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Late Roman legionary re-enactor with plumbata, lead-weighted darts that replaced the javelin
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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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Historical Artifacts
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I thought the javelin was Greek and the pilum was Roman. I don't see how these could actually replace a javelin or pilum since part of the point was to use the weight to force the enemy to drop their shield. I'm no historian, though.
Edit: autocorrect
Javelin is a generic term, pilum is a term for a specific kind of Roman javelin. The replacement is in that Roman soldiers started carrying these darts instead of pila - while pila were more general-purpose and heavy-duty weapons, these light plumbata were much more of a harassing tool that a soldier could carry more of.
Cost savings measure. In addition to being heavy for the troops to carry, it was expensive to make.