Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Among my people...

Nancy R. received an incredible birthday gift, a hand-made plug bayonet, and posted up pictures to show it off.

"Doesn’t every girl want her very own plug bayonet?" she asks. Well, sure, because then you'd have the perfect excuse to buy a matchlock musket! (Unlike Nancy, who just happened to have one already to hand.)

Now I'm having visions of someday completing my little attic armorium so that I have a proper place to display the Roman pilum that friend Jenn made for me one birthday...

22 comments:

elmo iscariot said...

I have a similar dream of making a melodramatic but awesome display of citizen-militiaman's arms from my two favorite republics:

A gladius, pugio, and pilum hung with a scutum and lorica segmentata, next to "a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, [and] a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges".

I expect the American militia gear to be significantly less expensive, neatly illustrating one of the advantages of living in the age of gunpowder.

elmo iscariot said...

Noli me calcare!

Borepatch said...

Careful with that pilum - it was designed to bend on impact, to make it hard to pull out of the enemy's shield. First anti-armor projectile?

Tam said...

Borepatch,

"Careful with that pilum - it was designed to bend on impact..."

Were we in meatspace, this is the part of the conversation where I would give you the same look I would if you had, very calmly and patiently, explained to me that two plus two is indeed four.

Anonymous said...

Borepatch, your crank, you stepped on it. Probably leave a mark too.

Whick blog did you think your on anyway? LOL...

Bubblehead Les. said...

Oh Great! Now we get to start up the old Flame War of which is better, the Pilum or the Parthian Bow!

Now those who attended Legate Cooperio's Acadamy Ballistica outside of Far West Carthage SWEAR that....

Justthisguy said...

So, Tam, how far can you throw it?

WV: wantrand. Yes, I do, of the Kruger kind.

elmo iscariot said...

Like all graduates of the Ludus Cooperiarum, I only trust the old reliable gladius hispaniensis that saw our boys through two Punic wars and every provincial hellhole from Gallia Transalpina to Cynoscephalae.

Those newfangled Mainz pattern gladii are strictly for emporium ninjas.

Sport Pilot said...

I would not want to be the person that offered to let you look at their new handgun purchase with the utterance “careful…it’s loaded…” That’s almost akin to letting someone use your pocket knife and saying “careful…it’s sharp…” Oddly enough at one time or another each of us have made such stumbles and been properly chastised in turn.

Jenny said...

elmo, Les - :p

Were they using the segmentata yet before the Ceasars? I'm still trying to get some kind of accurate mental picture of what Romans looked like over the years.
800 ish BC to 500 ish AD is a long time. :\

I keep trying to TJIC what visiting Tam's Lake House is like. "Okay, you know all those creepy old British manors, where the library is full of books and pith helmets and undrescribable old relics? Right, take that. But mind the swords along the wall on the way to the bathroom at night. That could cost a toe. Now add tanks..."

Tam is fun. :)

elmo iscariot said...

Were they using the segmentata yet before the Ceasars?

D'oh! I'd been under the impression that it was used in the Republic by commanders, but came into more general use either during the Marian reforms or under Augustus. But the only relevant book I have handy right now, Simon James' Rome and the Sword, says unequivocally that lorica segmentata was first used under Augustus.

I guess that's one more romantic sword-and-sandal standard that I have to exclude from the armorium.

elmo iscariot said...

I'm still trying to get some kind of accurate mental picture of what Romans looked like over the years.
800 ish BC to 500 ish AD is a long time. :\


The hardest part for me is excluding the Imperial helmet from the mental image. Imagining Republican milites in those weird iron jockey helmets just feels wrong.

Jenny said...

Once upon a time I stumbled across the website of a guy who had built a reenactor ensemble for about every period from the Classical Greek era to (I think) WWII - all in one great big long page.

The really neat thing was that he'd done late Etruscan/early early Roman stuff that I don't think I'd ever seen done before.

Wish I could find his site again, now that I've got some Livy under my belt. :\



(Also, the BBC has some okay documentaries for at least starting the process of massaging one's mental image of Republican era Romans to something a little more right. The US History Channel one though... ugh. )

Tam said...

Here are some suggestions if you want good visuals to work with:

http://www.ospreypublishing.com/store/Early-Roman-Armies_9781855325135

http://www.ospreypublishing.com/store/Early-Roman-Warrior-753%E2%80%93321-BC_9781849084994

http://www.ospreypublishing.com/store/book.aspx?bookcode=p5985

elmo iscariot said...

Thanks for the suggestion; I'll take a look.

The modern pop culture iconography of "Rome" is really hard to shake, isn't it? Legionaries with xiphoi or round shields just feel utterly wrong, even if you've just finished looking at the real-actual ancient Roman art.

Tam said...

I'm such a Rome nerd that the whole reason I first visited Indianapolis was because this woman I knew on the internet told me that there would be an exhibit of Roman art from the Louvre at the IMA here and I wanted to see it before it packed up and left. :D

elmo iscariot said...

...Aaaaand into the Amazon queue. Thanks very much for the suggestions, Tam. Maybe I'll get them as a Saturnalia present to myself.

Don M said...

"The Matchlock Gun" is one of my favorite children's books.

Read it to my kids every excuse I can.

Don M said...

Asterix and Obelix always show the Romans in Segementata (except for the occasional Legate in a bronze plate.

They couldn't be wrong, could they?

Gnarly Sheen said...

Speaking of bayonets...

My grandfather has a bunch of old ones that I am unable to identify. Is there a good place to research just bayonets? I took a bunch of pictures and told him I would do my best to find out what they were.

Tam said...

Gnarly Sheen,

Ebayonet.com, although a sales site, has lots of pics, as well as links to the "bayonet colector's webring".

Gnarly Sheen said...

Thank you kindly, Tam.