You are the only one who cares to make video about the Byzantine scutum and the long spear because i searched on UA-cam to find one video like this and i don't find other.Well done. Noone else even more and some organisation of HEMA they don't had make such video. Only one complaint so few likes?Come on guys.
Spears are generally underrated. Lindybeige and Scholagladiatoria collaborated on a video where a guy with a spear and shield went at all comers at a hema fight camp. The guy won most duels he got into.
Westerners are almost totally ignorant of the New Rome people and their history. A lot of times in the US I have said "the Eastern Church" and I get a blank look.
I’ve always wondered about Byzantine swords. As a hema practitioner I love the unique use of much more forward weighted Carolingian and Saxon swords but have no familiarity with how Byzantine swords of the same period behave.
I’m planning on doing an in depth video on my Galovo spathion. Im not a hema practitioner, so love some input on points you’d want covered in that video!
@@southpawskutatoi It is hard to condense on UA-cam, but as this is recontstructive based more on artifacts and vague art, not manuals, I wonder if the blade feels more forward weighted for cutting, or if maybe it had a healthy balance for cut and thrust. Also the small pommel is interesting which to me suggests a different use that Frankish swords with a large pommel to catch your hand.
Absolute banger, incredible discussion of the merits of different shield grips. Would love to see more about your takes on Roman military science and its interaction at the ground level, fascinating stuff
I still can't understand the lack of historical evidence, poetry anything from the longest lasting empire in the world. Thanks for making a video about the Byzantine !
@@melanoc3tusii205 Interesting, so why do you think the Byzantine empire is not a popular topic, it's almost unknown which is strange for the longest lasting empire in the world. Like no YT videos, no movies, no discussions etc.
It makes even more sense when you consider the tactics of that time such as the squares that the infantry would make so that the cavalry would have a safe area to retreat into and Sally out of to attack especially with the battles taking place in the east I believe it was the treatise you mentioned
@@southpawskutatoi would of been an absolutely amazing sight to behold with the horse archers and cataphracts it truly seems like an unbeatable strategy
I love the geometry the edge of the shield is often the weak point thus reinforced. However because the shield curves in it's far more likely to glance off.
Absolutely! I’d love a more in depth look at this from the HEMA community. Literally all we can really go off of is an opening line from the Praecepta Militaria, “It is both best and necessary to pick out foot soldiers from Byzantines and Armenians, heavy infantrymen large in stature and no more than forty years of age, then train them properly to use their shields, to be warlike and fit for all occasions, to maneuver with their spears, to defend themselves capably, and to fight against infantry with the same skills as theirs.” So we know there were methods of training how to fight with a spear and shield, just all the functional details have been lost.
From what I've seen of a lot of Viking age fencing videos is just the immense utility of center grips when fencing vs the other techniques (although I have fought large strapped shields of that size in SCA and they are almost impossible to get around), as it quite decisively turns the shield itself into a weapon and parrying tool able to deflect a lot of strikes from wrist rotation alone. Also helps minimize the amount of your body that might be struck by (almost certainly) overpenetrating missile hits.
Love the work you do man, keep it up. I would be curious to see the pike used a little more dynamically, like in a drill or sparring, seeing whether you could do some of the moves described in the later fechtbuchs with the big shield in place. The other thing I’d be super interested in is using a shorter spear in overarm grip, like some of the Byzantine manuscripts show.
That’s a good suggestion, once I have someone else to do it with I’d totally be into looking more into it. My intuition tells me they might have just not been as dynamic with these infantry formations than others with short spears.
Having such a limited amount of arm movement behind the shield while holding a kontarion will couse your shield to flop arround and make you voulnorable to enemy projectiles and pikes. We have multiple representations of twohanded spears being used with a shield and most of them show a baldric/shieldbelt in use , simillarly to later western European presentations. I would suggest installing it on your shield and using just one of the C grip loops for less shield movement while operating the pike. I posted this type of suspension a few days ago on byz army fb page. What type of wood is the kontarion it is extreamly wobbly ?
He is a frontline skoutatos. This is specifically designed for battle in phalanx formations where there are shieldmen left and right to him. He is not duelling one-on-one so he is not supposed to be manouverable. But other than that he is yet experimenting with spear holding techniques but his gripping is correct. He might need a baldrick.
@@Stavraetos12 I'd say that except for a baldric a horizontal grip lower down would be useful for carrying the shield with the arm extended down vertically (like a suitcase) as was done with the horizontal grip scutum of earlier times. This wouldn't be of much use in combat but it would be priceless for carrying the shield around without tiring the arm.
Hey! Yea I saw your post. I think it looks like a nice way to spar and seems sturdy enough. However, I don’t think I’ve seen your style of H grip represented in any artistic depictions. My aim was to marry what we see in artwork and textual sources, not to create the best set up, but the one we can most prove with sources. I do have a guige strap, but removed it for the sake of clarity on this video. Thanks for the input!
@@southpawskutatoi"artists depiction." Lost all credibility there. The only thing this video will do is bolster the ego of someone I know who claims to be an expert after watching a few of Todd workshop videos.
@@BestMods168 you’re welcome to hold whatever opinion you have. But I know what I’m talking about. The purpose behind my kit is to make a period sourced kit. Most of my kit is based off of period archeological finds. Something most Byzantine reenactors can’t claim, although I think I see this changing. When the archeological evidence is lacking it’s necessary to rely on period textual and then artistic depictions of the pieces in question. Most Byzantine reenactors don’t even bother to try to reconcile parts of their kit like how shields were held, spear length, etc. for the sake of being more efficient in tap fights. That’s not what I’m doing here. Im basing as much of my kit as possible on the surviving evidence. Archeological, textual, and artistic, all working together to recreate the most historically plausible and sourced kit I can manage. If you have a better methodology or source for Byzantine shield strapping, please enlighten me.
What an outstanding analysis! On top of that, the effectiveness may be much more if we consider that the average height of most people at that epoch was likely to be way shorter than it is now.
Height and span are directly related to each other, so the taller you are usually your span is longer. About chest height is what we can expect for a six span shield.
those so nice to see. I also really like this period and byzantine style - its shame it dont gets so much attention in pop culture. Man I really need to get better shield, bcs mine is from 12mm plywood and glued linen but weighs double copared to this one :D
It’s surprising how sturdy a shield this thin is! It’s taken spear hits and I had a guy throw an axe at me haha. I should probably do a tutorial when I make the next one.
Very intersting! We made a video on sumerian warfare. They have a representation of some warrior in a thight formation. It is not very clear if they are people holding long spears with two hands and a shield like this one, or if they are spearmen and some axemen with shields covering them. After watching your video I wish we knew more on how they held their shields.
Very interesting. I’m not sure how much would carry over, as there are so many ways of holding a spear and shield, like the classical Macedonians for example, but it’s really cool to see just how many militaries came back to the long spear and shield combo! Cool example of convergent evolution ha
A possible lead is what we know of warfare in the Bronze-age Aegean. We have a lot of artwork, including the beautiful Combat Agate (really do check this one out, it’s easy to google and a genuinely stunning piece), which demonstrates how people fought with large, conch-like leather shields supported by a strap around the shoulders, in conjunction with two-handed spears/pikes. The most iconic of those shields had a figure-eight frontal profile (though they were so deeply curved that side-on depictions look nothing alike) but there was also a strain of more rectangular variants. The trouble with the Stele of the Vultures is first of all that there’s a whole lot of abstraction and symbolic representation at work, which makes interpretation difficult. But putting that aside the shields portrayed are perfectly rectangular, without the neck-guarding swell at the top characteristic of Mycenaean examples, and they also seem to possess umbos, which could indicate they were centre-gripped - although it’s quite possible that, say, they had both a centre grip and a telamon, or that the bosses were vestigial, or that the circles portrayed were some form of decorative element rather than umbos (doubtful, but possible), etc.
@@melanoc3tusii205 Thank you for your comment! Yes, Mycenaean warfare is indeed fascinating, we plan to have some animated episodes on this topic as soon as possible. As for the Stele of the Vultures, I agree that the abstraction makes interpretation tricky. But after a long discussion with reenactors and experts we lean on the Mycenean style of fighting as seen on the Lion Hunt dagger. But it's not unlikely that we will never know about this...unless some future archaeological digging in Iraq will give us new data.
Great video! The "chiasma" shield grip seems very convenient and versatile! I have some questions, though. Byzantine chronicler Leo the Deacon writes about medieval Rus' warriors of the second half of the 10th century (the war of Ioannes Tsimisches against Svyatoslav of Kyiv in Bulgaria): "their (Rus') shields are strong and reach their legs for greater safety" and "the Tauro-Scythians (=Rus') left the city and lined up on the plain, protected by chain mail and shields that reached to their very feet". Those "long shields" seem to be either kite shields or maybe some sort of proto-kite oblong shields. It is possible that Rus' warriors adopted Byzantine shields - Rus' were trading, fighting and serving as mercenaries in Byzantine army for more than a century at that time. But if Byzantines already used kite shields during that period, it seems weird that Leo the Deacon specifically mentioned that Rus' shields were especially long. Is it possible that it was other way around and Byzantines adopted long kite shields from Rus'? Or maybe Byzantine shields were shorter, while Rus' ones were especially long? Later Ioannos Kinnamos stated in his "Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenos" that, before the reforms of Manuel I Komnenos in the middle of the 12th century most of Byzantine cavalrymen used round shields, and Manuel’s reforms included the adoption (or readoption?) of longer kite shields reaching the feet of the horseman. So were kite shields used only by Byzantine infantry before those reforms?
There is great possibility that first rank held shields and swords, while second and third held those long spears with shields suspended on their backs. That would be very fair formation for both keeping enemy at a distance, and close combat in sword melee with the first rank also.
That’s not attested anywhere and seems dubiously effective. Each pikemen was also a swordsman; a line of swordsmen is just a line of pikemen deprived of their most effective weapon for combat against cavalry or rival infantry alike.
Hmmm… interesting thoughts. Because of you I remember my historical fencing past :). I am not a historical expert and not a good fencer, but I like and, at that time, hate kite shields. If you handle it like a regular triangle shield it has too long bottom corner and without proper support of this corner your opponent just strikes at the corner and moves your shield away from your body. And you receive the next strike directly to the body. As I know, there are two ways to support the bottom corner - rest in the ground or on your knee (as you did in the previous fencing video). By the way, both ways reduce your maneuverability, and this is also fatal in the duel against an agile opponent. However, it may work in dense infantry formation. But I have no idea how to operate such long spears with the shield on one hand. If you do not want to die, you need to make strikes as a sewing machine in every open gap in the opposite infantry formation. Just try to make 10-15 strikes per minute and aim at some different points (head, shoulders, stomach, knees) and you will throw this shield away because it will get in the way of proper aiming. Perhaps the Byzantines had some special fighting technique in exactly the format you describe, but it has not yet been possible to understand and reconstruct it. At least I haven't seen that. Thanks for the video! After watching I feel myself younger :)
Awesome stuff! Do the historical design commentaries mention the intended thickness at all? And have you sparred with the shield? As it is lightish, I would be curious how well it performs in blocking. Mass is good at absorbing energy from incoming blows, but you then have to carry it, and move it about. Having that grip certainly does lend itself to extending the arm.
The Byzantine Empire is super underrated, even though we should call it the Roman Empire because that's what it was. Also holy crap that's a long spear. I guess Rome: Total War's hoplite spears aren't too long after all.
@@absyahwa7698both bro, greek romans, hence Romaioi, also there were other ethnicities in the eastern roman empire, for example Basil the Great I believe was of part Armenian ancestry, this is similar to the earlier roman empire. Identity, then and now, is often more complicated than we might think
@@absyahwa7698 They were also armenians, albanians, slavs, syrians, egyptians, etc, not just greek. And yet they're glued together in a roman identity, just like what it was during the ancient age. Greek vs Latin is a non issue as even during the ancient age, Greek was considered the more sophisticated language and all latin elites learnt it.
I've been wanting to make a shield for awhile but couldn't decide on a grip. I have now decided on the type of grip I want. Also really great video, I like the Byzantines but I don't know many people who talk about them.
Yeah, they’re cumbersome and limiting especially considering the second row of men similarly armed behind you. I think their job was to stand firm and keep other infantry at a distance while the archers rained down on them. In that case, you don’t really need the kind of mobility shown in other shorter spear fighting contexts.
Very cool. I'm no speciallist un buzantine military, but I think that probably the spear tip on a so largué spear probably were a lot tinier, for two reasons: first, in a long spear it would be better less weigth on the tip to better usage; and second, at son long distances probably you are not going to cut with the spear, only thrust, so a shorter spear tip in longer shaft would be better. Great work, and go on!
I believe there probably wasn’t much standardization for spearheads as they are described as “being fit for the task” in the military treatises. But the one I have is a replica of a spearhead found in a period shipwreck off of the coast of Turkey.
A large iron isn’t really “fit to task” when mounted on a pike. Pikes tended to have fairly small tips on account of the balance considerations; you see big tips more often on shorter spears that could be held single-handed.
I’m going off of period depictions, so the only evidence available. Later heater shields had more complex strapping patterns, and to my knowledge aren’t represented in any period Byzantine depictions of shields
A casual uneducated thought of why they used really long spears is because Macedonian long spear/phalanx battle formation inspired Rome and Byzantine Empire greatly
Imagine a future where few of our contemporary artworks survive and our descendants look to the limited and somewhat random assortment of surviving drawings from a vault that was surely treasured as their qualities indicates a level of skill and refinement; Deviant Art. Yes, that's how our ancestors will know we used to worship neon lights and Anime Priestesses sporting cat ears, mini-skirts, and fangs. Clearly, like the Greeks and Egyptians before us, we merge human-animal anatomy to create sacred beings. P.S. I know we often have more than artwork to inform our understanding of the ancient world, but it's astounding to see how often we don't... I also enjoyed the video.
In they sense that later on Western Europe was able to train and equip larger amounts of soldiers for these large infantry formations. I’m not sure what else had carried over. It seems like most of the Byzantine military tactics transitioned to Western European styles after 1204.
@@southpawskutatoi That does not make sense. The Swiss were the first who created OFFENSIVE infantry again, they started with helbards, pikes only came later as protection against cavalry (after bad experience in northern Italy). Was the Byzantine infantry used in an offensive role or "only" as support for calvalry in a hammer and anvil approach?
@@olafkunert3714 to my knowledge, didn’t really use hammer and anvil tactics in the 10th century. It is advised in some of the manuals that the infantry should advance to contact enemy infantry in support of a cavalry charge. So they could be offensive and defensive depending on what the situation demanded. Part of what made these formations work was the requirement to drill and be able to move units of men as the situation needed.
@@olafkunert3714I'm not a super expert like skoutatos, but from what I have read byzantine infantry was generally meant to be very defensive. Cavalry was the real offensive asset
Most pikes throughout history were used with shields. Early modern ones are the exception to the rule, for the reason that musket bullets don’t really care about kite shields or any other sort either.
It doesn't be Byzantine. It was a East Hellenic roman empire of Constantinople. It's the middle time history of Greece. They named Byzantine by the Germans because they want to reclaim the continuity of Roman empire, because concurrent the city of Rome.
Yep, I have a short on this topic. They weren’t really Hellenic though. They acknowledged their Hellenic heritage same as their Roman, but they identified as Romans
The reason they used this type of shield is turkic nomads and long spear is another compliment against horses. Still it doesnt save the empire internal crisis and italian ambition . They could have survived if managed to make huge wall like china did in anatolia.
The spear is too long for a kontarion liton and too short for a great kontarion, and the shield is similarly too long. See my article ‘Fit for the Task: Equipment Sizes and the Transmission of Military Lore, sixth to tenth centuries’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 31 (2007) pp. 1-12.
If you can do it any better, then by all means post content about it. Otherwise you might as well just shut the hell up and enjoy the content. Clearly you like his videos enough to comment on not one, but two of his videos lmao
great work! Eastern Rome deserves so much more attention!
Thanks a lot!
@@southpawskutatoi and you even declinated the Skutatoi in singular correctly, skutatos! Salve, Haire!
@@GeorgeKarayannis if only I did it for my channel name 🥲
@@southpawskutatoi no worries, you may yet get more brothers on board!
You are the only one who cares to make video about the Byzantine scutum and the long spear because i searched on UA-cam to find one video like this and i don't find other.Well done.
Noone else even more and some organisation of HEMA they don't had make such video.
Only one complaint so few likes?Come on guys.
Spears are generally underrated. Lindybeige and Scholagladiatoria collaborated on a video where a guy with a spear and shield went at all comers at a hema fight camp. The guy won most duels he got into.
@@purple_menace6604that was an short spear, with the thinking that everyone was unarmored, with the shield added, and in formations the sword won
Westerners are almost totally ignorant of the New Rome people and their history. A lot of times in the US I have said "the Eastern Church" and I get a blank look.
I’ve always wondered about Byzantine swords. As a hema practitioner I love the unique use of much more forward weighted Carolingian and Saxon swords but have no familiarity with how Byzantine swords of the same period behave.
I’m planning on doing an in depth video on my Galovo spathion. Im not a hema practitioner, so love some input on points you’d want covered in that video!
@@southpawskutatoi It is hard to condense on UA-cam, but as this is recontstructive based more on artifacts and vague art, not manuals, I wonder if the blade feels more forward weighted for cutting, or if maybe it had a healthy balance for cut and thrust.
Also the small pommel is interesting which to me suggests a different use that Frankish swords with a large pommel to catch your hand.
Absolute banger, incredible discussion of the merits of different shield grips. Would love to see more about your takes on Roman military science and its interaction at the ground level, fascinating stuff
Great video
Thanks!
I still can't understand the lack of historical evidence, poetry anything from the longest lasting empire in the world. Thanks for making a video about the Byzantine !
There’s plenty of evidence, multiple whole detailed military manuals of it in fact.
@@melanoc3tusii205 Interesting, so why do you think the Byzantine empire is not a popular topic, it's almost unknown which is strange for the longest lasting empire in the world. Like no YT videos, no movies, no discussions etc.
Fourth crusade burned plenty of records
Very cool stuff
Beautiful shield as well
It makes even more sense when you consider the tactics of that time such as the squares that the infantry would make so that the cavalry would have a safe area to retreat into and Sally out of to attack especially with the battles taking place in the east I believe it was the treatise you mentioned
Yep! Fortresses of men
@@southpawskutatoi would of been an absolutely amazing sight to behold with the horse archers and cataphracts it truly seems like an unbeatable strategy
Wow, this is excellent. Thanks for the tactical description!!!
Great job of showing us the weapons and shield. Never knew they used such long spears.
I love the geometry the edge of the shield is often the weak point thus reinforced. However because the shield curves in it's far more likely to glance off.
Cant believe I just stumbled on this channel!
Welcome!
Nice video!
Good research and presentation!
Subscribed for more!
Awesome, thank you!
Excellent video, I enjoyed that!!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
@@southpawskutatoi all fascinating stuff!
I didnt know you had a UA-cam Channel. The algorithm recommended this and i subscribed right away. Great video.
Awesome! Thank you so much!
Very nice, video, I would love to try out fighting with this weapon combinations and see how it works out!
Absolutely! I’d love a more in depth look at this from the HEMA community. Literally all we can really go off of is an opening line from the Praecepta Militaria, “It is both best and necessary to pick out foot soldiers from Byzantines and Armenians, heavy infantrymen large in stature and no more than forty years of age, then train them properly to use their shields, to be warlike and fit for all occasions, to maneuver with their spears, to defend themselves capably, and to fight against infantry with the same skills as theirs.” So we know there were methods of training how to fight with a spear and shield, just all the functional details have been lost.
Very exciting video, got looked at funny for yelling at you putting your arm through the strap to hold the pike, genius design.
Hahaha it’s my best attempt to marry the textual and iconographic evidence. I’m glad you liked it!
From what I've seen of a lot of Viking age fencing videos is just the immense utility of center grips when fencing vs the other techniques (although I have fought large strapped shields of that size in SCA and they are almost impossible to get around), as it quite decisively turns the shield itself into a weapon and parrying tool able to deflect a lot of strikes from wrist rotation alone. Also helps minimize the amount of your body that might be struck by (almost certainly) overpenetrating missile hits.
Very interesting experimental archeology.
Pikemen only started ditching shields during the age of gunpowder.
unique gem of a video thank you so much
I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Love the work you do man, keep it up.
I would be curious to see the pike used a little more dynamically, like in a drill or sparring, seeing whether you could do some of the moves described in the later fechtbuchs with the big shield in place.
The other thing I’d be super interested in is using a shorter spear in overarm grip, like some of the Byzantine manuscripts show.
That’s a good suggestion, once I have someone else to do it with I’d totally be into looking more into it. My intuition tells me they might have just not been as dynamic with these infantry formations than others with short spears.
finally the byzantines getting some love
Excellent
Having such a limited amount of arm movement behind the shield while holding a kontarion will couse your shield to flop arround and make you voulnorable to enemy projectiles and pikes.
We have multiple representations of twohanded spears being used with a shield and most of them show a baldric/shieldbelt in use , simillarly to later western European presentations.
I would suggest installing it on your shield and using just one of the C grip loops for less shield movement while operating the pike.
I posted this type of suspension a few days ago on byz army fb page.
What type of wood is the kontarion it is extreamly wobbly ?
He is a frontline skoutatos. This is specifically designed for battle in phalanx formations where there are shieldmen left and right to him. He is not duelling one-on-one so he is not supposed to be manouverable. But other than that he is yet experimenting with spear holding techniques but his gripping is correct. He might need a baldrick.
@@Stavraetos12 I'd say that except for a baldric a horizontal grip lower down would be useful for carrying the shield with the arm extended down vertically (like a suitcase) as was done with the horizontal grip scutum of earlier times. This wouldn't be of much use in combat but it would be priceless for carrying the shield around without tiring the arm.
Hey! Yea I saw your post. I think it looks like a nice way to spar and seems sturdy enough. However, I don’t think I’ve seen your style of H grip represented in any artistic depictions. My aim was to marry what we see in artwork and textual sources, not to create the best set up, but the one we can most prove with sources. I do have a guige strap, but removed it for the sake of clarity on this video. Thanks for the input!
@@southpawskutatoi"artists depiction." Lost all credibility there. The only thing this video will do is bolster the ego of someone I know who claims to be an expert after watching a few of Todd workshop videos.
@@BestMods168 you’re welcome to hold whatever opinion you have. But I know what I’m talking about. The purpose behind my kit is to make a period sourced kit. Most of my kit is based off of period archeological finds. Something most Byzantine reenactors can’t claim, although I think I see this changing. When the archeological evidence is lacking it’s necessary to rely on period textual and then artistic depictions of the pieces in question. Most Byzantine reenactors don’t even bother to try to reconcile parts of their kit like how shields were held, spear length, etc. for the sake of being more efficient in tap fights. That’s not what I’m doing here. Im basing as much of my kit as possible on the surviving evidence. Archeological, textual, and artistic, all working together to recreate the most historically plausible and sourced kit I can manage. If you have a better methodology or source for Byzantine shield strapping, please enlighten me.
What an outstanding analysis! On top of that, the effectiveness may be much more if we consider that the average height of most people at that epoch was likely to be way shorter than it is now.
Height and span are directly related to each other, so the taller you are usually your span is longer. About chest height is what we can expect for a six span shield.
Congratulations man, loved the video
Thanks man! I’m glad you loved it. Hopefully we’ll get to play with this in Bulgaria
Well done mate. I appreciate you. Respect for the effort and delivery
He picks up the spear at 11:45
lol thanks for the timestamp
those so nice to see. I also really like this period and byzantine style - its shame it dont gets so much attention in pop culture. Man I really need to get better shield, bcs mine is from 12mm plywood and glued linen but weighs double copared to this one :D
It’s surprising how sturdy a shield this thin is! It’s taken spear hits and I had a guy throw an axe at me haha. I should probably do a tutorial when I make the next one.
Awesome work thank you so much!
Very intersting! We made a video on sumerian warfare. They have a representation of some warrior in a thight formation. It is not very clear if they are people holding long spears with two hands and a shield like this one, or if they are spearmen and some axemen with shields covering them. After watching your video I wish we knew more on how they held their shields.
Very interesting. I’m not sure how much would carry over, as there are so many ways of holding a spear and shield, like the classical Macedonians for example, but it’s really cool to see just how many militaries came back to the long spear and shield combo! Cool example of convergent evolution ha
A possible lead is what we know of warfare in the Bronze-age Aegean.
We have a lot of artwork, including the beautiful Combat Agate (really do check this one out, it’s easy to google and a genuinely stunning piece), which demonstrates how people fought with large, conch-like leather shields supported by a strap around the shoulders, in conjunction with two-handed spears/pikes.
The most iconic of those shields had a figure-eight frontal profile (though they were so deeply curved that side-on depictions look nothing alike) but there was also a strain of more rectangular variants.
The trouble with the Stele of the Vultures is first of all that there’s a whole lot of abstraction and symbolic representation at work, which makes interpretation difficult. But putting that aside the shields portrayed are perfectly rectangular, without the neck-guarding swell at the top characteristic of Mycenaean examples, and they also seem to possess umbos, which could indicate they were centre-gripped - although it’s quite possible that, say, they had both a centre grip and a telamon, or that the bosses were vestigial, or that the circles portrayed were some form of decorative element rather than umbos (doubtful, but possible), etc.
@@melanoc3tusii205 Thank you for your comment! Yes, Mycenaean warfare is indeed fascinating, we plan to have some animated episodes on this topic as soon as possible.
As for the Stele of the Vultures, I agree that the abstraction makes interpretation tricky. But after a long discussion with reenactors and experts we lean on the Mycenean style of fighting as seen on the Lion Hunt dagger. But it's not unlikely that we will never know about this...unless some future archaeological digging in Iraq will give us new data.
Hello!What a nice channel!Just found it and subscribed at once! Cheers and greetings from Greece...🙂
Thanks for the sub! Always happy to welcome in the Greeks!
Great video! The "chiasma" shield grip seems very convenient and versatile! I have some questions, though.
Byzantine chronicler Leo the Deacon writes about medieval Rus' warriors of the second half of the 10th century (the war of Ioannes Tsimisches against Svyatoslav of Kyiv in Bulgaria): "their (Rus') shields are strong and reach their legs for greater safety" and "the Tauro-Scythians (=Rus') left the city and lined up on the plain, protected by chain mail and shields that reached to their very feet". Those "long shields" seem to be either kite shields or maybe some sort of proto-kite oblong shields. It is possible that Rus' warriors adopted Byzantine shields - Rus' were trading, fighting and serving as mercenaries in Byzantine army for more than a century at that time. But if Byzantines already used kite shields during that period, it seems weird that Leo the Deacon specifically mentioned that Rus' shields were especially long. Is it possible that it was other way around and Byzantines adopted long kite shields from Rus'? Or maybe Byzantine shields were shorter, while Rus' ones were especially long?
Later Ioannos Kinnamos stated in his "Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenos" that, before the reforms of Manuel I Komnenos in the middle of the 12th century most of Byzantine cavalrymen used round shields, and Manuel’s reforms included the adoption (or readoption?) of longer kite shields reaching the feet of the horseman. So were kite shields used only by Byzantine infantry before those reforms?
Okay I guess I am getting a shield to play with. Thanks.
Hahaha I’m glad I can push you over the edge to get a shield
That was a really practical demonstration, and you covered a lot of FAQs. Looking forward to more videos 👍🏼
Thanks so much!
Great video with a ton of information and a very well done demonstration
Thank you for you hard work.
Thanks so much!
There is great possibility that first rank held shields and swords, while second and third held those long spears with shields suspended on their backs.
That would be very fair formation for both keeping enemy at a distance, and close combat in sword melee with the first rank also.
That’s not attested anywhere and seems dubiously effective. Each pikemen was also a swordsman; a line of swordsmen is just a line of pikemen deprived of their most effective weapon for combat against cavalry or rival infantry alike.
Wow. This is a very exciting insight. Makes my wonder about the "boss held" shields and long spears.
A solid two cents.
Two cents made from gold!
youre an interesting fellow! keep up the good work
great spear! Greetings
Thanks!
Hmmm… interesting thoughts. Because of you I remember my historical fencing past :).
I am not a historical expert and not a good fencer, but I like and, at that time, hate kite shields. If you handle it like a regular triangle shield it has too long bottom corner and without proper support of this corner your opponent just strikes at the corner and moves your shield away from your body. And you receive the next strike directly to the body. As I know, there are two ways to support the bottom corner - rest in the ground or on your knee (as you did in the previous fencing video). By the way, both ways reduce your maneuverability, and this is also fatal in the duel against an agile opponent. However, it may work in dense infantry formation.
But I have no idea how to operate such long spears with the shield on one hand. If you do not want to die, you need to make strikes as a sewing machine in every open gap in the opposite infantry formation. Just try to make 10-15 strikes per minute and aim at some different points (head, shoulders, stomach, knees) and you will throw this shield away because it will get in the way of proper aiming. Perhaps the Byzantines had some special fighting technique in exactly the format you describe, but it has not yet been possible to understand and reconstruct it. At least I haven't seen that.
Thanks for the video! After watching I feel myself younger :)
Thanks so much for your thoughts! I always appreciate ponderings about these kind of things in the community!
Great work!
Thanks!
nice video, nice info, before I always thought kites were mainly cavalry shields
Awesome stuff! Do the historical design commentaries mention the intended thickness at all? And have you sparred with the shield? As it is lightish, I would be curious how well it performs in blocking. Mass is good at absorbing energy from incoming blows, but you then have to carry it, and move it about. Having that grip certainly does lend itself to extending the arm.
Great vid
The Strategikon mentions armoured gauntlets btw
The Byzantine Empire is super underrated, even though we should call it the Roman Empire because that's what it was.
Also holy crap that's a long spear. I guess Rome: Total War's hoplite spears aren't too long after all.
They are greek not romans😂
You’re right, they called themselves Roman and understood their descendants from the Greeks. It’s a complicated identity
@@absyahwa7698both bro, greek romans, hence Romaioi, also there were other ethnicities in the eastern roman empire, for example Basil the Great I believe was of part Armenian ancestry, this is similar to the earlier roman empire. Identity, then and now, is often more complicated than we might think
@@absyahwa7698 They were also armenians, albanians, slavs, syrians, egyptians, etc, not just greek. And yet they're glued together in a roman identity, just like what it was during the ancient age. Greek vs Latin is a non issue as even during the ancient age, Greek was considered the more sophisticated language and all latin elites learnt it.
@@majungasaurusaaaaNo they weren't. Slavs, Syrians, Egyptians and Albanians were never called Romans. They even had wars with them.
Love the shield and the pike. I think that a guige strap would help a lot.
Yeah I agree, I had one and took it off for simplicity’s sake
I've been wanting to make a shield for awhile but couldn't decide on a grip.
I have now decided on the type of grip I want.
Also really great video, I like the Byzantines but I don't know many people who talk about them.
very
very informative
thank you
2 questions if i may
they did not use a shield strap
or a counterweight on the back of the spear
Good video. I just don't understand long spears. They seem so cumbersome. I guess I have to try one for myself someday.
Yeah, they’re cumbersome and limiting especially considering the second row of men similarly armed behind you. I think their job was to stand firm and keep other infantry at a distance while the archers rained down on them. In that case, you don’t really need the kind of mobility shown in other shorter spear fighting contexts.
This is incredible, please do more video of you wearing your gear, sparring, doing drill ect. just amazing stuff.
More to come! I think the next video is on the Byzantine surcoat. I’d love to hear suggestions too!
Nice built-ins
Great stuff, subbed!
Please tell me how to make a shield with a similar shape! How did you get that final shape? Can the curves be defined mathematically?
Very cool.
I'm no speciallist un buzantine military, but I think that probably the spear tip on a so largué spear probably were a lot tinier, for two reasons: first, in a long spear it would be better less weigth on the tip to better usage; and second, at son long distances probably you are not going to cut with the spear, only thrust, so a shorter spear tip in longer shaft would be better.
Great work, and go on!
I believe there probably wasn’t much standardization for spearheads as they are described as “being fit for the task” in the military treatises. But the one I have is a replica of a spearhead found in a period shipwreck off of the coast of Turkey.
A large iron isn’t really “fit to task” when mounted on a pike. Pikes tended to have fairly small tips on account of the balance considerations; you see big tips more often on shorter spears that could be held single-handed.
Great work.I wonder why the shape is like that with pointy edge,did they use it for stabbing dying enemies on the ground?
Saves on mass, that’s all.
Ngl bro got me clicking on the video because the spear in the thumbnail looks absolutely RIDICULOUS
It is, you should’ve seen me when I carried it to the photo location!
@@southpawskutatoi dude, please tell me you took the subway
@@MrDukeSilverrcheck out my instagram, I think I posted a picture of it hanging 6ft out of a car window haha
Oh man i absolutely LOVE the that pike BEAUTIFUL
It’s very cool!
Keeping your pike around your house was probably super annoying. You cant just leave it out in the rain either.
My garage is slowly filling up with pike shaped pieces of wood haha
Like an ancient Riot Shield.
I think they used shield strap like the western heater shield
I’m going off of period depictions, so the only evidence available. Later heater shields had more complex strapping patterns, and to my knowledge aren’t represented in any period Byzantine depictions of shields
A casual uneducated thought of why they used really long spears is because Macedonian long spear/phalanx battle formation inspired Rome and Byzantine Empire greatly
what was the weight for the shield? i remember you mentioned it was relatively light, but i don't remember hearing a number
It’s right around 7 pounds
that spear length is like a pike. 3m+
Spear, pike, long pokey stick, ehhh
Ещё раз этот щит для конного боя
I wish my wife allowed me to have a shield and swords at the main room, as your does!
I’m a lucky man
That's a really long pike. I thinked lance was more common
My spear is made in concordance to the lengths prescribed in the military texts from the period
Sadly the Byzantine unit that carry this shield with the sword is not available in Knight of honor 2
Bummer 🥲
isn't it a similar to Norman shield?
It’s pretty much the same shield, yes. Popular all throughout Europe by the 11th century.
Imagine a future where few of our contemporary artworks survive and our descendants look to the limited and somewhat random assortment of surviving drawings from a vault that was surely treasured as their qualities indicates a level of skill and refinement; Deviant Art. Yes, that's how our ancestors will know we used to worship neon lights and Anime Priestesses sporting cat ears, mini-skirts, and fangs. Clearly, like the Greeks and Egyptians before us, we merge human-animal anatomy to create sacred beings.
P.S. I know we often have more than artwork to inform our understanding of the ancient world, but it's astounding to see how often we don't... I also enjoyed the video.
So they returned to pike infantry then?
how is this related to the large pike formations later in history?
In they sense that later on Western Europe was able to train and equip larger amounts of soldiers for these large infantry formations. I’m not sure what else had carried over. It seems like most of the Byzantine military tactics transitioned to Western European styles after 1204.
@@southpawskutatoi That does not make sense. The Swiss were the first who created OFFENSIVE infantry again, they started with helbards, pikes only came later as protection against cavalry (after bad experience in northern Italy). Was the Byzantine infantry used in an offensive role or "only" as support for calvalry in a hammer and anvil approach?
@@olafkunert3714 to my knowledge, didn’t really use hammer and anvil tactics in the 10th century. It is advised in some of the manuals that the infantry should advance to contact enemy infantry in support of a cavalry charge. So they could be offensive and defensive depending on what the situation demanded. Part of what made these formations work was the requirement to drill and be able to move units of men as the situation needed.
@@olafkunert3714I'm not a super expert like skoutatos, but from what I have read byzantine infantry was generally meant to be very defensive.
Cavalry was the real offensive asset
HOPLITES
🗿👍
Pike?
*No, We can’t defend from archers.*
Spear?
*No, we can’t defend from cavalry*
Yo I got the perfect idea…
Can’t hurt me if you can’t reach me 🤷🏼♂️
Most pikes throughout history were used with shields. Early modern ones are the exception to the rule, for the reason that musket bullets don’t really care about kite shields or any other sort either.
It doesn't be Byzantine. It was a East Hellenic roman empire of Constantinople. It's the middle time history of Greece. They named Byzantine by the Germans because they want to reclaim the continuity of Roman empire, because concurrent the city of Rome.
Yep, I have a short on this topic. They weren’t really Hellenic though. They acknowledged their Hellenic heritage same as their Roman, but they identified as Romans
The reason they used this type of shield is turkic nomads and long spear is another compliment against horses. Still it doesnt save the empire internal crisis and italian ambition . They could have survived if managed to make huge wall like china did in anatolia.
The spear is too long for a kontarion liton and too short for a great kontarion, and the shield is similarly too long. See my article ‘Fit for the Task: Equipment Sizes and the Transmission of Military Lore, sixth to tenth centuries’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 31 (2007) pp. 1-12.
Where can this article be found? A search showed a pdf on the Levantia webpage which seems to be down or broken, and the rest are behind paywalls.
Mouth breather
Allergies got me 🤧
When you have no idea how to fight but you have to say something or you'll shit yourself 😂😂😂
🤷🏼♂️ do the research, make a shield and build a 12ft spear all based on period sources. I’d be happy to hear your perspective then
If you can do it any better, then by all means post content about it. Otherwise you might as well just shut the hell up and enjoy the content. Clearly you like his videos enough to comment on not one, but two of his videos lmao
Może byś tak wstydu nie przynosił dooorniu, co?
@@adamkwinto1942 Może byś mi wylizał rowa
U sus bro. Pfffff 👎
Plywood isnt historical or it is for 11th century Normans ?
@@gotfrydzbouillon4191 I said plywood isn’t historical. Historical kite shields were made from thin pieces or wood laminated together