Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

Was it the heavier armor and shield or superior sword techniques that gave
Romans their advantage of lightly armored Gauls as the battle goes on? I seem
to recall reading (maybe Caesar) an author who said the better, heavy
defensive equipment was the key for the legionarii when facing the Gallic
swordsman.

Maybe I'm making that up.

John Meunier


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[scott holder]

Was it the heavier armor and shield or superior sword techniques that
gave
Romans their advantage of lightly armored Gauls as the battle goes on? I
seem to recall reading (maybe Caesar) an author who said the better,
heavy
defensive equipment was the key for the legionarii when facing the
Gallic
swordsman.
Maybe I'm making that up.

>No. Although I don't remember the specific primary source(s), Roman
infantry "counter punched" once engaged in H-T-H combat. They would
literally hide behind their shield and stab with their short sword, both
being well designed for exactly that type of fighting. In a close order
formation, that provided lotsa protection for the standard grunt whereas
the whacko barbarians in front of them would be wailing away with some
long sword, geting tired in the process, AND opening himself up for some
convienient stab wound in the gut or something.

>Now, when fighting pikes, same legionaires actually had to be a tad bit
more active. They would use their swords to hack away at the pike so
they could actually close with the men in the formation since successor
pike blocks weren't designed for swordplay. Apparently the Romans had a
helluva time even hacking thru the pikes to get at the men. And this
*after* apparently tossing in two pila before "contact".

>But what happens when you're fighting your standard Marian/Sulla era
Roman civil war? Here is where my knowledge of primary accounts falters
and I'm not sure if any modern day reenactors have attempted to recreate
this. The whole "rugby scrum" concept comes to mind but that's been
used to describe Hoplite-on-Hoplite warfare which seems to make more
sense since, like the pikes, said formation was designed not so much as
to engage the other guy in sword play, but to bowl him over with the
formation itself. What happened when two essentially defensive
man-on-man formations hit (one cohort vs another for example) is
anybody's guess. Heh heh, no one willing to come out from behind their
shield, etc. In this case, the impact of the thrown pila might have
been the decisive factor and potentially breaking up the opposing cohort
somewhat. But I'm on shaky ground here.

Scott
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