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Pilum. The pilum (Latin: [ˈpiːɫʊ̃]; pl.: pila) was a javelin commonly used by the Roman army in ancient times. It was generally about 2 m (6 ft 7 in) long overall, consisting of an iron shank about 7 mm (0.28 in) in diameter and 600 mm (24 in) long with a pyramidal head, attached to a wooden shaft by either a socket or a flat tang.
A sturdy pilum that does not bend upon impact would be in line with the numerous historical Roman writings that state the pilum was often used as a weapon in melee combat: For example, in "The Gallic Wars" Caesar writes that at Alesia his troops used the pila as spears or pikes. In the "Life of Pompey" and "Life of Antony", Plutarch describes ...
The light pilum would have weighed a more serviceable 2.2 kg (4.9 lb). [49] The pilum used during the earlier period was not as sophisticated as the fully developed weapon used in the later Republic: it did not feature lead counterweights or a buckling shank until around 150 BC. [50]
An NRS-2 combination knife/gun was designed and developed during the 1970s at the order of the Russian Ministry of Defence and KGB of the USSR. [5] However, the NRS-2 was not in fact a ballistic knife, but a gun hybrid (instead of launching the blade, a small barrel aligned with the blade fires a non-standard 7.62mm bullet).
The first examples seem to have been carried by the Ancient Greeks from about 500 BC onwards, but the best-known users were the late Roman and Eastern Roman armies.The earliest and best written source for these weapons refers to a period around 300 AD, though the document was composed around 390–450 AD.
Peter Connolly also researched the matter. Connolly wrote that the cavalry spear was depicted as a primary weapon (rather than a Roman pilum which could be thrown once, like a javelin) and thus should be able to be used repeatedly. Connolly arranged for a modern horse rider to test out reconstructed spears of several of the possible lengths ...
The pilum in the late Republic consisted of a pyramidal iron head atop a 60–90 centimetre long soft iron shank, which was attached to a wooden shaft. [45] Once the pilum struck a hard surface, the unhardened iron shank would buckle under the weight of the shaft; this prevented the enemy from throwing it back. The pilum's narrow point, long ...
A spiculum is a late Roman spear [1] that replaced the pilum as the infantryman's main throwing javelin around 250 AD. Scholars suppose that it could have resulted from the gradual combination of the pilum and two German spears, the angon and the bebra. As more and more Germans joined the Roman army, their culture and traditions became a ...