spear or pilum?

[Paullus Scipio]

Valerius/Robert wrote:-

Exactly! And apart from using names in a very loose manner, the ancient sources are also very unclear what was done with the weapons described. So, personally, when a source does not explicitly tells us that a weapon was used more than once (in which case it must be a thrusting weapon), it's even unsafe to assume it was used for thrusting OR throwing.

...I'm not sure I would agree with this, Robert......the impression I get is that when the source is contemporary, military terminology tends to be exact, especially if the writer has a military background e.g. Xenophon or Polybius. Thus if a longche/lancea is referred to, the reader was expected to know this was a dual purpose, short spear for throwing and/or thrusting, and this was a different weapon from a veles (light pila-like javelin) or indeed pila, which was different again from a saunion! Polybius and his readers well knew the differences between the weapons, and how they were used...just as a modern militaria reader would know what the author meant if they referred to an AK47, M16 or HK MP5. Later writers and lexicographers then often 'muddy the waters' by trying to sound learned about weapons that no longer exist, or whose meaning has changed.(writing often some hundreds of years later...just as a few hundred years from now, an author might explain that Ak47,M16 and MP5 were basically all just 'automatic rifles', blurring their very different performances) This in turn leads to 'modern' confusion. Hasta, I think, originally meant the long (7-8 ft) thrusting spear, equivalent to the greek Dory, or "great spear". Later it may have come to have a more generic meaning, equivalent to "spear".
As Matt Amt wrote, the typical weapon of early imperial auxiliaries seems to be the lancea(larn-chee-a), the short dual-purpose throwing/thrusting spear. This weapon had a long pedigree, going back to Homeric times ( when Heroes carried a pair of 'throwing' spears) until replaced in Southern Greece with the rise of 'Hoplite' warfare by the Dory "great Spear"/long thrusting spear. The 'throwing spear', generally used and carried in pairs, and as Matt pointed pointed out, often with throwing loops attached continued in use in the Balkans/Macedonia/Thrace as the Longche(lon-chee-er) from where it spread to be used by mercenaries etc. Some Classical Greek writers may have called it the 'Thracian spear' to distinguish it from the DoryThe weapon may also have been native to Italy and other places too, but Polybius calls this weapon longche and evidently this balkan name stuck(since lancea is clearly derived from it.) No doubt it was its dual purpose flexibility as a weapon that led to its longevity and eventual use in Imperial Legions after 100 AD.