The Spartan wrote:Yeah, that was the augment part I was thinking of. What I was thinking of when I said stand alone weapon was actually from the show Weapons Masters, as I recall, when his counterpart on the series was to build a weapon based upon the Roman Scorpion. Mike Loades, towards the beginning of the program, gave a brief demonstration on how Roman soldiers fought, throwing the pilum, fighting with gladius and shield and then tossing the gladius away (to simulate losing it) he started using the shield in a way that would have had the edge slamming into opponents. I think he also mentioned that they trained to fight without any weapons, too.Thanas wrote:They rammed the metal protruding boss into the gut of the enemy. Or simply used it to push over a weaker opposing line, which would then get trampled by their iron boots or quickly stabbed when they had fallen.The Spartan wrote:According to Mike Loades they also used the shield itself as a weapon. Both to augment the use of the gladius and as a stand alone weapon on the off chance that they lost their sword.
Yeah, but if a roman soldier lost his weapon, he most likely would either have fallen back on the pugio (in small scale unit actions) or have shuffled to the back of the line to get a replacement, using the roman combat system that rotated soldiers from the front to the back or vice versa.
