Some Sarauter revisionism

[hoplite14gr]

Well I have seen medieval (might even have been Byzantine) iron butt-spikes in Russian and Ukranian museums.
I feel Christian has a valid speculation but I am not fully convinced about ancient iron sauroters.

Kind regards

[Kineas]

Stephanos--First, thanks for the AWESOME tour of the Benaki and your strong support at the meeting.

May I say to the rest of you that the hospitality of Greek reenactors (my cross section with Giannis and Stephanos) is superb?

It is.

Anyway, Stephanos, Die Angriffswaffen Aus Olympia (WdG 2001) has 20 iron sarauters and some fragments. Some have bronze rings, and some don't. All are from the sanctuary at Olympia (I don't read German, so if I got this wrong, I need to be corrected!) and seem to be 525-450 in time period.

In fact, my war spear that Joe Piela is building (right now, I think!) will have an iron sarauter with a bronze ring like Peter mentioned above.

[hoplite14gr]

The usuall case! (Not exibited!) At least they weren't last time I was there.
Some times old gravoures old photos and old books give more info than current exibits.

How could I refuze to a protege of Xenios Zeus? He would cast a thunderbolt on me !

Kind regards

[Paullus Scipio]

Archelaos wrote:

Actually there is no way to tell if this sauroter is from hoplite spear or sarisa. It is quite long, and if you check in Angriffswaffen aus Olympia you will find only three similar, all of them much shorter than Newcastle example.

....actually, undoubted 'Dory Sauroters' vary enormously in size - from 12-20 inches (0.3-0.5 m), so the Macedonian example is not particularly large, and it is of the 'dory' type, lacking the ' wings' found on what are presumed to be sarissa butts found in tombs - one example being 18 inches(0.445 m) long and weighing over a kilogram (1070 g) !

The Newcastle example therefore is almost certainly from a 'dory'.........

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Paul B,here's the photo you requested,the bronze point is not intact. But I have to say,it could also have been a butt spike and not the spear point itself.

Paul M, you have a point about the sauroters being "killed". However,I haven't seen swords that were "killed" for dedication. Only swords that where wrapped around vases with the ashes of a cremated person. In fact,there is one probably hellenistic sword,a kopis,that might have been "kille" in the National Museum. On the other hand,many of the sauroters have been found intact,and even int he photo above,the second one had the inscription "ME???" cut in the middle. There is another sauruter that has all the inscription "???????? ??? ?????????????" (Messenians from a Lakedaemonian). it isn't logical that they first wrote the incription and then they cut it in the middle.
In the next picture you can see the one with the lead weight. Note that it is identical to the next one,in decoration and size. Only the next one is broken and has no signs of any lead weight.

[Paullus Scipio]

I wasn't suggesting that ALL broken sauroters were 'ritually destroyed', but it is likely that many were, which casts doubt on Kineas' suggestion regarding breakages.

As to swords, I would suggest that one wrapped around an urn had been pretty effectively 'killed' - especially as it would almost certainly have been heated/annealed to soften the metal to allow this !!

Many thanks for that photo - it illustrates very well that sauroters came in a variety of sizes, as did spear-heads for that matter..... D

[PMBardunias]

Assuming that those are doru heads in the bottom right, the sauroter is fairly large in comparison even without the lead weight. With the weight it would be very back heavy, Notice too that the diameter of the sockets for the heads is smaller than the diameter of the sauroter- as seen by the angled lines connecting them- thus as you mentioned a tapered shaft.

[Paullus Scipio]

BTW, the old tradition of ' coppicing' - encouraging the wood to grow tall and straight, harvesting it at the right time and re-growing the next 'crop' would produce quite naturally tapered shafts, which would only need de-barking and seasoning to produce strong spear and javelin shafts....

There are even depictions of shafts with the 'knobs' of off-shoot branches crudely left on e.g. Thracian examples and the tapered javelin depicted in the foreground of the 'Alexander Mosaic' .

[PMBardunias]

I'm thinking about these lead weights and the function of the sleeve section of the sauroter. As was noted earlier, it does not need the sleeve since the shaft inserts into the head and I assumed it was for weather protection. It is my understanding that in Pila the lead weights are cast directly onto the shaft. I wonder if the sleeve was originally to protect the shaft during such a casting. It would be interesting to have a look at the sleeves to find traces of lead or deformations of the metal that would indicate such a casting.

[Matthew Amt]

I'm thinking about these lead weights and the function of the sleeve section of the sauroter. As was noted earlier, it does not need the sleeve since the shaft inserts into the head and I assumed it was for weather protection. It is my understanding that in Pila the lead weights are cast directly onto the shaft. I wonder if the sleeve was originally to protect the shaft during such a casting. It would be interesting to have a look at the sleeves to find traces of lead or deformations of the metal that would indicate such a casting.

Well, since no pilum parts have been found with a lead weight, nor have I ever seen any lead artifact that *might* have been a pilum weight, we can't prove that what we're seeing in artwork *is* a lead weight. (Though personally I think it is!) So we certainly can't say whether they were cast in place or not. There aren't any suggestions of metal sleeves from pilum shafts, either, so I don't see why the Greeks would need them just for protecting the wood from molten lead. I've done quite a bit of casting lead in wooden molds, and I really don't think the wood needs protection for this, though I will say that I haven't cast anything that large. But as has been pointed out before, why would all this lead be missing while the bronze still exists?

Khairete,

Matthew

[PMBardunias]

But as has been pointed out before, why would all this lead be missing while the bronze still exists

I agree that this is puzzling, but we also have to ask why two seemingly identical sauroters would exist, one with a lead weight, one without. As to the casting, I picked that up from the Legio XX site- I have no special knowledge of roman equipement. Since the "sleeve" section is quite thin, once the shaft is removed it sould be quite easy for the sleeve to collapse enough to let the lead slip off. Perhaps there is a drawer of lead weights that were found near sauroters and never connected to their use. I will note that I have not yet found an image showing the lead weight.

Perhaps the fact that we don't have any surviving pila weights shows that lead balls like this were considered very useful and recycled more than sauroters.

[Archelaos]

Archelaos wrote:

Actually there is no way to tell if this sauroter is from hoplite spear or sarisa. It is quite long, and if you check in Angriffswaffen aus Olympia you will find only three similar, all of them much shorter than Newcastle example.

....actually, undoubted 'Dory Sauroters' vary enormously in size - from 12-20 inches (0.3-0.5 m), so the Macedonian example is not particularly large, and it is of the 'dory' type, lacking the ' wings' found on what are presumed to be sarissa butts found in tombs - one example being 18 inches(0.445 m) long and weighing over a kilogram (1070 g) !

The Newcastle example therefore is almost certainly from a 'dory'.........

I highlighted the problematic words Actually there is not a single proof that "winged" butt spike is from sarisa except Andronikos's wishful thinking. His article from 1970 (in BCH) started all this, but I am almost sure that he was wrong. He described 51cm, 1300g spearhead, 44.5cm,1070g butt spike, 27cm spearhead and iron tube from psi tumulus in Vergina and assumed that big pieces and tube were from sarisa just because "big spear needs big head and butt"! Later Markle made such reconstruction, but never shown it to public (in infantry use). Why? Well, Connolly made his reconstruction and found out that you almost can't raise such heavy head off the ground. He suggested "winged" butt and small head and it seemed a great theory. But small head look exactly like heads of hunting spears in Macedonian art and there is evidence that "big pieces" were together pieces of 2m long spear, possibly parade one (Sekunda Sarissa in Acta Universitatis Lodziensis Folia Archaeologica, no.23, v.1, p.13-41). I found quite a few arguments for this hypothesis, but I still wait for publication of my conference paper.

So if winged butt is not from sarisa then Newcastle example may be the right one. Or maybe sarisa had no butt... Though some (very) late sources claim it had butt...

Newcastle butt is quite atypical, there are only 3 roughly similar examples from Olympia and possibly they appear on some Beotian stellai (black ones with very shallow relief lines).

Edit: On lead weights. I believe that those could have been separated and misinterpreted. Without seeing Athens example I will interpret is as loom weight, fishing weight etc. and I think if found alone every archaeologist would interpret it such.

[Paullus Scipio]

....the Newcastle sauroter cannot be from a sarissa. The 'winged' sauroter and joining tube have a diameter of around 39-40 mm, and even at this diameter a reconstruction by Connolly had natural bend.( see attached) The Newcastle sauroter has a diameter of 19-20 mm - typical of the dory but impossibly thin for a sarissa.....

[Archelaos]

....the Newcastle sauroter cannot be from a sarissa. The 'winged' sauroter and joining tube have a diameter of around 39-40 mm, and even at this diameter a reconstruction by Connolly had natural bend.( see attached) The Newcastle sauroter has a diameter of 19-20 mm - typical of the dory but impossibly thin for a sarissa.....

Do you have any proper measurements of this butt? I would be really interested, as I do not have any. I know only the length (38cm) and a simple calculation of proportions on the photo results in around 30 mm for the socket width is quite similar to the smaller winged butts (from a tomb III in Vergina, or an Agios Athanasios tomb). What's more, the diameter of socket do not have to fit exactly diameter of shaft. From tomb III in Vergina comes winged butt with about 30-40 cm of shaft preserved and it's definitely wider than the socket, by about 0.7-1 cm.

[PMBardunias]

By chance I came across a description of a sauroter with measurements. It was in a paper on votive weapons from 1881 and the author thought it was a spear point

Votive Armour and Arms
Author(s): W. Greenwell and P. G.
Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 2, (1881), pp. 65-82.

Here's what he wrote:


It is 11 1/4 inches long, of which what must be denominated the blade occupies 7 1/2 inches. The hollow of the socket, which is 7/8 in. wide, extends to a distance of 9 1/4 inches into the body of the weapon. The metal of which it is composed is bronze, but the exact nature of its composition cannot be stated, as it has not been analysed. It is now coated with a thin, dark- coloured patina, having upon it, here and there, patches of oxide of a light green colour. The socket, which has no rivet holes, is round at its extremity for the space of an inch, and then becomes dodecagonal up to the base of the blade, where three raised and rounded bands, a larger between two smaller ones, encircle it and form the division between the blade and socket. The blade is four-sided, gradually tapering and terminating at one end in a blunt point, and at the other passing, after a very graceful fashion, from the square into the round by being chainfered and forming four leaves, the leaf-like appearance of the chamfer being caused by continuing the angles of the blade down as far as the surrounding bands at the base. In form it corresponds very closely with those lately discovered at Olympia, and indeed so much alike are some of them that at first sight it might be thought that they had been cast in the same mould; a closer inspection, however, shows minute differences. It is inscribed on three of the four faces of the blade, the words being written from base to point...