Despite the influence of Vegetius’ late-antique military treatise, medieval chroniclers were invariably influenced by the terminology used in Isidore of Seville’s seventh-century Etymologies, a highly influential, sprawling encyclopaedia of the classical period containing, among many other things, observations on Latin grammar, technical terms, orthography and pronunciation. Isidore’s section on arms is very specific in regard to the correct words for various weapons, and hence the following translated excerpts are crucial to any assessment of the terminology used by the various Latin chroniclers consulted throughout this book. As Isidore’s descriptions of weaponry pertain to classical texts, there are some anachronisms (e.g. spear straps), but medieval writers nonetheless used the terms to denote contemporary equivalents. The popularity and influence of Isidore’s lengthy work cannot be overemphasized: while 226 copies of Vegetius’ Regarding Military Matters have survived, there are almost 1,000 extant manuscripts of the Etymologies. Lastly, given that Isidore’s encyclopaedia provided numerous insights into Graeco-Roman antiquity, it is particularly important in regard to the works of various classicizing writers who chronicled the deeds of the Normans (Dudo of Saint-Quentin, William of Poitiers, William of Apulia, and Raoul of Caen). But that is not to diminish the influence of Vegetius’ work; indeed, it will be cross-referenced throughout this appendix.1
All sections derive from Book Eighteen, entitled Regarding War and Entertainment.
7.1–2: The spear [hasta] is a long pole [contus] with iron … [2] The contus has no iron but only a sharpened point [cuspide].2
7.5: The lance [lancea] is a spear [hasta] featuring a loop [amentum] in the middle.3
7.6: The loop [amentum] is the bond which is fastened to the middle of the shafts of javelins [iacula] … in order to be thrown.4
7.9: Pila5 are javelins [iacula] as well as missiles [tela], so called because they require twisting or hurling.6
7.10: The missile [telum] is named after the Greek etymology, from telothen7 – anything that can be thrown from afar.8
8.1: The arrow [sagitta] is named after a sharp [sagaci] blow – that is, a speedy sting.9
8.2: Darts [spicula] are arrows or short lances named after the appearance of heads of grain [spicae].10
8.3: The scorpio is an arrow [sagitta] infected with poison, cast out by a bow or [stone-throwing] catapults [tormenta].11
10.1–2: The sling [funda], from fundantur, that is, ‘they may be hurled’, is so called because it rains stones. [2] A bal[l]ista is a variety of stone-thrower [tormentum] … Indeed, a tether of sinew is wound [i.e. torsion power], and with great power it hurls either spears [hastae] or stones. Thence it is also a fundibalus, as in spreading out [fundens] and discharging.12
11.1, 3–4: Its appearance gave the name to the battering ram [aries], because by means of its impetus it strikes against a wall in the manner of sheep [arietes] fighting … [3]. Moveable screens [plutei] are frameworks [crates] woven by raw hides, which are created to oppose an enemy’s fortifications. [4] The mouse [musculus] is made similar to an underground tunnel, with which a wall is undermined [lit. ‘perforated’] ….13
Spear types
Javelins
As Isidore regularly reminded his readers, iaculum derived from iaciendo – that is, something thrown.14 Accordingly, whenever Latin writers used the term, they meant throwing spears. Hence when William of Apulia used the term for two battles – Olivento (1041) and Civitate (1053) – he emphasized that the Normans were hurling their spears, not thrusting them. Moreover, this tactic is supported by Amatus, who related that the Normans ‘threw their spears [Fr. haste] against the Greeks’ at Montepeloso in 1041.15 Tela and spicula, as excerpts 7.9–10 and 8.2 demonstrate, are more difficult to translate since the words could indicate the loosing of arrows, javelins or darts, potentially even all at the same time. Hence, the spiculum (sing.) that felled al-Ṯumnah’s horse at Entella (1062) was either an arrow or javelin, although the latter is more likely given Malaterra used the precise term for archers and arrows elsewhere: respectively, Muslim sagittarii at Centuripe (1061), and Byzantines firing sagittae at Cosenza (1091). When ambiguous terms are used, sometimes the context or paired words can help but, in reference to the horse at Entella, spiculum was matched with transfigunt (‘transfix’, ‘pierce through’), which clearly supports a wound received from a spear or arrow. Yet, in reference to the siege of Bari (1068–71), Malaterra used spiculum on three occasions, and the weapon described was clearly a javelin/spear given the pairing with impingendo, which carries the sense of thrusting, dashing, or pushing against. Thankfully, however, Malaterra used the unambiguous iaculum for javelin on all other occasions. While problematic at times to translate, it should be underscored that spiculum was understood to mean javelin in the tenth century: Regino of Prüm used it to describe the formidable weapon wielded by the Bretons at Jengland-Beslé in 851 (interestingly, the Frankish poet Ermold opted for the variant missile in the previous century).16
The other potentially ambiguous term of particular importance is tela (excerpts 7.9–10) which, along with hastilia, Vegetius used to denote javelins (tela was utilized as a synonym for lead-tipped, shortened javelins/darts [martiobarbuli] thrown by assault infantry). As noted below, Walter the Chancellor employed the word to identify throwing spears in the twelfth century, and prior to the composition of William of Apulia’s The Deeds of Robert Guiscard (c. 1097–99), in the Norman context tela was regularly used to denote throwing spears. For example, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s chronicle (c. 995–1015) distinguished between lanceae and tela. The latter he clarified as being ‘cut short’ (decurtatus); they were therefore spears shortened for the purpose of hurling. Similarly, Duke William II was noted to have been equipped with a sword, shield, helmet and telum (sing.) at his coming-of-age ceremony. While the term could mean missile or arrow, the context clearly suggests a spear. Taking these examples into consideration, it therefore seems likely that William of Apulia intended tela to denote javelins at Civitate (1053). Assuredly, the unambiguous word iaculi was used for the spears wielded by Richard Quarrel’s cavalry who formed the right wing, but using a different word to identify those brandished by Humphrey’s men in the centre does not necessarily imply that William meant something different. As a poet, William liked to vary his vocabulary and since he wrote in hexametrical verse, he also needed to be mindful of the dictates of scansion. Despite using lancea for Guiscard’s spear, he also opted for cuspide which, as excerpt 7.2 demonstrates, literally means a spear point. Moreover, when William intended tela to mean arrows elsewhere in his poem, he made it very clear on two occasions. An example of this approach is when he described a battle between the Byzantines and Selçuk Turks in Anatolia (late 1070s): ‘From every side missiles [tela] fly; the entire sky is covered in a hail of arrows [sagittarii]’. Importantly, on only a single occasion did the poet use tela to denote arrows. Since the skilled Latinist clearly knew that the word was ambiguous, he once again clarified the term’s meaning. Relating that Guiscard deployed a contingent of slingers and archers during the siege of Palermo (1071–72), he noted these missile troops assaulted the battlements with ‘stones’ (saxa) and ‘arrows’ (tela). Accordingly, since on all other occasions the precise meaning of tela was clarified by William, coupled with the fact that neither archers, arrows, nor bows were mentioned in reference to Civitate, the poet almost certainly meant that Humphrey’s men threw spears at the phalanx of Swabian swordsmen. While it remains possible that the ‘small number of infantry’ loosed arrows at the enemy, at best it is an assumption, not a fact.17
Throwing spears were evidently wielded by those whom Hauteville forces and other crusaders fought against in Anatolia and Syria, an assertion that runs considerably counter to R.C. Smail’s belief that Selçuk troops were ‘a race of mounted archers’. While most of them certainly were, others, perhaps light cavalry but probably the heavier ghilmān, evidently threw spears (and probably thrust them too, as did their Byzantine and earlier Norman counterparts). Indeed Raoul of Caen was precise in this respect, noting the presence of spiculatores at Dorylaion (1097). Similarly, the anonymous member of Bohemond’s contingent recorded the throwing of javelins (iaculando) in addition to the firing of arrows (sagittando) at the same battle. Moreover, the same eyewitness observed that the enemy ‘threw javelins, [and] cast arrows’ at Antioch in the following year. Such examples are just that; there are many others mentioned in Chapter 5. An illustrative passage in Walter the Chancellor’s Antiochene Wars is particularly illuminating: he noted that the Hauteville army at the ‘Field of Blood’ (1119) was overcome ‘by javelins [tela], by lances [lanceae], by arrows [sagittae] soldered with iron, and by repeated blows of swords’.18
Lances
Walter’s description of the devastating Antiochene defeat in 1119 is particularly interesting for two reasons. Firstly, not only does it show that tela often meant throwing spears, but the distinction made between tela and lanceae underscores that, despite Isidore’s indication that a lance in antiquity was effectively a throwing weapon (7.5), in the intervening centuries the term had evolved to denote a thrusting spear. While some uses of the word may have been meant in the Isidorean sense, it is clear that William of Apulia, Walter the Chancellor and the abovementioned Anonymous, among numerous others, employed lancea to indicate a cavalry spear; a weapon increasingly placed under a Frankish cavalryman’s arm in the eleventh century (but earlier by certain units of Byzantine kataphraktoi – see Chapter 1). While primarily intended to be used for thrusting, lances of the time seem to have been light enough to throw when necessary: e.g. the Conqueror’s chaplain, William of Poitiers, himself a former cavalryman, had the duke ‘throwing his lancea’ at a battle in the late 1040s. Eleventh-century lances, therefore, to a certain degree still conformed to the type described by Isidore.19
Naturally, given the wooden composition of eleventh-century Norman lances, only the iron heads have survived. Nonetheless, Peirce has convincingly theorized that lance shafts were fashioned from apple wood or ash, and were approximately nine to eleven feet long. To add to this observation, ash is the most likely wood given its proven ancient heritage: Nicholas Sekunda notes the ancient Macedonians used it for their pikes (sarisai) on account of the wood’s ‘combination of strength and light weight’; a fact emphasized by classical authorities such as Pliny the Elder. Eleventh-century lances were therefore far from cumbersome, and should not be confused with the longer, weightier shafts that became the standard in later centuries (e.g. Kinnamos noted that Sicilian cavalry were ‘brandishing long lances’ in the 1150s [Fig. 5]). Adding to the idea that lances were light enough to be thrown is the fact that they were known to be brittle; indeed such weapons were noted to have shattered prematurely in battles. For example, Robert of Vieux-Pont, an Antiochene knight originally from Normandy, was forced to draw his sword in battle owing to a ‘broken lance’.20
The contus (7.1–2) has no application to Frankish troops, for it was an ancient lance so lengthy – three to five metres – that it needed to be gripped with two hands. Heavy cavalrymen were an ancient eastern invention, for contemporary Greek-speaking Thessalians and Macedonians were light-to-medium in comparison. Such troops, known to the Greeks as kataphraktoi (‘all-covered’) were a formidable component in the armies of three great Persian royal houses: the Achaemenid, Arsacid (Parthian), and Sassanid dynasties. It was the second dynasty which inflicted a humiliating defeat on the cocksure Roman army, which at Carrhae (59 BC), later the site of an Antiocheno-Edessan defeat (1104), was outclassed by a superior combined-arms force (mailed lancers and horse archers skilled in the ‘Parthian shot’). Despite the defeat at the hands of the Parthians, the Romans only slowly began to incorporate heavy cavalry wielding the contus, although such units, contarii and cataphractarii, did not become a feature of Roman armies until the reign of Trajan (98–117). It is unclear as to when the late-antique or early medieval Romans dispensed with the barge-pole-length contus, but the term survived to describe a single-handed lance (Figs. 3 and 4), although classicizing historians like Leo the Deacon, despite using the word, preferred to use dory or even akon (which in the classical period meant a javelin). But the term nonetheless persisted in Greek, hence the appellation discussed in Chapter 2: kontaratoi, ‘lancers’. As noted in the same chapter, the Apulian Lombards fielded such troops as well (conterati). Whether this troop type reflects Byzantine influence remains an open question, but it is interesting to observe that Lombards were noted by their greatest historian, Paul the Deacon, as using conti (pl.) in the seventh century. Paul observed in his History of the Lombards that a cavalryman serving Prince Romuald I of Benevento (r. 662–87) named Amalong:
… holding the sharpened contus in both hands, with great force pierced a certain little Greek, whom he raised from the saddle on which he rode, lifting him in the air above his head. Upon witnessing this, the Greeks [Byzantines] were extremely terrified and soon turned backwards in flight.21
Clearly, the lance wielded so ferociously by Amalong was of the ancient Parthian type.22
Slings
The use of the sling (funda, 10.1; Veg. 1.16; Fig. 6) is well attested in Italy:
• Prince Gisulf II led men armed ‘with sling [Fr. fionde] and bow’; Salerno, 1050s.
• ‘slingshot [fundibula] and arrows’; Aiello, 1065 (discussed below).
• ‘stones hurled by a sling [funda] towards the enemies on top of the walls’ and ‘The citizens … cast frequent stones as well as javelins/missiles’; siege of Bari, 1068–71.
• ‘He [Guiscard] had the infantry strengthened with slings [fundae] and arrows’; Palermo, 1071–2.
• ‘slingers’ (funditores); present on Guiscard’s Balkans campaign, 1081.
• ‘a countless mass of slingers’ (Gk. sphendonetai); recruited by John Doukas in Apulia, 1155.23
In regard to the battle fought at Aiello, Calabria in 1065, Malaterra used a synonym for catapults (10.2, fundibula), a term he opted for on two other occasions (Centuripe, 1061; Cosenza, 1091). However, these were not catapults but slingers, who clearly fought alongside their fellow missile troops: archers and javelineers. Had the men of Aiello fought from the battlements, the use of catapults would have made sense (as was the case at Centuripe and Cosenza). However, Malaterra explained that in order to extend the range of their missiles, ‘the Aiellans advanced outside of the fortified town’. Dragging catapults outside the walls during a sally makes little sense, especially since this disciplined force was able not only to drive back the Norman cavalry, but also to kill a substantial number of them. Indeed, doing so would have unnecessarily exposed both the engines and men tasked with their transit to mounted attacks, not to mention encumber the momentum of what was clearly a speedy, devastating sally. The encumbrance aspect cannot be overemphasized, for Vegetius noted that a fourth- or fifth-century catapult not only required a mule-driven cart, but ten men to attend to it.24
Siege engines
The ancient Greeks of Sicily invented the catapult, a word, like the majority of English military terms, deriving from French (catapulte). In Greek katapeltes means ‘through the shield’, and was so named because it was an anti-personnel weapon that fired bolts with lethal force. Invented in c. 399 BC during the reign of Dionysios I of Syracuse, after the subsequent development of torsion power (10.2) Alexander the Great was able to besiege Halikarnassos (southwest Turkey) in 334 BC with catapults hurling rocks; hence the names used by the Byzantines: petrovoloi or petrarea, ‘rock-throwers’. Using the Latin transliteration of the latter term, William of Apulia related that each side of Guiscard’s formidable siege tower at Bari (1068) was protected by a rock-throwing catapult (petraria). To describe other engines, the poet used the word recommended by Isidore – tormentum (8.3, 10.2) – as did William of Poitiers in reference to Duke William II’s campaign in Maine (1063). The Byzantines distinguished between larger rock-throwers and smaller ‘stone-throwers’ (lithovoloi). William of Apulia, by mentioning both rock-throwers and ‘every variety of catapult [tormentum]’ at Bari, clearly did the same thing in reference to the epic siege of Bari. Other than the two abovementioned references to catapults, unfortunately Malaterra regularly used the generic machinamenta (‘siege engines’) which, without further clarification as was normally his style, could simply have meant bolt-shooters, ladders, mantlets or rams (11.1,3) rather than catapults. That is, aside from a reference to the abovementioned siege of Bari, when the monk broke the mould: ‘battering rams [arietes] and other siege engines [machinamenta], the use of which was needed for the capture of the city, were made’.25
It was observed in Chapter 1 that William of Apulia mentioned Guiscard’s use of ‘wickerworks’ (crates) at the siege of Bari, ‘beneath which’ the duke placed ‘armoured men lying in ambush’. As is evident in excerpt 11.3, the correct term was in fact, plutei: siege shelters or hurdles consisting of frames (crates) covered in raw leather. The classicizing William was undoubtedly familiar with the Etymologies. Accordingly he knew the pertinent term for siege shelters, but seems to have used crates because of its other meaning – ‘wickerworks’ or ‘latticeworks’ – for it best described Byzantine laisa: large siege houses with roofs and doors capable of protecting up to twenty men, and woven not with leather like plutei, but with vine stalks (Vegetius called the less elaborate woven structures of his time, ‘vines’ [uinea]). In the tenth century, Liudprand of Cremona noted that German troops used crates but, as is evident from his description, they were simply wicker shields or screens held above soldiers’ heads when advancing on fortifications. William, however, was not referring to Guiscard’s use of simple woven shields or screens. Rather, the crates were deployed at ‘the entrance of the gates’, and since they were ably protected by these large siege houses, the ‘armoured men lying in ambush’ could therefore spring forth and attack any sortie launched from the city. Interestingly, Raoul of Caen noted that Tancred placed a cratis (sing.) before the gates of Tarsus in 1097. Unfortunately, other than the mention of the shelter, Raoul merely added that it was flattened by what seem to have been rocks flung from catapults.26