Hey, I need some info for a project at school. Is it possible to tell me which weapons the Romans used?

EDIT: Don't need Chinese weapons or Spartan weapons anymore, but thanks for people who gave me info on that. I just need Roman Weapons, Armors, and Equiptments now.

(This is for my own refrence, basically listing roman weapons/equiptment)

Weapons:
Slings
Hasta - Thrusting spear
Pilum - Heaving throwing javelin
Bows
Gladius - Short sword, about 24 in
Spatha - Straight sword, average 75-100 cm
Contus - Barge pole, 3-4 m
Xyston - Smaller contus
Ballista
Cheiroballista - Handheld Ballista
Carroballista - A ballista on a cart

Shields:
Scutum - Big shield that was first oval, then rectangular
Parma - Small round shield

Armor:
Lorica Hamata - Chaimail
Lorca Squamata - Scale Armor
Lorica Sementata-Iron or steel strips fastened to internal leather straps

well all had spears and that was standard but as far as that the list is long.  :)

Ok. Also, which of them used bows, slings, and swords? (Or any of them)

Slings were never used in Mainland-China (not including Tibet)  but of course they used all sorts of bows, swords and spears.

Ok. Did any of them use slings (Spartans?), axes, catapults, etc?

What period of China are you talking about?

My friend once had a huge tome of Chinese militairy history. Seems like they kind of went backwards there. They started out with bronze chestplates, shields, bright uniforms, and all sorts of nasty looking blades and polearms. But by the 1600s, they barely had pants and a bamboo pole.

Um...ancient china?

:o Barely had pants?  Chinese were way advance even at 1600 B.C.!

I will cover the Romans

The early Romans (Kings and very early republic) fought in a very similar way to their Greek and etruscan Neighbours. They wore armour, linen or bronze pectorals, and their main weapon was the Hasat 9Stabbing spear) with a straight Greek type or curved Kopis style sword as a side-arm. The poor fough alongside as Slingers and Javelin men. Bows were not important a factor.

The republican Romans started using the Pilum, the heavy throwing Javelin as a 'just before contact' weapon and would then switch to the short, very broad-bladed Gladius sword. The Javelin and sling - armed poor were still there, and they also started recruiting foreign mercenaries with bows. Early on some would have used the Pilum, while the rear reserve (The Triarii) stuck to the Hasta - the theory is if things went bad the triarii would form a 'phalanx' behind which the Pilum troops could retire.

Toward the end of the Republic the State started issuing weapons, rather than people paying for their own, and just about everyone was armed with the Pilum/Gladius/Scutum (big long oval shield) combination. They still used slingers, archers and Javelins, but these will all have been mercs.

Under the empire units of foreigners were recruited formally, (Auxilia) and served for 25 years in the same unit, rather than being hired as needed. These are shown on Trajan's column armed with Hasta Spears, flat oval shields and (probably) Javelins. Others hired in the same way were Sagitarii (Archers). They SEEM to have still hired foreigners at need, and its possible these were called Foederati to show the difference. Some of these are shown as slingers, some armed just with a wooden club.

As the Empire declined this 'all the same' look faded. After the 3rd century AD the Roma  army looked a lot more barbaric, and there seems to have been variance between units. The Pilum was still used, but also the Hasat made a come-back. New weapons were various sorts of small, weighted darts (Plumbata, Martiobarbuli) and a longer version of the Gladius sword, the Spatha (where the spanish word for sword comes from, and from there the 'Spade' in a deck of cards. The best guess for the Spatha is that it was a cavalry weapon (you want something you can chop with if you are on a horse) and the infantry took to it as the Barbarians were not wearing helmets, so a chopping blow was useful again.

Other Roman Weapons/armour words  (some of these are greek words)

-Kontos (Means 'barge-pole') a very very long (12 feet plus) heavy spear used two handed from horseback.
-Xyston (smaller Kontos)
-Chain-mail (Lorica Hamata)
-Scale Mail (Lorica Squamata)
-the rather neat plate mail in bands most romans wear in movies  (Lorica Sementata - not what they called it - we don't know what they called it really)
-The big shield (oval at first, squared off at the corner later, finally rectangular) Scutum
-small round shields - Palmata

Artillery weapons

-The two-armed torsion crossbow - Scorpio, also called a ballista - the scorpio may have been the smaller one IIRC
-The one-armed Onager
- Chieroballista - a Balista on a cart so you could move it about.

anything I have missed?

Pat

Hmmm that post was full of Typo's...

I am not big on the classical Greeks, but here is what I recall.

The 'Spartans' used the same weapons as the rest of the Greeks. If you are referring to the 'classical' Spartans, the ones that fought at Thermopylae and Plataea...  

The spear was an 8-foot long thrusting spear
The sword was called a Xyphos, they also used a Kopis
The armour was layers of linen cloth sized with glue and stuck together - it ends up with a texture like wood, but is springy - they called it a Linothorax.
Helmets were Iron, or Bronze, as it's easy to shape
The big round shield was called a Hoplon. Soldiers were called Holites, and if you wanted to disarm a people you took their shields away. They could keep their swords and spears, but no shield meant no war - The Phalanx did not work without shields.

Some armour was reinforced with leather plates, or metal plates in little pieces sewn or riveted to the linen. We are guessing here, from pottery pictures. Linen armour rots, none has been found.

This is the 'heavies - the guys who would have formed a line 8 men deep, with their shields overlapping and gone for the enemy like a Giant battering ram.

Light troops were very important, as the Phalanx was slow and clumsy, and only worked from the front. Hit a phalanx in the side or rear and it is toast. So, to protect the flanks Light troops acted as skirmishers. Slings, Javelins and Bows were all used. They had some horses, but not many. Most light troops would have been poor people that could not afford to buy Linothorax/Hoplon/Xyphos and Spear. It has been calculated that the cost of equipping yourself as a Hoplite was about comparable to the cost of Buying a Ferrari would be today - IE You needed to be pretty well off.

Later there was a stunning victory in which a Spartan Mora was surrounded by light troops armed with small shield and Javelin, shot to bits for hours and then, when they were knackered, finished off close-up. The light troops were called Peltasts (again, after their shields, the crescent shaped Pelta) and most peltasts were mercenaries. They took off in a big way - its a lot cheaper to fight as a Peltast than as a Hoplite.

Want any info for the later Greeks - IE Alexander and onwards? That I DO know a lot about!

Pat

God damn typing fingers - how MANY different ways are there of spelling the same word???

HASTA - The Roman Thrusting spear was called a HASTA. Not a Hasat. Not a Haats... HASTA.

I am so carelesssss.

Pat

The Asians were the ones who came up with the crossbow. It made its way to Europe via the Silk Road, that linked the 2.
  It was so affective in battle, that the church actually banned it, as being "unGodly, and unfair" for use.
 However, during the Crusades, the church allowed it to be used, but, only against the Muslims, as they were not Christians. Apparently that was alright.  

:o Wow, sure, it would really help. Since I only studied about greeks and spartans this early school year, and our textbooks dont cover that much info, your help will be greatly appreciated.

Chinese weapons:
 Standard infantry arm across all periods is the spear.  It is quick to produce and little training is needed for peasant levies.
 Standard infantry missile weapons has been, for peasantry, the crossbow.  This has more than adequate penetration, is easily accurate, and in the pre-Han period to the middle of the Tang, crossbow mechanisms were manufactured with inter-changeable bronze parts.  The crossbow has a long draw, almost from the end of the stock where the bow is placed to the other end, on a stock over a foot long.  The early Chinese crossbow stocks frequently had pistol grip handles, and the locks were quite possibly the best in the world from around 600BCE, when they were first manufactured, to the 17th century in Europe, when new advances made very complicated mechanisms possible.  (More about this later.)  There are, in fact, many mechanisms which have survived and because they are bronze and remain un-corroded, they are still useable today, more than 2000 years after their original use.
 Missile weapon for the higher-up folks was the composite bow, which has varied somewhat throughout history in China, from small, light cavalry bows with short siyahs (ears on the recurves) to the giant Qing (Manchu) infantry and cavalry weapons with very long siyahs from the 16th century onwards.  Most bows were recurved to a C shape when unstrung and were made of differing amounts of horn, sinew, wood, birch bark, silk, lacquer and other ingredients.
 Other weapons include swords and halberds.  The ancient Chinese halberd (and double bladed halberds) were made of bronze, with a long horizontal blade and a shorter vertical blade on the end of a long pole.  It was a good infantry and cavalry weapon, and there are many surviving examples, because, as with the bronze swords and crossbow locks, they have not corroded.
 In fact it is somewhat correct to say that many of China's innovations have gone backwards.  Much of the bronze working tradition was lost in the latter half of the Tang dynasty, and later the Yuan (or Mongol) dynasty of China caused a medieval Cultural Revolution, and much of China's traditions of weaponry were lost (ie, the manufacture of crossbows by native Chinese for native Chinese was forbidden, and bamboo was strictly controlled so that bows could not be easily manufactured.)  The Ming dynasty, the third of China's Golden Ages (or possibly the fourth, if one believes that that the Zhou dynasty was as noble and wonderful as Confucius and other believed), had lost the bronze working technology for making crossbow locks had been around about 1300 years before them.  They used simpler, all wood, bone or antler mechanisms, which, although powerful and accurate, frequently failed during use.  Also, repeating crossbows, the earliest of which found comes from 250BCE, were still in use up to the Boxer Rebellion (1900).
 Sword technology was also less advanced, although I know slightly less than bugger all about swords, so I'm sorry I can't provide more information.  In any case, Chinese weapons technology, at its height, could be considered the best in the world, although the later dynasties' loss of the technological traditions could be said to have undone earlier gains.
 If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Didin't the Romans also use catapults and repeating balistas ???

Dunno...can anyone clarify that? And does anyone know how a roman sling looked like?

wrote on Mar 16^th, 2006 at 9:04am:

HASTA - The Roman Thrusting spear was called a HASTA. Not a Hasat. Not a Haats... HASTA.

This isn't very relevent, but I have to mention it. "Hasta" is the Turkish word for "sick". Maybe they were so effective that they made people sick (wounded). Maybe just coincidence.

Ok

After Philip conquered the Greek States the old Hoplite became obsolete.

The army Alexander invaded Persia with was based around Pikemen (Phalangites) armed with the very long pike,(Sarissa). They ditched the Hoplon (too big and heavy, and a pike needs two hands) and used a smaller lighter shield that just hung from the shoulder by a strap and was guided by the arm. (Aspis).

The light troops remained, slingers, peltasts and Javelin men. Elite light Infantry  were recruited from the wild Agrianes and Crete was a source of good archers.

Macedon had big open spaces, unlike Greece, and Cavalry were important .  Heavy Cavalry (Companions) wore armour, hemlets and carried a Kontos. They fought in a triangular wedge formation, and since NO cavalry at this time could hope to charge a unit of disciplined infantry and win, the trick was that the Pike Phalanx would pin the enemy in place. Against a pike the enemy of the time could really only stand or fall back - frontally the pike phalanx was unbeatable - and after a while under the stress of combat gaps would start to appear.

Meantime light Thessalian cavalry would be used to try and stop the enemy cavalry, then the Heavy Cavalry would go in, seeking one of the gaps in the line, splitting the enemy battle line - thats why a wedge.

After Alexander died his empire broke up into different (still big) Kingdoms, ruled by his ex-generals and Companions - The Seleucids in Syria (Syria, most of turkey, israel, east to the borders of India) The Lagids (Ptolemies) in Egypt and the islands, the ermm cant remember in Macedonia itself and some new little kingdoms in Turkey.

Pike and Cavalry stayed the mainstay, but everyone had been VERY impressed by elephants during the war against Porus, so all the Successors tried to get their hands on them. At about this time Celts had invaded and briefly overun Greece, and one hang-over from this was the replacement of the peltast by the Thureophoroi - armed with a long oval shield just like the ones the celts used, and still spear and javelin.

The battles of the period were all very 'samey' - Heavy infantry Pike in the centre, Light infantry filling the gaps, Heavy and Light cavalry on the flanks and on the very edge the elephants. When people tried to do things differently it often went badly wrong... Cavalry can't charge a wall of pike, and when Antiochus tried alternating pike with elephants in a checkerboard formation at Magnesia, the elephants stampeded back through his own pikes.... nasty.

So, things stayed the same for about 2 hundred years 'til the pesky Romans came along.

A pike Phalanx is a simple weapon - a big block of men with a mass of projecting points in front of it. The Pike was over 20 feet long, and if you imagine 3,200 men trying to keep a nice neat formation while carrying these point forward, you can imagine it's tricky. A unit like that is simply unstoppable from the front, if everyone is in the right place and moving at the same speed. But if you attack it from the side, the guys can't turn around to fight you.. if they drop their pikes and switch to swords, there are gaps in the pike-wall at the front ....

Plus after a while, a fighting pike phalanx will start to get disordered. The Romans learnt to exploit these things. As long as the plucky legionary with his nasty gladius in his hand could work past the gaps and get face to face with the men holding them, the pike phalanx was a goner. The phlanx couldnt cope with a battlefield that was not flat and tidy - reven something simple, like a rock or a bush in the way could disrupt the pike phalanx.

So the Romans kicked successor butt.

Other weapons of the period - The staff-sling (sling on a pole for extra leverage) Cestrosphendon (sling used to throw a dart) and apparently crossbows too were available.


Philip (Alexander's dad) had a nasty shock when he was fighting the Phocians - they had picked up on the idea from the Syracusans of artillery. Phil still won, but he liked the weapon, and used them. All the early artillery 9Roman as well as Greek) was Torsion or Tension powered. = that is twisted hemp ropes to give the power, like springs. The Counterweight artillery (Trebuchet) was a middle-ages invention, and in some ways more primitive than Torsion. (But you can build a Trebuchet as big as you like, whereas with Torsion you need longer and longer ropes, so in theory you can build a more powerful trebuchet than you can a Catapult or Ballista - but thats only in theory)

I don't think the Romans had a repeating catapult by the way, but in the 4th century an anonymous Roman author wrote what looks like a 'proposal' for the emperor suggesting a whole bunch of  (slightly mad) weapons ideas - a Cataphract Chariots, nutty ideas like that, and he may have suggested repeaters as well. The Romans COULD have made such a thing, but since at the time the Roman army was pretty much on its last legs, I doubt it.

Pat

I also know bugger-all about the Chinese - but here is a summary of that bugger all.

Everything English says sounds good. The very early chinese (pre-dynasty) fought a LOT like the Vedic Indians, and the Hittites and Egyptians did - the nobles rolled around in chariots shooting bows at each other , while big mobs of badly armed peasant spearmen stumbled about hacking at each other. When one side's chariots won, the other sides spearmen were in trouble - the chariots could just trundle round them shooting arrows at them from safety till the poor bloody infantry were shot up, scared and unhappy (rememeber none of these cultures REALLY trained or drilled their infantry,  - it was just 'you are in the arny. Here is your spear. Here is your shield. Kiss your wife goodbye and follow me.")  Then the chariots and their own infantry could all pile in on them - game over.

What I know about swords in china is third hand - the later chinese swords are all quite big, and seem quite clumsy - nothing like the neat, small elegant Samurai sword.

Don't forget rocket artillery - when did the chinese start using these? Was it the Han, or not until the Ming?

Pat

Rockets were presumably first invented along with gunpowder, so that means early Tang dynasty - around 650 CE, say.
 Chinese sword technology may have been inferior to Japanese sword technology, but I do not know.  Swords in Chinese warfare are actually quite limited in use, I believe, and since crossbows, halberds and spears seem to be the main early Chinese weapons, a sword would have trouble getting a look in.
 Yes, you are correct - aristos riding about with advanced bows, peasantry milling about with sticks.  This did change quite early on, when the king of one of the states of the Warring States (I'll look this up later and inform you of exactly whom) was forced to confront the nomads of the north and west who rode on horseback with advanced bows in an indidividualistic manner - henceforth, cavalry archery became part of the Chinese army's arsenal, and candidates in the military examination were tested on it from its introduction in the reign of Wu Zetian (Tang) to the last days of the Qing in the nineteenth century.
  Also:  The army of the Qin (221 BCE to 206 BCE [short dynasty]) and afterwards, the Han, had quite highly trained armies - the Terracotta army (bingmayong) of Qinshihuangdi is a testament to this - and included many crossbows, archers (actually armed with bamboo longbows as well as composites), spearmen, and very importantly, halberdiers.  From the Tang, as I said, the military examination was put in place, and was a very long lasting institution.  It ensured a high standard of military officer, trained in different weapons, classical and "modern" tactics, who also knew the Confucian corpus and other important things.  The exception to this is actually the southern Song dynasty, after the Juerchen (of "jinruzhen") invasion of the northern part of China in the 10th century - it is said that peasant levies had to cut staves from the roadside to use as weapons in combat.
 Btw, there is actually no such thing as "pre-dynasty" Chinese in history, but I understand what you mean; the Warring States period, and the Springs and Autumns, when the Zhou dynasty became so unimportant that the Emperor wasn't even a figurehead - the Zhou court was effectively dissolved - but there had been a dynasty in power.  The situation is comparable to the situation in Japan in the sengoku jidai era, given the same name of "warring states", the emperor becoming nothing in comparison to the heads of the different states.

Yup.

Pat

It's unkown what slings were physically used, since there have been, to my knowledge, only 3 found in Europe.
  However, it is known through the Annals, that the slingers used woven slings, generally of sinew and hair. What specific weaving process used is anyones guess.
The Balearics used sling of" black tufted rush"

interesting....

;D SlingWolf ;D

Slingbadger wrote:"The Asians were the ones who came up with the crossbow. It made its way to Europe via the Silk Road, that linked the 2.
  It was so affective in battle, that the church actually banned it, as being "unGodly, and unfair" for use.
 However, during the Crusades, the church allowed it to be used, but, only against the Muslims, as they were not Christians. Apparently that was alright"

???Wasn't there an ancient Greek version
of the Crossbow?

I think it was called"Gastrophedron"
if i remember correctly.

Besides,the triggers of european and asian Crossbows
are absolutely different!

Points to a parallel development if you ask me.

Welcome!

I've never heard of a greek crossbow, though I do know that the greeks and romans had things very similar; Ballistas that could be handheld and fired. Since the means of generating power is torsion as opposed to the elacticity of the wood, it wouldn't strictly count as a crossbow. Did the greeks have a modern cross bow though?

I think the ancient greek weapon was properly called a gastophetes. It means, roughly translated, "belly bow" because instead of a complicated levering mechanism to cock the bow, the bowman had to only press the U shaped stock against his belly and draw the bow back, using its own weight to cock it and seat the string. Very simple and very fast to load.

Right!
Gastrophetes,that's how it was called!

Your description matches the ones i heard.

did it lose strength when compared to the asian design or not ? sounds like something easyer to make imo ::)

It did lose strength, actually compared to the smaller and more efficient laminated crossbows of the asian models. The gastrophetes, as I learned of it, usually used a wooden prod instead of a laminated one, although laminate forms were known and sometimes used, but because of its size and design, it wasn't as powerful or efficient, but it was definitely deadly.

This is a little late, and it's on later China, but you may find it interesting:
"Many Chinese maces were straight iron bars with sword-like hilts; others have ball-shaped heads. One Chinese form is quite characteristic. It has the "long life" character in quite high relief repeated 6 times around the head. It would not only smash a man's head but stamp it with the character meaning long life." Grisly  :o

Love that kind of sarcasm 8)

The gastrophetes is a well documented piece of equipment, and I believe it would have been just as powerful as a contemporary Chinese weapon.  The Chinese used self prods as well as laminate and composite ones, and the only differences between gastrophetes and Chinese crossbows are in the mechanisms, not in the strength of the bow, it's efficiency, etc.  I expect a gastrophetes would be a quicker weapon to use too, because of the manner in which it was spanned, as opposed to the Chinese method of getting down on the floor and pulling with all your might, or using a long, thick rope stirrup.