For hundreds of years the Roman Pilum gave the Roman Army superiority over its enemies that was unmatched by the spears and javelins of its enemies.  I own two replicas, the first, a Windlass Steelcrafts Pilum, made in India. the second, an elegant Mark Morrow handmade pilum, which is about as close to the real weapon of antiquity that  I can imagine.  After buying that first pilum and trying to get it to resemble the real weapons reportedly used by Roman armies, and then comparing it to the Mark Morrow pilum, a sense of how the pilum was really used by Roman legions can be gained only by the American replica. 

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How the pilum was used according to legend

In close order combat the Roman infantryman typically used three weapons that made him superior to nearly all his opponents, the scutum, or heavy Roman shield, the pilum which was a heavy javelin or throwing spear, and the short sword or gladius.  Each legionnaire carried one or two pila, which he threw at his enemies from a range of up to 30 meters.  The primary purpose of the pilum was to take an enemy soldier out of combat one way or the other, either by killing or wounding him or by forcing him to throw away his shield which would make him an easy victim for the Roman soldier's short sword.  The pilum employed a long metal shank of soft steel or iron with a small barbed point.  Throughout a time period of roughly 300 b.c. to 400 a.d. the pilum evolved into a number of incarnations but in general there were two major types, the tanged and the socketed pilum.  But it was during the time of Marius, around 100 b.c. that the pilum was transformed into a weapon that would typically bend upon piercing an enemy shield or striking the ground or whose long metal shank would break off from its wooden handle section due to replacing the metal rivets that formerly fastened the wooden and steel components of the pilum together with a single wooden pin that would break upon impact.  By this time the concept was to make it extremely difficult for the enemy to recover pila that had been thrown at them  so that they could throw them back at the Romans. 

The Windlass Pilum

I received my Windlass Pilum from Cult of Athena at the Banglamung Post office which is a couple of miles from my condo here in Thailand.  This was the first time I was to ever receive a weapon through the mail.  In the condo lobby at our security desk a notice was waiting for me that I should pick up a package that was waiting for me at the post office which I could take home after paying the duty which amounted to something like ten dollars.  It only took five minutes to retrieve the package from the post office after I took the notice to a window where I paid what I owed.  I then took my pilum back with me in its box on my motorbike which I opened back in my condo.  The pilum had been shipped in two pieces.   The first was the handle which was something like 1 1/8th inches in diameter and two and a half feet long.  The other was the wooden tang to which a steel shaft and point had been fastened.   A hole had been drilled into the bottom part of the tang into which I inserted the handle. 

The first thing that I noticed about the Windlass Pilum was that the steel shaft and point had not been painted.  It had been left in the white which made it appear to be pretty inauthentic.  Moreover, it would easily rust in Thailand's humid climate.  But that was easily remedied by spray painting the pointed shaft with flat black paint.  The second thing I noticed was the absence of a metal butt spike on either the wooden handle or in the package.  The third thing I noticed was that after assembling the wooden handle to the rest of the pilum that the spear did not appear to be absolutely straight when I stuck it out horizontally in front of me.  I tried to straighten the pilum by taking the handle out of the tang and reinserting it several times.  Finally I resorted to having our Thai maintenance man take the pilum to a welding shop in order to straighten it.  When I got it back it was a little better but it still wasn't as straight as it should have been. 

After going to a number of web sites to read more about pila I then discovered that the wooden handle with its over 1 inch diameter was simply too thick to be historically accurate.  I also realized that it was far too point heavy due to the steel shaft being something like fourteen inches too long in comparison to other pila which employed a shorter steel shaft and point.  I got the impression that the thing had been designed more as a thrusting or stabbing spear than a javelin that was meant to be thrown at one's enemies. 

I then took the tang with the steel pointed shaft assembly to a welding shop and had the shop cut 14 inches off the shaft from the point down, cut the point from this 14 inch section of severed shaft and to weld the point back onto the much shortened remainder of the steel shaft that was still riveted into the tang.   I then went to Home Pro which is Thailand's answer to Lowe's and Home Depot's home improvement centers in the U.S. where I bought a five foot long wooden dowel of smaller diameter than the original wooden handle had been.  The trouble was that the dowel's diameter had been measured in centimeters and millimeters whereas the original handle had been sized in fractions of inches.  When I got the dowel back home I found it to fit too loosely into the hole that had been bored into the pilum's wooden tang. 

Cutting the dowel into a length that I felt more accurately reflected the dimensions of real pila that might have been used by the Romans was no real problem.   The difficult part was trying to get it to fit tightly into the hole.  I used a piece of a rag to make it fit more tightly.  I even used silicon.  Finally I drilled two holes through the tang and into the wooden dowel that I had inserted into the hole.  I was able to get the whole thing to fit more tightly together but it was still not quite up to what it should have been.  Nevertheless, I now had a pilum that seemed to have the right dimensions as far as the steel pointed shank and the wooden handle as well as the diameter of the handle itself.

And then I finally got the Gladius from Mark Morrow which completely spoiled me.  What would a Mark Morrow made pilum really be like?  I started to ask myself.  Once again I started to study pila on the internet and it's then that I started to realize that there were pila out there that I could have bought which used much thinner steel shafts than the thick steel shaft I had gotten from Windlass.  So what I had put on my wall even after all the altering I had done to it still wasn't authentic at all.  It was time to call Mark Morrow.

He could send a pilum out to me in two sections, Mark told me on the phone.  Otherwise it would cost me more to have him ship it to me in one piece than the actual pilum was worth, Mark told me.   Which was a real shame considering it was just a hundred and fifty dollar item, Mark continued.  The trouble was because the pilum was roughly six feet long it could not fit into a normal box that could be shipped at a reasonable rate.  I had the option of receiving the pilum from Mark in two pieces while saving a large amount in the shipping cost but then I'd have to rivet the thing together again.  First, I did not have the equipment.  Second, I did not have the skill, and third, even though I might have taken it to the welding shop to get this done, who's to say that the people there would do the job precisely enough to satisfy me?  After all, the Windlass pilum had not gotten to me as a perfectly straight piece.   I had to have a perfect replica of a real Roman pilum on my wall.  So I wound up paying a lot of extra money just for the shipping.

The Mark Morrow Pillum

For someone of Mark's skill as a blacksmith and custom sword and knife maker, creating a $150 pilum is not really a big deal--not when you measure it against the skill it takes for his much more complex projects such as a samurai sword that is heat treated the way the traditional Japanese sword smith's made their artistic masterpieces.  But what I got was truly elegant. 

The thing was made to be thrown with accuracy and precision.  The entire pilum was perfectly straight for one thing.  The wooden handle was unvarnished but still utterly smooth so that it felt good in the hand.  But the entire shaft and point were so much smaller in diameter than the Windlass pilum.  Upon coming out of the wooden tang into which it had been riveted, the shaft was angular.  But the thickness of the piece kept getting smaller the closer one got to the point.  Finally what had started out being four flat angular edges had been transformed into a  thin tubular section of steel.

The pilum was very well balanced and it felt lighter than what it actually is.  Moreover the point was much narrower and longer than what I had expected or what I had seen in so many pictures.  With a longer narrow point like that flowing into such a small diameter stem there was no question as to this pilum's ability to penetrate. 

What the Mark Morrow Pilum shows me

First----that the pilum was all about maximum penetration.  Whereas the Roman gladius with its very wide blade would open up large wound channels, this pilum could only make small holes into whatever it pierced.  This meant that other types of spears with much larger points on them would kill much more quickly simply because they would engage more arteries, organs and other vulnerable parts of the body. 

Second--But that's the entire point.   The Mark Morrow pilum has a narrow shank especially where it's close to the point.  This means if the shank and point were to drive into a piece of plywood for instance, it's going to drive deeply through it and due to the narrow hole it makes in the plywood it's going to be much more time consuming and difficult to pull the shank out of the plywood than if a much broader point had been thrust into it.   And--a spear that cannot penetrate armor or a shield is useless no matter how large a wound channel it's capable of making. 

Third---You don't want pila that break off as soon as they enter an enemy's shield.   You want the enemy warrior to be encumbered to the max by having the  steel shaft, the tang and the wooden handle to be protruding out of it, not just the steel shaft.  So using a wooden peg to lightly secure the steel shaft to the tang so that the assembly easily breaks could very easily leave the enemy soldier free to use his shield that is only partially encumbered by only the weight and length of the steel shaft itself.

Fourth---The idea of purposely making pila to bend easily by using soft steel makes no sense whatsoever.  First....the concept behind this myth is that one ends up having the ground littered up by bent pila that the enemy cannot throw back at the Romans.   The victorious Romans then gather up their own weapons which the legion's armorer's then re-bend to straighten the steel shafts.  My Windlass pilum was slightly bent and even a skilled welder could not straighten it to my satisfaction.  One can conclude then that once a steel shaft is bent it's going to be very difficult to straighten it enough so that it can be re-used with any degree of accuracy.  Not only that, but just imagine 5000 or 10000 pila being unleashed at an enemy which commences a second charge the next day or even one hour after he's initially repulsed.  Can we expect the legion's armorer's to straighten all those bent pila this quickly?  It is much more logical to expect the victorious Roman legionnaires to scamper out into the battlefield to recover their own weapons after initially repulsing the enemy. 

Fifth---It's not necessary to use soft steel for pila just so that an enemy can't find the time to pull a pilum out of his shield.  Let's figure that each legionaire carries two pila.  He throws his first pila at his enemy at say 25 meters, tops.   The enemy starts going down from thousands of pila descending into their ranks as the Romans come within twenty meters range.  At ten meters out the Romans unleash their second volley of pila.  By the time the enemy is going down from this second volley the Romans have unleashed their short swords from a range of five meters.  Now let me ask this question.  When will the enemy have the time to pull the pila from his shields? And which hand  will use use?  Will he drop his weapon from his right hand if he's right handed to attempt to pull out a protruding pilum?  Will he drop his shield and calmly try to extract the pilum sticking through it with his hand while he steps on the shield with his foot?  Or will he throw his now disabled shield onto the ground while trying to defend himself as best as he can with his weapon?  Soft steel, hard steel, it's not going to make any difference whatsoever, that shield has been rendered useless in that very small interval it takes for the Romans to come within range of their short swords.

Sixth--Roman infantry also had to fight off enemy cavalry with their pila.  In at least one commentary Julius Caesar is reported to have ordered his soldiers to go for the eyes of their enemies with their pila.   I am assuming he meant the eyes of the horses the enemy cavalrymen were riding.  In situations such as these having a pilum that would easily bend or break would be a complete liability. 

Conclusion--- It is a myth that the Roman pilum was made from soft steel so that it would bend to keep the enemy from throwing it back at the Romans. It's also a total crock that pila were designed to easily separate at the tang where the steel pointed shaft is fastened by rivets or wooden pegs as described in such legends.  The Roman pila were primarily designed to be thrown which meant that the Roman infantry had unpredented firepower that usually greatly exceeded that of his enemies.   This meant that if a Roman legion had 5000 heavy infantry, there were 5000 short ranged artillerymen since every man was armed with longer ranged weapons than swords and similar short ranged weapons.  In those days when archers comprised a relatively small percentage of one's total army, this  was equivalent giving nearly every soldier a bow with the caveat that his range was restricted to twenty-five meters.  Coupled with the unique ability of the pilum to penetrate the shields of an enemy and to make them useless, this usually gave the Roman army an incalculable advantage over its enemies unless they were similarly equipped.