by my comment, is that there was probably little to no fencing in the individual duel sense, given the nature of the roman military formation. The cohesiveness of the formation was central to roman military tactics and training and strictly enforced. Although it is doubtless that roman soldiers became very skilled in the use of their gladius, their training was very largely based on the formation. Look at the other main weapon of the roman soldier, the pulim. . . a javelin like weapon is not nearly as effective in single combat as it is in a massed formation.

There are also the weapons of their enemies. The celts and germans favored a longer sword than the gladius, the dacian signature weapon was the falx, which is probably similar to a two handed messer in size and use. The Persians favored the mounted heavy cavalryman armed with a spear and a sword long enough to use from horseback. A short sword like the gladius would put a roman soldier at a significant disadvantage against many of these opponents, who were equally skilled with their weapons, in single combat.

[James_Knowles]

A short sword like the gladius would put a roman soldier at a significant disadvantage

IANAG (I am not a general), but from what I've gleaned from limited reading of strategic writing, what the length of the gladius took away, discipline, strategy, and tactics gave back.

It was not a perfect system (no system is flawless), but worked well for a fair number of centuries. The details of why it worked so well against such a variety of opponents would be interesting. I've read the Strategikon a few times, but that late Roman fighting was heavily revised to revolve around combined arms.

[Jaron Bernstein]

Just a small thought. The Roman tactics ye are discussing (gladius+shield and pilum used in one type of formation) is very much a "snapshot in time". Roman tactics and weaponry evolved over time as the nature of Roman society (part time citizen militia of all age groups with less training to a full time professional legion) and the nature of Rome's enemies (a macedonian cirissa is fought differently from a herd of Gauls with axes, which is fough differently from chasing peltist all over the hills, etc.). Maybe we should be asking here what sort of enemy the gladius/shield/pilum formation was optimized to fight against and against what enemy would it be less effective?

[Alex Kurtzman]

That is a good idea, and very valid. And the tactics romans used to fight different enemies did change over time.

The following can be said of the period of the rise of Agustus to about the end of the Flavian Emperors:

One thing that Boudacia and the Jewish Revolts showed, is that the Roman army is at a serious disadvantage in a guerilla war. As can be seen from the pursuit of dacian king and his followers at the end of the 2nd dacian war from trajan's column, that in pursuit of an elusive enemy , the Romans turned to their alae (cavalry), but the cavalry was never a particularly large combat arm until the later empire. Boudacia was defeated because she was brought to battle by the Romans, and the Jews because they tried to hold their cities against the Romans. The picts in scotland, however, persisted in their more guerilla-like tactics, so instead of trying to adapt to that, the Romans decided their lands had little value to them and just built a wall to keep them out.

As a general rule ( in the most basic of terms) the Romans fought by releasing their two pulim and then closing with the enemy to fight with gladius and shield. The basic formation was for the cohorts to be formed up in columns of three (although often deeper) in a straight line against the enemy. The rain of pila would disrupt the enemy lines, and even if it didn't kill, it would make shields unusuable, and because the head was of a softer metal, it would bend on impact and could not be thrown back either. A rather ingenius weapon.

One of the most famous formation changes came from scipio africanus at the battle of zama. At that point, the roman cohorts would be arranged in a sort of checker board pattern. At this battle, he arranged them in straight columns so that hanibal's elephants would pass between them and could be taken down.

Some Roman legionares are depicted fighting ahead of the main lines, without their lorica segmentata likely as skirmishers, so it would be logical to assume that some, if not all roman soldies had light infantry type training. Allied barbarians (numeri and foedrati) and auxillary infantry were also used for this purpose.

The Romans were very similar to the greeks in that they placed their emphasis on the heavy infantryman. But they also had a better understanding of combined arms than most of the pre-hellenistic greek armies did.

Caeser and other generals on several occasions divided their commands so that one force could be used to outflank the enemy. By in large however, it seems like the army of the pax romana period, met its enemies in a head on linear fashion. To defeat an enemy, they favored the pitched battle or the siege, and most enemies were willing to oblige, but it was really the superior discipline and tactics of the Roman soldier that often carried the day.

I also think that a lot of what dictated Roman tactic was the engagement itself. The romans prefered to choose the field of battle that they could use to their advantage, but often there wasn't a general "rule" per se about how a particular enemy was fought. Changes in Roman tactics to a particular enemy were generally reactionary.

The later empire saw many changes, especially in the armament of the Roman soldier, but I'll go into that more later

[James_Knowles]

I have no idea about the evolution of Roman military thinking, but find it fascinating that the core of the Strategikon focuses on adapting to the enemy, the terrain, weather, etc. in order to win (if possible) without a head-on confrontation; failing that, to make full use of combined arms, use semi-guerrilla tactics, re-configure the army so that it's strong where the enemy is weak, use the two-dimensional space effectively with reserves, open and closed ranks, and supressive fire. There's also heavy emphasis on information warfare before and during the battle. (Hey, the term "Byzantine politics" didn't come from thin air. <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />)

Any idea whether some of this type of thinking was persistent or a late development?