§ 1. A prince who is about to wage war ought principally to prepare these things: alliances, provisions, arms, fortifications, money, and soldiers. The individual matters need not be discussed in this chapter. Alliances, provisions, fortifications, and money were discussed in book 8, for they are works of peace rather than of war.
§ 2. Most of those who have written about war have treated accurately of everything concerning arms and men who are to fight either on land or at sea. Yet they have done so in such a way that some have exhibited ancient things, others new things, but few the reasons and counsels of the ancients and moderns. It is my intention to set forth briefly what I have understood concerning both new and ancient things.
§ 3. Arms are whatever necessity advises: iron, oil, wood, and other things. Arms are, as it were, the limbs of a soldier. For nature gave natural arms to beasts because it denied them prudence, but gives man external things to use, with reason added:
Φύσις κέρατα ταύροις,
ὁπλὰς δ’ ἔδωκεν ἵπποις,
λέοντι χάσμ’ ὀδόντων,
τοῖς δ’ ἀνδράσιν σίδηρον.
Nature gave horns to bulls, hooves to horses, the gaping array of teeth to the lion, but iron to men, with which man conquers bulls, tames horses, hunts lions, and, finally—which is most difficult—conquers other iron. Therefore, a great supply of arms must be prepared in peace, because they are readily obtained. When necessity presses, even all things must be accepted: the bronze of bells can be melted down, so that it may be restored when the war has ended.
§ 4. I define arms as all the instruments of wars by which we are defended from the enemy or strike the enemy. They are therefore twofold. For either we protect ourselves with them, as with a shield, helmet, and greaves, or we harm the enemy with them, as with a sword, spear, and musket. They are also divided in another way: either they are placed around the body and handled by individual men’s hands, or they are operated by machines, act more violently, and require the forces of many men, as do the ram, the tortoise, and the greater artillery. Among these I place horses, elephants, camels, dogs, pigs, and serpents in an intermediate class. Some men have sometimes employed them like arms; but they are animate arms, or half arms and half soldiers.
§ 5. Defensive arms, or coverings, are prior to offensive arms. For it belongs to a praised commander first to place his own men in safety, then to harm the enemy. If they fall under mutual blows, there is no victory for either. Therefore, the better protected man is the stronger. He who has provided well for himself does not fear the sound of the hammer, like an anvil. While the helmsman holds the tiller, he despises storms. A well-covered soldier confidently attacks the enemy and fearlessly employs skill; and skill absorbs every difficulty in affairs, as men boast in a military proverb.
§ 6. The head covering of the ancients was the helmet. That of the light-armed soldier was made from a wolf skin or another hide. Polybius says:
προσεπικοσμεῖται δὲ καὶ λιτῷ περικεφαλαίῳ· ποτὲ δὲ λυκείαν ἤ τι τῶν τοιούτων ἐπιτίθεται, σκέπης ἅμα καὶ σημείου χάριν, ἵνα τοῖς κατὰ μέρος ἡγεμόσι προκινδυνεύοντες ἐρρωμένως καὶ μὴ διάδηλοι γίνωνται.
“He is adorned in addition,” as Lipsius translates, “with a simple covering of the head; and this occurs when a wolf skin or something of that kind is put on, both for protection and as a distinguishing mark, so that those who have fought vigorously or otherwise may become known to the commanders of the units.”
Concerning the material of the helmet Lipsius says: “Not of bronze or iron, but of wool, felt, or leather; the cassis was of metal.” Galea was named from γαλῆ, a cat or weasel. They took the hides from wild animals, whence ἰκτιδέη, κυνέη, ταυρείη, αἰγείη: weasel-skin, dog-skin, bull-skin, and goat-skin helmets. In Homer and Virgil there is also a lion-skin helmet. Aeneid 5: “Turning the enormous covering of a lion.” Lipsius notes on Trajan’s Column that everyone in this equipment has a lion skin which covers the head, shoulders, and back. In Propertius there is a wolf-skin helmet in an elegant poem:
And a bristling helmet adorned with a wolf’s mane.
In Statius there is a bear-skin helmet:
He makes his head savage with the jaws of a Lycaonian bear.
Others preferred the fox-skin kind. The Thracians and Macedonians had similar helmets. But this is the point about which the reader of Lipsius remains in doubt: since they wore them for protection and as a sign, did they place them upon a bare head or upon another helmet? Lipsius thinks that the light-armed soldiers put them upon a bare head, for they were not so cautiously and securely armed. I remain even more doubtful. Although lion and bear skins afford protection, I do not see how little weasel, goat, or even fox skins delay arrows or swords. Our felt hats resist much more, especially those thick ones which they are accustomed to call Brunswick hats.
Therefore, that which Polybius calls λιτόν signifies a cheap helmet not made with elaborate workmanship. It does not signify that it was merely a small skin, but that it was supported with linen or wool to break blows; perhaps the hides were also doubled. Statius describes the arms of countrymen:
Their weapons were rough trunks; their helmets, the empty mouths of lions.
Lipsius himself says that helmets were of leather or similar material, with some iron applied in lines or circles. The leather, therefore, was either doubled or supported by another material. Indeed, I approve more the view that skins were placed upon caps, or that the helmets were made from hides doubled or compressed more frequently. For Vegetius, in book 1, chapter 20, calls them caps: “Almost to the present age the custom remained that all soldiers used caps which they called Pannonian and which were made from hides. This was preserved so that a heavy helmet should not seem burdensome in battle to a man who always wore something upon his head.” The caps were therefore heavy in some proportion to the metal helmet.
Furthermore, we learn from Virgil that terrifying shapes were placed upon helmets; Turnus is described in book 7:
Turnus himself, preeminent in body, moves
Among the foremost, holding arms, and towers by a whole head above them.
His lofty helmet, crested with a triple mane, supports
A Chimaera breathing Aetnean fires from its jaws.
The Cimbri were also equipped in this fashion. Plutarch, in his Marius, says that the helmets of the Cimbrian horsemen were distinguished by feathers and by the forms of bristling animals. Diodorus Siculus, in book 2, says that the kings of the Egyptians bore the heads of lions, bulls, and dragons upon their own heads as insignia of rule. This gradually ceased in Christian times, and to wish to employ such terrors against a known enemy is childish. These things, if I may say so, have passed into family insignia; hence comes the variety among nobles when they display shield and helmet.
§ 7. The cassis was of bronze or iron, sometimes of silver or mixed metals. Camillus manufactured very many helmets entirely of iron and smooth around the circumference, so that swords might either glide upon them or be broken.
At the sides were cheekpieces which covered the cheeks or sides of the face. Servius commands bronze helmets for the wealthy; this sufficiently shows that bronze defenses were used earlier than iron ones.
§ 8. Crests served for ornament and terror. Polybius says: “In addition to all these things they are adorned with a feathered crown and three upright feathers, either purple or black, a cubit in length. When these are added upon the crown of the head to the other arms, the man appears twice as large, the sight is beautiful, and it is terrifying to the enemy.” Lipsius translates στεφάνῳ as “crest,” for Polybius is not speaking of a crown, although it bears some resemblance to a crown.
That crest, or feathered crown, was fixed to the top of the helmet and was called by the Greeks both λόφος and φάλος. Indeed, there were also tubes into which the crests were inserted. Centurions had transverse and silvered crests so that they might be recognized more readily. Those of the others stood upright; when damaged in frequent battles they hung down and spread out.
Purple crests belonged to distinguished men. The crests of Turnus were red; Hannibal’s were snow-white. Later they also employed the colored feathers of peacocks.
There were generally three crests, for “the lofty helmet was crested with a triple mane.” In Virgil Mezentius is bristling with a horsehair crest. Hence in the helmets and insignia of nobles there are either crests or other signs, such as horns, beams, and fixed colors. That other objects were borne in place of feathers is established by the history of Pyrrhus, who was recognized τῷ τε λόφῳ διαφέροντι καὶ τοῖς τραγικοῖς κέρασιν—by his remarkable crest and goat’s horns. But as regards all these things, and indeed arms generally, men changed them in various ways, and everything had to be changed on account of enemies, because by these and other arms they render ancient arms useless and compel the adoption of new ones.
§ 9. The cassis, therefore, was of bronze; Polybius calls it περικεφαλαίαν χαλκῆν:
Their heads covered in bronze, they rise above the battle lines with their crests.
Camillus made helmets of bronze and iron, smooth about their circumference, against the enormous swords of the Gauls. They were bound beneath the chin with a strap, and the face was bare. Now many cover the face so that they are exposed to a wound only where they see out through the eyes. Marcellinus observed such helmets among the Persians. In 1 Samuel 17:38 and 5, and 1 Maccabees 6:35, men use bronze helmets. Our men temper iron by a new method so that it repels balls.
§ 10. Another covering of the body was the parma. Polybius says, ἡ δὲ πάρμη, and continues:
καὶ δύναμιν ἔχει τῇ κατασκευῇ καὶ μέγεθος ἀρκοῦν πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν.
“The parma possesses both strength from its construction and sufficient size for safety.” This belonged to the light-armed soldiers.
The strength of the parma did not come from its material, for it was not made from metal, but from leather, or leather and wood; and the wood was either solid, woven wicker, or little boards joined and bound together.
The shape of the parma was round—περιφερής—according to Polybius and Nonius. On the testimony of Aemilius Probus, Iphicrates gave his men peltae in place of the parma, from which they were named peltasts.
Polybius writes that the size of the parma was τρίπεδον ἔχει τὴν διάμετρον. Thus, Lipsius says, it has nine feet in circumference; but then it is not that short little parma and small shield. He doubts whether by the word “diameter” the circumference itself, περιφέρεια, is meant. Then, indeed, it would be a very small parma, for the true diameter would be one foot. Marius removed the little parmae and substituted Brutiana—that is, shields with which the Bruttians were accustomed to fight. But it cannot be that they were one foot across: for what would this contribute to protection, or ἀσφάλειαν, as Lipsius rightly objects to himself? It appears foolish, since the parma occupied the left hand, to have made it so small that it did not defend the man fighting and yet impeded him. Pliny says that the parma is what the Greeks call the pelta, and that they also call it a cetra. But although each was a short shield, their shapes were different: the pelta had the appearance of a half-full moon. Virgil, book 1:
She leads the battle lines of Amazons with their crescent-shaped peltae.
§ 11. The shield and buckler are related to the parma.
The shield was two and one-half feet in width and four feet in length. The larger kind had a palm more.
Polybius says that the material of the shield was ἐκ διπλοῦ σανιδώματος, “from a double planking.” Thus it is agreed that two boards were compacted with linen by means of bull glue. But Lipsius adds that it was woven together from small planks; for Varro derives scutum from cutting, as if it were named from being cut because it was made from minute boards. Ammianus likewise says of Julian: “While Julian was still Caesar at Paris, he was exercising in the field and shaking a shield whose round surface was compacted from little boards; when these were shaken loose to no purpose, only the handle remained.” Here, I confess, I hesitate and should wish an ancient shield to be shown to me. For that construction from little slats is laborious and not suited to strength. Accordingly, since the use of shields was so extensive, I do not doubt that they were more readily made.
First, it was much stronger and more resistant to blows if two boards were glued together crosswise than if there were only one. For one board is readily pierced along the dimension in which it is liable to split; but here the lines liable to split run in different directions. What is received into one board is held in the other and suffers delay. For one plank glued to another, with the lines running in a different direction, overcomes and contains it so that it cannot gape with cracks or be split.
Second, it is certain to me that some little planks had to equal the length and others the breadth. For the length could not be made from two or three pieces, because they cannot be glued on the part where the length of the wood is cut off. I do not sufficiently understand how it was made from little boards unless they were rather long, joined to one another and compacted with glue, with a little rod added as a kind of bond, as we learn from Ammianus. Pliny names in book 16, chapter 40 the woods most useful for this purpose: “The coldest are all aquatic woods; they are most pliant, and therefore most suitable for making shields, whose wound draws itself together immediately after a blow and closes; for that reason it transmits iron more stubbornly. In this class are the fig, willow, linden, birch, elder, and both kinds of poplar.” Of these the fig and willow are lightest and therefore most useful. From this we also learn that those shields are now altogether useless.
The shape of the shield was twofold: one was nearly flat and the other curved like a roof tile, of the kind Lipsius exhibits for us.
§ 12. Sometimes nothing was added beyond the little boards. Tacitus says of the Germans in book 2 of the Annals: “Not even shields strengthened by iron or sinew, but structures of wicker, or thin boards stained with color.” But the Romans strengthened and covered them with leather, both for firmness and so that the moisture by which willow boards would be loosened might be kept off by the leather; for glue cannot endure moisture.
They also frequently multiplied the hides, for they are light and pliant. Hence the ancients strengthened shields with a sevenfold fabric, even among the Trojans and Greeks. These were the arms used at that time because of the price of bronze and iron, which the common multitude of soldiers in those places could not afford. Certainly, in Sacred Scripture we read of bronze bucklers and shields among the most ancient peoples.
In addition to these there was an iron defense which Polybius calls σιάλωμα and which the Suda interprets σιδηρᾶν περιφέρειαν τῷ ῥωμαϊκῷ θυρεῷ: an iron rim or circumference of the Roman shield. Iron was added late, for Camillus was its originator; nevertheless, he added a bronze plate. Plutarch says in his Camillus:
τοῖς θυρεοῖς κύκλῳ περιήρμοσε λεπίδα χαλκῆν, ξύλου καθ’ αὑτὸ τὰς πληγὰς μὴ στέγοντος.
“He fitted a bronze plate in a circle to the shields, since the wood alone sustained blows insufficiently.” Against the great swords of the Gauls, brandished with powerful strength, the resourceful commander devised this. That circumference was sometimes silver and sometimes gilded. Sidonius says that the light of the shields was snow-white on the rims and golden-yellow on the bosses. This occurred among the great and powerful.
The boss is the rounded iron projecting in the middle of the shield, called ἄμβων by the Greeks, a word which signifies the prominences of mountains and other things. Tertullian recognizes a boss even in clothing. The Greeks also sometimes call it ὀμφαλὸν ἀσπίδος. Polybius calls it σιδηρᾶ κόγχος and says that it turns aside ὁλοσχερεῖς πληγάς—the violent blows of stones, sarissas, and every violent kind of weapon.
They also drove enemies back with the boss: “Acilius drives those who meet him with the boss.” Lipsius has excellently observed that the shoulder and the arm itself are sometimes called the boss. They wheeled and shook the shield in such a way as to oppose the boss to every blow.
§ 13. There was little weight in a light shield and more in the larger. Now all those things would be impediments in war rather than aids. But let us consider their use among the ancients.
First, the Romans despised the shields of the Gauls as not strengthened by iron or sinew, but made of woven wicker, or of boards that were thin or stained with color. Therefore, before iron was added by Camillus, Roman shields too were weak.
Second, the boss resisted heavier blows; therefore, the rest of the shield was unequal to those blows and failed under repeated strokes. Thus Ajax also says of his own shield: “A new successor must be obtained.”
Third, it was sometimes so burdened with javelins and arrows that it was heavy for the bearer.
Fourth, its manipulation greatly fatigued the soldier, so that the left arm was wearied no less than the right.
Fifth, in battles themselves we frequently see shields pierced through, even together with the man himself, as many histories show.
If, therefore, we come to the wars of our own time, they would be impediments, not defenses. For, to say nothing of cannon, they would not sustain the blow of even any middling weapon. Since they were pierced by a cast javelin and by an arrow, they cannot resist even lesser forces of arms. Against shields our forefathers, before cannon were invented, employed chiefly three kinds of arms: the lances of horsemen, by which they carried away shield and man together; great swords, which they brandished with both hands, by which they split the shields set against them and struck them from the bearer’s hands; and, finally, two-edged axes, whose extremely violent blows rendered every shield useless. This armament took its origin from the Germans, Goths, and Lombards, whose great strength readily dashed shields away.
Shields, therefore, are now useless. In ancient times they too were frequently changed. Before Romulus, men used Argive bucklers, according to Plutarch. Romulus instituted shields, I believe because bucklers could not readily be obtained among a pastoral people. Hence Servius later restored bucklers, but commanded them for men who possessed a greater census. At Veii bucklers were omitted and shields retained. I do not sufficiently conjecture the cause: perhaps, since the soldiers’ pay was equal, they judged that the arms of the infantry ought also to be made equal. Lipsius thinks so.
The θυρεός was the shield of the Greeks. It was so called from its likeness to a θύρα, a door, because its length was greater than its width, Athenaeus 4 and 6.
§ 14. The Greeks had bucklers; they called them ἀσπίδας. Homer calls one εὐκύκλος because they were round.
§ 15. The ancients had various kinds of cuirasses, and it is wonderful that so great a care was devoted to them when there were no cannon. Titus is described in Hegesippus, book 3, chapter 14: “We advance into war protected on every side: a helmet covers the head, a cuirass the breast, and a buckler the whole body. The enemy cannot discover where he may strike a Roman soldier.” Nor is this an amplification. Claudian, in book 2 Against Rufinus:
Joined together by art,
The flexible plate comes alive upon the limbs it covers,
Terrible to behold: you would believe iron statues to move
And men to breathe through their kindred metal.
Not only a poet but also the historian Ammianus speaks in the same manner: “You would believe them statues polished by the hand of Praxiteles, not men: slender circles of plates, fitted to the bending of their bodies, encircled them and were drawn over every limb, so that wherever necessity moved a joint, the clothing corresponded to it, its connection coherently fitted.”
But let us speak about the kinds of cuirasses.
In an earlier age most Roman soldiers did not cover the whole body with a cuirass, but only the breast with a plate:
οἱ μὲν οὖν πολλοὶ προσλαβόντες χάλκωμα σπιθαμιαῖον πάντῃ πάντως, ὃ προστίθενται μὲν πρὸ τῶν στέρνων, καλοῦσι δὲ καρδιοφύλακα, τελείαν ἔχουσι τὴν καθόπλισιν.
“Most take a bronze plate which measures a span, or twelve digits, on every side and place it upon the breast, and thereby possess complete armor.” They call it καρδιοφύλακα, which Lascaris renders “heart-guard”; Lipsius calls it a breastplate. Polybius says it was a bronze plate; Varro and others say that the breastplate was made from raw leather. But I believe that leather cuirasses ceased to be used because they afforded too little protection and heated those fighting very greatly.
Those who were more honorable and stronger covered the breast, belly, and the parts below with a cuirass, as Pausanias testifies in book 1. They connected the two parts of the cuirass at the sides with clasps, and this was called the proper and full armor. Those men belonged to the first class and were assessed at more than ten thousand drachmas, as Polybius says.
Those cuirasses were threefold. They were either made from a whole plate, as most are today, or ringed and woven from little chains, which the Greeks call ἁλυσιδωτούς. Virgil calls it “a cuirass joined with hooks and triple-woven with gold.” The third kind was of scale armor, λεπιδωτῶν θωράκων:
Clad in a gleaming breastplate,
He bristled with bronze scales.
The scales were sometimes joined by little chains, sometimes to linen, and sometimes spread over leather.
In the Suda the Parthian horsemen, whom the Latins later imitated and call clibanarii, are armed as follows: “The cuirass of a Parthian horseman is of this kind. Its front part covers the breast, thighs, extremities of the hands, and legs; the rear part covers the back, neck, and entire head. Clasps are at the sides, by which they join both parts and thus cause the entire horseman to appear iron. Yet the iron neither prohibits nor impedes the extensions or contractions of the limbs; it is so carefully made and divided according to the nature of the limbs. They also arm the horse similarly with iron, wholly and down to the hooves. They do this because their own armor profits them nothing if the horse is killed.”
This was the strength of soldiery then, and it is so now. Ammianus calls them iron plates “in the manner of a slender feather”; and Virgil:
He drove his foaming horse, which a covering joined
With gold in bronze scales, feather-like, protected.
Ammianus describes the armor more clearly in book 16: “On either side advanced a double line of armed men, bearing shields and crests and radiating with glittering light, clothed in polished cuirasses. Scattered among them were armored horsemen—whom the Persians call clibanarii—protected by coverings of breastplates and encircled with iron bands, so that you would believe them statues polished by the hand of Praxiteles, not men. Slender circles of plates, fitted to the bending of their bodies, encircled them and were drawn over every limb, so that wherever necessity moved a joint, the clothing corresponded to it, its connection coherently fitted.”
He teaches in book 25 how men resisted them: “Representations of human faces were so carefully fitted to their heads that missiles falling upon their bodies plated solidly with metal could lodge only where sight was afforded sparingly through minute cavities attached to the circles of the eyes, or where narrow breaths were emitted at the extremity of the nostrils.”
Great men had scales, for they were easy to carry and resisted blows by the very fact that they yielded somewhat. More wonderful is the fact that they made scales from the hooves of horses and other animals. Pausanias describes them in book 1: “They make breastplates as follows. Each man keeps many horses. They use them not only in war, but also sacrifice them to their ancestral gods. Collecting their hooves, cleaning and cutting them, they make from them something like the scales of dragons; or, if someone has not seen a dragon but has seen the green fruit of a pine, he will not err if he likens the work to those segments or little swellings upon the cone. Therefore, piercing these little scales and sewing them together with horse or ox sinews, they have cuirasses for use, inferior to the Greek ones neither in beauty nor in strength. For when struck at close quarters or assailed by a cast weapon, they resist and withstand it.”
Homer shows that linen breastplates were of the most ancient use, for in him Ajax is λινοθώραξ, “linen-cuirassed”; I should believe them to have been among the earliest arms.
They are sometimes used in this age, but they resist iron or balls only slightly. They were suitable for hunters, for they blunt or break teeth. Ringed cuirasses have almost ceased to be used, since when the rings are broken by a ball they cause several wounds; their fragments lodge in bodies and cannot readily be extracted.
They also had woolen breastplates pressed together, or made of felt; they added vinegar so that they would resist iron. A sponge too was a covering for the breast. But lest such things be made heavy by rain, they were covered with hides. Things of this kind are strongly approved even now; for if they are protected by a moderate cuirass, by which the force of a ball is broken, it is arrested by this felt.
Meanwhile, at almost the present time strong, heavy iron cuirasses are in use, like the one in Plutarch’s Demetrius, which repelled a missile from a ballista and received only a light scratch, as if from an engraving tool. But such cuirasses were very rare. For even swords overcame the common armor. Diodorus says:
οὔτε θυρεὸς οὔτε κράνος οὔτε ὀστοῦν ὑπομένει τὴν πληγήν.
“Neither shield, nor helmet, nor bone sustains the blow”—namely, that of the Spanish sword. Plutarch likewise relates in his Perseus that the swords of the Romans, by their weight and impact, passed through every kind of armor to the bodies. But now no one would deign to carry armor that did not resist even a sword.
§ 16. Vegetius assigns iron greaves to the legs—one upon the right leg, which comes forward in a stationary battle; but when men fought with missiles, the left leg came forward. The ancients, nevertheless, had both legs covered.
§ 17. Horsemen did not have cuirasses at first, as Polybius reports, for they made it their concern to mount a horse readily, since they did not have grooms, or ἀναβολεῖς, to help them mount. This was strictly exacted. Vegetius, book 1, chapter 18: “The exercise of mounting horses was always strictly exacted not only from recruits but also from soldiers receiving pay. It is evident that this custom has survived to our own age, although even with some concealment. Wooden horses were placed under cover in winter and in the field in summer. At first the younger men were compelled to mount these unarmed until they became proficient by habit, and finally while armed. So great was the care that they learned together not only to leap on and off from the right but also from the left side, even while holding drawn swords or pikes. For they did this by constant practice, namely so that amid the tumult of battle those who were so diligently exercised in peace might mount without delay.”
The shields of the horsemen were made from pure leather, which, if it had not been sufficiently hardened, was rendered useless by rain. They called it the cetra, a leather shield without wood. I believe that it was also made from another material, and sometimes from hardened leather which water would not harm. Without doubt it would be ridiculous to advance into our warfare with that defense.
§ 18. As a conclusion I shall add what Vegetius has in book 1, chapter 20 concerning arms:
“The place requires that we attempt to relate with what kind of arms recruits ought either to be equipped or defended. But in this part the ancient custom has been utterly destroyed. For although, after the example of the Goths, Alans, and Huns, the arms of the horsemen have advanced, it is established that the infantrymen have been stripped bare. From the founding of the city down to the time of the deified Gratian, the infantry army was protected both with armored breastplates and helmets. But when field exercise ceased through the intervention of negligence and sloth, the arms which the soldiers wore only rarely began to seem heavy. Thus they ask the emperor first to lay aside the armored breastplates, and then the helmets. In this way, meeting the Goths with breasts and heads uncovered, our soldiers were often destroyed by the multitude of archers. Even after so many disasters, which reached the destruction of such great cities, no one took care to restore either armored breastplates or helmets to the infantry.
“Thus it happens that men who were exposed naked to wounds in the battle line think not about fighting but about flight. For what can an infantry archer do without armored breastplate and helmet, when he cannot hold a shield along with his bow? What will the draconarii themselves and the standard-bearers do in battle, who govern the spears with the left hand, when it is established that both their heads and breasts are bare? But a cuirass and perhaps a helmet appear heavy to an infantryman who seldom practices and seldom handles arms. Daily use, however, does not labor even if it carries burdensome things. But those who cannot bear the labor of carrying the ancient defenses of arms are compelled, with bodies uncovered, to sustain both wounds and death; and, what is more grievous and more shameful, either to be captured or certainly to betray the state by flight. Thus, while they avoid exercise and labor, they are slaughtered like cattle with the greatest disgrace.
“Why, then, was the infantry army called a wall among the ancients, unless because the legions armed with javelins shone not only with shields but also with armored breastplates and helmets? This went so far that the archers protected the left arm with sleeves, while the shield-bearing infantrymen were compelled, in addition to armored breastplates and helmets, to receive iron greaves on their right legs. Thus were those men protected who, fighting in the first line, were called principes, in the second hastati, and in the third triarii. But the triarii, their knees placed upon the ground, were accustomed to crouch behind their shields lest, while standing, they be wounded by incoming missiles; and when necessity required it, as men who had rested they attacked the enemies more violently. It is established that victory was often achieved by them when the hastati and those who had stood before them had perished.
“Among the ancient infantrymen there were also those who were called light-armed troops, slingers, and ferentarii. They were stationed principally upon the wings, and the beginning of the fighting was taken from them. The swiftest and most highly trained men were selected for these troops. They were not very numerous; if the necessity of battle compelled them to withdraw, they were accustomed to be received between the front ranks of the legions, so that the battle line stood unmoved.
“Almost to the present age the custom remained that all soldiers used caps made of hides, which they called Pannonian. This was preserved so that a heavy helmet would not seem burdensome in battle to a man who always wore something upon his head. The missiles which the infantry army employed were called javelins. They were tipped with slender, three-edged iron, nine inches or one foot long; when fixed in a shield, they could not be cut away, and when directed skillfully and forcefully, they readily break through a cuirass. Among us weapons of this kind are now rare. But barbarian shield-bearing infantrymen chiefly employ them. They call them bebras and carry two or even three apiece in battles.
“It must be known, moreover, that when missiles are being employed, soldiers ought to put their left feet forward; for in this way the blow is stronger when darts are brandished. But when they come to the javelins, as they call them, and fight hand to hand with swords, then soldiers ought to put their right feet forward, so that their flanks may be withdrawn from the enemies and cannot receive a wound, and so that the right hand which can inflict the blow may be nearer. It is therefore established that recruits must be instructed and protected by every art of fighting and with every kind of arms. For it is necessary that he who, with his head or breast protected, does not fear a wound should acquire boldness for fighting.”
§ 19. At that time the Roman army was neglected. For Valens admitted the Goths and, trusting in their protection, despised his own soldiery—not altogether without reason, since they were accustomed to become more famous for the slaughter of their own emperors than for victory against an enemy. Gratian, through the same error, trusted the Alans and suffered the treachery of his own men. Vegetius calls a defense of the breast and a cuirass cataphractae: all the καταφράξεις, or defensive coverings, which enclose and protect the body. Stripped bare in this way, they were thrown into confusion by the attack of the Goths, as Paul the Deacon, book 12, and Orosius indicate: “At the first attack of the Goths the companies of Roman horsemen were thrown into confusion and abandoned the naked infantrymen, who were soon surrounded by the enemy cavalry and overwhelmed by clouds of arrows.”
Afterward they protected themselves with the thoracomachus, concerning which Stewech writes from the Notitia Imperii: “Among all the things which provident antiquity devised against warfare for posterity, it also placed beneath the weight and harshness of the arms the thoracomachus, of wonderful usefulness for relieving the body. For anxious concern, with skill as its teacher, composed this kind of garment from soft wools compressed to the measure and protection of the human breast. Thus, after this was first put on, the cuirass, the clibanus, or things similar to these would not injure the frailty of the body by the harshness of their weight; and the limbs of the wearer, aided by such relief amid the danger of arms and winter, might suffice for the labor. But lest this same thoracomachus, beaten by rains, afflict the wearer with increasing weight, it will be suitable to draw over its surface well-prepared Libyan hides made in the likeness of the same thoracomachus. Therefore, as we have said, after the thoracomachus has been put on—a Greek appellation which took its name from the protection of the body—and after he has also put on low shoes, that is, footwear, and iron greaves, and a helmet has been placed above, with a shield and sword fitted to his side and lances seized in full array, the soldier about to enter an infantry battle will be armed.”
But this too was changed and did not remain in use for long. Against the force of spears, especially those with a narrow point, the iron could accomplish nothing. Then great expense and labor had to be employed in preparing the hides. Most grievous of all, those wrapped in a woolen fabric flowed with sweat, and it weakened the wearer in the battle line.
Hence it appears that everything depends upon the coverings’ being light and impenetrable. If any commander could join these two qualities, he would easily obtain the empire of the world.
Hence came so many changes of arms, continuing even to the present day: first coverings of iron or bronze, then of wood and leather, then once more of iron and bronze—sometimes light, sometimes heavy. Dio says that Macrinus removed the scaled breastplates and shields which were like channels, but curved in the manner of roof tiles, so that he might render the soldiers readier for battle. But as he made them more agile, so he also made them weaker and more exposed.