Roman Centurions 753-31 BC by Raffaele D'Amato

Author:Raffaele D'Amato [Raffaele D'Amato]
Language: eng
Format: epub

This detail shows the trilobate pommel of the gladius; note also the heavy ring, clearly carved on the third finger of Minucius’ left hand. (Author’s photo, courtesy Civic Museum, Padua)

The detailed depiction of the dagger (pugio) on the Minucius stele, with its sheath fixed horizontally below the belt buckle by means of thongs. (Author’s photo, courtesy Civic Museum, Padua)

ARMS AND EQUIPMENT

WEAPONS

The offensive equipment of the centurion in the Consular period varied according to his centuria and later his manipulus: he might be armed with hasta, verutum, pilum or gaesa. According to Silius Italicus (VI, 43), the centurions were armed with spear (hasta) and sword (ensis). In the Roman hoplite phalanx of the Servian age the sword is assigned to the first two classes, and specimens of the curved machaira were recovered from Praeneste and Lanuvium. Their wider diffusion, especially among officers, is clearly attested for the early Republican period; and the sword worn on the left side of the body was a distinctive sign of rank, the common legionaries usually wearing it on the right side. During the war against the Privernates in the mid 4th century BC, the centurion Sextus Tullius ordered his men (antesignani) to lay aside the javelin and to charge with the unsheathed gladius (Livy, VII, 16). Orosius (IV, I, 11) relates that at the battle of Heraclea in 280 BC one Minucius, a centurion of hastati, cut the trunk of one of Pyrrhus’ elephants with his sword, so buying time for a Roman withdrawal: ‘Minucius, the first hastatus of the Fourth Legion, used his sword to cut off an elephant’s trunk, and forced the beast, now distracted by the pain of his wound, to leave the battle and to vent his rage upon the army to which he belonged.’

At that time the swords of the centurions were those typical of the Greek hoplite – the curved, single-edged machaira or the straight, double-edged xiphos. The Hellenic xiphos is well attested in Latium and the southern Etruscan area; together with the machaira, it is often visible in the hands of centurions represented in Etruscan and Roman art of the 4th to 2nd centuries BC. It was during the 2nd century, especially after the Punic Wars, that the terribly effective new gladius hispaniensis appeared, soon becoming the sword par excellence of the Roman army.

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