{"id":43558,"date":"2018-06-16T02:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-06-16T06:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43558"},"modified":"2019-07-18T10:10:21","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T14:10:21","slug":"the-pilum-did-legionaries-carry-one-or-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/06\/16\/the-pilum-did-legionaries-carry-one-or-two\/","title":{"rendered":"The <em>pilum<\/em> &#8211; did legionaries carry one or two?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Be24ufxNLyM\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Lindybeige<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Published on 24 Jul 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I used to be a museum guide, and when showing people the mannequins dressed as Romans, I used to tell the visitors that legionaries carried two <em>pila<\/em>, as I had seen it pictured in modern books. I may have been wrong.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>pilum<\/em> (plural &#8216;<em>pila<\/em>&#8216;) was the standard throwing weapon of the Roman legions. Archaeologists has found weighted and unweighted versions of them, but were both types carried by every legionary?<\/p>\n<p>The spark for this video was a discussion I had about the authenticity of a set of plastic model legionaries on the march. They were shown carrying one <em>pilum<\/em> and wearing <em>lorica segmentata<\/em>. I said that they should have two, but then found myself unable to back this up with evidence. Polybius, writing about the earlier period, with javelin-throwing <em>velites<\/em>, and the <em>triarii<\/em> at the back, says that the <em>hastatii<\/em> carried two types of <em>pilum<\/em>, but it isn&#8217;t perfectly clear whether he meant that the unit carried both types, or each individual man within them. For the later days of the classic legionary, with no <em>velites<\/em> in front of him, and <em>lorica segmentata<\/em> on his back, I have no evidence for two <em>pila<\/em> per man.<\/p>\n<p>Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lindybeige Published on 24 Jul 2015 I used to be a museum guide, and when showing people the mannequins dressed as Romans, I used to tell the visitors that legionaries carried two pila, as I had seen it pictured in modern books. I may have been wrong. The pilum (plural &#8216;pila&#8216;) was the standard throwing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,7,663],"tags":[31,1299,561],"class_list":["post-43558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-history","category-weapons","tag-army","tag-bladedweapons","tag-rome"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bky","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43558"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43560,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43558\/revisions\/43560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}