Combat Effectiveness of the Gladius

Every fucking thing about the gladius points to it being used for stabbing. You don't slash from a formation you idiot.

The only thing that points to it being used for stabbing is De Re Militari, which was written centuries after the Marian Reforms. Meanwhile some accounts of actual battles from the period describe it as being used for both.

>Key: This is why the Triarii, whose only job was to provide a fallback position where the other troops could rally behind them, carried spears instead of swords. They were NEVER intended to be used in a chaotic melee, but only to hold formation and provide a bulwark against the enemy. Spears are good for that.
Intredasting.

Just watch the lindy video

durability.

the more wikipedia articles I read, the less I like wikipedia. there's a lot more bullshit than I thought written all over it.

>every fuckign thing
Like the relatively fat, non-tapered blade? the kind of blade that is ubiquitos in cut and thrust wepons

>MUH FOrMATIONO|S!!!!!!1eleven

Fuck off. Period sources make it fucking clear that Romans actively left room for men to maneuver and use footwork. 3-6 feet in all directions was common. They also mention cutting, and a lot of it.

The gladius is very fucking obviously a cut and thrust sword. NOTHING about it suggest any for of specialization from a design standpoint.

I never understood people like you. You clearly have a very limited understanding of what you are talking about and yet you attack someone so aggressively before checking whether they could be right or you could be wrong. You dont even use critical thinking. So Romans in your opinion always fought in formation. The average soldier never went on patrols or was on gaurd duty. A Roman soldier never fought one on one with anyone ever.
As far as the gladius itself, its already been explained multiple times in this thread. The only thing about it that points to it being sed for stabbing is its point. Which every sword ever has had. The fact that it is not curved means it was probably used for stabbing quite often. However the rest of its shaped is gret for hacking and slashing. Why wouldnt the Roman army develop a short sword that was super versatile?
Try to do some thinking before you aggressively attack someone else point.

>Like the relatively fat, non-tapered blade? the kind of blade that is ubiquitos in cut and thrust wepons

And relatively fat is a bit of an understatement. Many cut & thrust swords were narrower in fact.

I have always viewed the gladius as a cut&thrust sword. People who claim it was only used for thrusting like some kind of rapier are full of shit.

Hacking and Slashing are two different things though

The only thing I know of the gladius is using an reenactment replica and it being fairly weighted. If an actual gladius was a similar weight then it would have be adequate for hacking. That's all I have to offer.

Even the tightest formation doesn't limit you to just stabbing.

You can bring your arm down over the top of your shield to strike a foe in the head or shoulders.

It's a brawler

>The key with the gladius was that it was good at everything
Not 100% true. There's a reason it was replaced after all.

If the Gladius/Scutum combination was so effective, why did practically no other military in history, before or after the Romans field mostly sword infantry? In every other culture, swords are used as backup/cavalry weapons

>Because it was made of iron
correct

>I'm pretty sure they were made of steel.
You are wrong.

Ferro-metallurgy simply wasn't that advanced yet and with the material they had at hand a blade with a thicker cross section and shorter length was in order.

>My question is why was it so thick? Wouldn't it make more sense for a primarily thrusting weapon to be thinner so as to more easily slip through gaps in the enemy armor?

my question would be, why do you assume they are thick?
most of the archaeological evidence indicates that most of the uncorroded mainz and fulham gladii are about 5-6mm thickness at the cross. One example is about 8mm, tapering to 5mm.

And for the second part: no, cutting weapons are thin, thrusting weapons are thick.

you want linear rigidity to allow the thrust, otherwise your blade bends.

have an image that shows examples in a medieval context. the pre-medieval arms are exactly the same physics.

now, into that context, the second element is what
both said.

the gladius was, in its early incarnations at least, generally a wrought iron core with harder steel edges. Even the better later ones tended to be a medium carbon, rather than a high carbon.

those lower-quality wrought cores dont have the same spring stiffness as steel, though they instead serve to act as a shock-absorbing layer which minimises the risk of breakages.

however, with its lower mechanical strength, thicker cross-sections, 5-6mm or so, are advantageous for durability.

>generally a wrought iron core with harder steel edges.
not even that, generally they where just piled iron, at least the majority of the finds. There are very few finds of high quality roman blades which actually used proper steel and some sort of heat treatment in their construction.

And before some Romaboos getting pissed, that was the state of ferro metallurgy at the time, it took several centuries to make something better than that. It was as good as a bronze weapon and significantly cheaper, something that matters for someone that is used to field mass armies.

And that reason will never be known. A tragedy.

Well, it was replaced by the longer spatha, a blade that gives you and advantage in in single combat, like when it was common in the small guerrilla type border wars in Germanistan where the individual fighter was more important than the huge unit tactic of earlier.

Swords require much more iron than, say, a spear or javelin/arrowhead

Since Roman soldiers had to buy their own equipment, does that mean that a poor soldier would have to buy gladius made of shitty iron while a rich soldier could buy one of high quality, or were all the swords made by the state and you just buy a random one off the shelf.

Essentially, what were the logistics of manufacturing weapons and armour for the Roman legion?

>Since Roman soldiers had to buy their own equipment
source please! And I mean, fucking source please nao!

He's right in a way. The original hastati, principes, triarii triple line was a levy when it was originally formed, which was after the romans dropped the greek style hoplite phalanx. Part of your position on the field was your age and what you could afford to equip yourself with. This lead to the equites becoming the more entrenched pseudo knightly class they were during the late republic, principate, dominate, etc.

By the marian reforms, when the roman military became the image most people have in their heads, roman legionaries didn't bring their own equipment to the field, as the poor tended to make up the legions rather than patriotic roman citizens. Equipment was docked from pay through a modern-ish quartermaster system.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Roman_army

Sorry about the wikipedia article, but I'm not gonna scan textbook pages for this.

He's talking about the pre-Marian armies of Rome.
Standing armies did not come into effect until the Marian reforms.

>Chain mail is also resistant to slashes, so puncturing would also be effective

True but mail improved over time. In 28 BC it was noted that a Gladius could go thru mail, by 170 AD it was noted that it could not effectively go thru mail.

>why did practically no other military in history, before or after the Romans field mostly sword infantry? In every other culture, swords are used as backup/cavalry weapons

no unlimited funds for heavy infantry spam

changes in armor and projectiles

Well, there was the Rodelero. And as you know, every spearman turned into a swordman when needed. Didn't the Romans also use the spear ?

The Romans almost always fielded spear-infantry throughout their history, becit Triarii, auxiliaries, later on a lot of their infantry had spears in general.

Hell, arguably the 'classical' legionary was a spearman of sorts too, except that those spears were thrown.

As for the gladius and spatha, my assumption is that technology might've played a role, as sword length throughout history kept increasing until it reached its logical conclusion with large two-handers and rapiers.
Early medieval ('viking') swords were on average a tad longer than late Roman spathas, arming swords were longer still, and so on.

It also makes sense when you consider that the longer sword initially was the sword of the nobility in much of classical Europe, such as in the Celtic world, and possibly the early-ish Roman Equites.
I think it's easy to deduce that the grunt's sword increased in length because it became affordable to do so.

There are dozens of reasons which are quite well understood by military historians of late antiquity. I'm not sure what you mean by your post. Are you stupid?

It was probably fat so that it'd remain sturdy but I'm just guessing.

The nature of Roman warfare changed significantly to the point where the gladius was relegated to being a weapon for auxiliaries and then phased out entirely. It's not a good weapon to have if you're fighting against a band of 100 or so Germans who can outrun you and outreach you. Or amagine trying to fight against a mounted Hun lancer with a gladius. You'd be torn to pieces.

This is late antiquity 101. Were you being sarcastic? Every military historian of antiquity knows this.

Soldiers bought their equipment from the government with their first year salery

>thinner so as to more easily slip through gaps in the enemy armor

Nigger this isn't the 1400s. Against lesser armoured opponents a wider blade will give a wider stab wound, therefore being more deadly. It's also more durable. You need to stop thinking of X design being better for X use (like the common idea that something thin is 'better' for stabbing) and start looking at individual weapons for what they are.

>I have always viewed the gladius as a cut&thrust sword

Then you are retarded. And nobody says the gladius was used like a rapier, but it absolutely was used for thrusting. 'Just' like you thrust with a pike. Does that make the weapons similar? Probably to someone retarded, yes.

Clip is not short for magazine.

Metallurgy got better and longer swords became more feasible. The gladius has little advantage over the spataha.

>Like clip, for magazine
>this triggers the /k/ommando

A short sword works better with a big shield.

....

The standing army still had to buy their own replacement equipment and their initial was taken out of their wages.

Explain either what about gladius makes it a poor cutter, or else why would Romans choose not to cut with it even when it could cut just fine (as you would expect from such a broad sword). Seems a bit strange to me to not use the sword's full potential.

>or shrapnel for flying bits of metal from an explosion

that's called "spall" in tanks

>race of would be mafiosos
>not being naturally adept at shanking opponents while staring right at them