Basically. The problem with a machete ( and single-edged machete-like swords that evolved from the longseax were in use among some early Vikings ), which as noted IS a type of sword, is that it is a bit of an inferior axe. Solid for hacking unarmored foes, kinda rubbish at everything else and contrariwise to the OP has the axe’s drawback of needing to take wide swings to make it effective. Axes make more sense if you are going to go that route a la Bertrand du Guesclin.
Swords are neither heavy nor cumbersome until you get to the very largest of greatswords which had very specialized uses. Swords survived as the sidearm of choice for millennia because they were the most effective compromise weapon, simple as that.
Yep, although from what I understand Roman infantry combat wasn’t usually quite the shield-pushing match that earlier phalanx warfare and later Germanic shield-wall fighting was.
Origins of the gladius are obscure (Romans may have picked it up in Spain according to some arguments) but there is no doubt they adopted it as the legions’s primary weapon. What they liked about it was that, though it greatly increased a soldier’s chance of being wounded/killed, it also greatly increased the chance of wounding/killing his opponents. Romans had lots of manpower, so they thought the weapon’s trade-offs were to their advantage.
Something that was touched on briefly is that swords are much more expensive and difficult to manufacture than other weapons. Any farmstead is likely to have an axe, and a knife can be reworked into a spear head, but a sword is pricey and not much good for anything but fencing.
This may not be a bug, but a feature: ownership of such a specialized object marked the man owning it as a person who could afford to own an otherwise ‘useless’ object - a professional fighter or nobleman.
Just as an example to illustrate what mr. Miskatonic is referring to take a look at this
at about 1:45 you see a lovely example of a spearman pulling a backup weapon and taking out a swordfighter.
or a larger scale versionThese clips are part of SCA battle reenactments and you can see dozens of examples of how sword/board fighters and spearmen mix things up and how screwed a spearman can be once a shorter faster weapon gets in close.
‘Swords or daggers of famous warriors ought not to be coveted. A sword worth ten thousand pieces can be overcome by one hundred spears worth only one hundred pieces.’ - Asakura Toshikage, 15th century.
That said the idea that swords aren’t good for much of anything but fencing really isn’t accurate. At certain points in time and circumstance that was true, but in others it was the primary weapon of choice. The gladius has already been mentioned in that context and that technique was also adapted by the later Franks ( the army of Charles Martel that one at Poitiers fought phalanx-style, substituting mostly low-quality longseaxes for the gladius ). But just as another example cavalry sabres were the weapon of choice of plenty of 17th-18th century shock cavalry units, used to tremendous effect by powers like the Swedes and Poles.
Because once you make it inside the spear’s reach, the spearman is kinda boned. Which is always the issue with pole weapons. Also, and in the same spirit, while a spear might be the bee’s knees on an open field it’s not so great in a hallway, on top of a rampart, inside a winding staircase, on horseback (outside of charges obviously)…
Finally, I expect it’s easier to hit a pinpoint target with a sword than it is with a spear - useful when going for the slits in a helmet, or the weaker joints between plates etc.
I didn’t mean sport fencing - I should have said “sword fighting”. You can cut wood with an axe, and hunt with a bow. Swords are only for fighting.
Sure, a sword might be the best all around weapon, and as Malthus correctly mentions it can be a status symbol, but if you want to equip an army it is going to cost you. That’s why mobs have pitchforks and axes and clubs - they’re cheaper and therefore easier to come by.
Homer always mentions the winning warrior stripping the loser of his arms and armor. That stuff costs money. Spoils of war and all that.
Speaking of which (because I’m in the process of writing on this very subject), you can see many such cases displayed on the Bayeux tapestry. And not just stripping the opposite side : they also seemed to pick up the mail of their dead buddies. Which is to be correlated with the fact that while it is somewhat common to dig up swords, axes, knives, spears, shields and helmets from tombs of that period, armour proper seems to be a rare find.
This is very likely because, you said it, that stuff was very time-consuming (and thus, quite presumably, expensive) to make. Waste not, want not. Some historians have also suggested that maybe this is indication that Frankish/Norman warlords furbished their soldiers on their own dime (and as such, the armour they wore was not their property).
But “winner gets the armour” perdured long after that, too - it was a common resolution for duels & tourneys for example ; and the prisoner’s stuff was also typically part of their ransom.
My suspicion, though, is that an army equipped with agricultural tools will generally be worse off, man for man, than one armed with swords. That may not be a factor for the general, who may prefer to spend his gold on a lot of axes or clubs rather than a few swords, but is is surely going to be a factor for the individual soldier risking his life and limb - which explains the popularity of swords.
An axe makes a decent weapon under certain circumstances, but it is less wieldy - in unarmoured combat, you would usually be better off with a sword.
Of course an axe can be useful for battering down a shieldwall, or for smashing through armour - you see in contemporary pictures knights armed with axes: but if you are talking about armoured soldiers, the cost component of the weapon won’t be a big issue - useful armour is always going to be more expensive than the hand-weapon. A guy who can afford chain or plate isn’t going to be fussed about affording a sword.
I will, as ever, sing the praises of the shortspear.
Extend enough of the lightweight wooden handle so the dagger on the end has a slight reach advantage over almost the same length of heavy solid-metal sword; all else being equal, you’d be faster – except you’d then lose a little speed by having a little more length stick out the back – except you’re only doing that to get faster, because you’re two-handedly punching the end at your close-range opponent.
I don’t want to try getting inside that reach. Granted, I also don’t much want to try getting inside roughly the same reach of a swordsman – but I’d reluctantly prefer trying that over facing a dagger with a long enough handle for fast two-handed use.
Got a source for this? Not picking on you, just wondering. Because I’m thinking (seconding Kobal2 here) that this has more to do with keeping civilians from using military hardware in general (presumably also extending to, say, armor, artillery etc), rather than javelins being any kind of superweapon.
I do know that the Romans practiced “gun control”, as it were. From way back when there were laws against bearing arms in the city of Rome, which extended to armies (not that this stopped everyone from doing it, mind, especially in the Late Republic). This was the case until Augustus instituted the Praetorian Guard and gave them (and maybe, I suppose, the vigiles?) the exclusive rights to being armed in the city.
However, I don’t know how widespread or extensive this kind of thing was in the provinces, and I can’t seems to find anyone who will give me a straight answer on the subject. These were dangerous times, and you’d think people would at least be able to pack some ancient heat for self-defense. It’s complicated further by the fact that settled veterans apparently were allowed to keep some of their gear in retirement.
I’m wondering about this partly because I was just reading about how Valentian III, in 440, revoked a law that banned citizens from bearing arms.
The background to why he revoked it (which is that the Empire was being overrun by Goths, Vandals etc.) of course says something about the pros and cons of disarming your civilians. It makes perfect sense to do so in order to avoid civil unrest and deter any local independence movements. On the other hand, if foreign invaders beat or avoid your armies and break through your frontier defenses, they could have a free run of a ridiculous amount of imperial real estate, until someone manages to find another army to point in their direction.
But I suppose that discussion belongs in a different thread, so I’ll stop digressing.
Not sure about this. Manpower, combined with an attitude of “the game isn’t over until we win”, was certainly the key to Roman success at certain points. All your armies destroyed by Hannibal? No matter, just raise some new ones, and give him the finger rather than surrender.
However, if there was one thing the legions also did a lot of throughout their history, it was blowing through enemy armies despite being vastly outnumbered. How many Gauls did Caesar beat at Alesia? I think he stopped counting after the first bajillion.
I am sure you are correct, both because swords are more effective weapons, and because an army with standardized weaponry is going to be likely to be an army that is trained as well as equipped. A Roman legionnaire with his gladius is going to make bloody hamburger out of the average peasant with his wood axe.
Questions about armored vs. unarmored combat inevitably turn into discussions about specialized swords/weapons vs. general purpose weapons.
Melee fighting vs. fighting in formation vs. urban duelling vs. Samnitevs. retiarius vs. cavalry vs. light skirmishers vs. pikemen vs. the almost endless ways and means of putting leaks in the other guy’s hide.
But for a non-projectile hand weapon, in general -
That’s probably because it depends. A lot. And, as you say, once we get into the Imperial period proper, all bets were pretty much off in Rome as elsewhere.
But even before that, the Roman colonial system was a complicated beast (IIRC there were three separate legal frameworks for the establishment of a colony or client city) and much like every empire-building process the laws put in place during the conquering part of the job were very ad-hoc and based on what the locals would bear, what it would take to make them stop fighting and so on.
Sometimes they’d just say “fuck it, let’s just kill every motherfucker out there, make a nice new quadrangular road network and build a **proper **city” ; but sometimes especially when the city was already rich or the citizens were deemed not too alien for romanization they’d make deals and preserve this or that local administrative/legislative institution with some token local authority - mostly in Italy and Greece since those places already more or less functioned like the Roman system.
I believe that in those colonies they established from the ground up or evicting everybody and replacing them with Roman settlers/retiring legionnaires at least, the pomerium (that is to say, the holy cordon around the city, which precluded one from bearing weapons in there) was respected, if only to make it feel “just like home”.
But I hasten to add that this religious/legal construct applied strictly to bearing weapons. You could own them just fine (in fact, since those were still the days of citizen-soldiers, you sort of had to) and sometimes you were even forced to bear them to and fro as there was one citizens’ assembly where you had to go armed because Tradition, and as such was held on the fields of Mars outside the city.
And while I can’t think of an ancient source saying as much, I strongly suspect plenty of dudes carried anyway, in a “oh no centurion sir, that’s no spatha it’s just me kitchen knife I’m a butcher by trade you see” kind of way. Beacon of Civilization or not, these were pretty violent times.
Then again, maybe not. No pockets in a toga :D.
