Pugio handles!

[Posca]

Hi all,

Nice to finally meet, long time roamer here. But now finally with a question of my own that i would love some experts to shine a light on. I just finished my thorough read of 'pugio gladius brevis est' hoping to find the definitive answer and evidence to my question, but alas ...


1) my first question is actually very simple;

were pugio handles made purely of organic materials (bone, ivory, wood), meaning WITHOUT being covered by the external metal plates/'grip plates'. And if so, how common could this have been?


Surprisingly enough i could not find the answer to this question in the forementioned book. It only mentions two cases where the handles were made of ivory without any metal covering plates (both following the later 'tight insertion technique') but both with the abnormality of a recess in one side of the handle surface, with the other side of the handle being normally shaped and clearly finished. The recess is assumed to be the fitted with an iron part.

So aside from those two 'abnormal' ivory handles, the book never mentions any handle or even the possibility of a handle purely made of organic material without the metal plating over the organic 'filler' handle.

A clue to the answer might be that there have been found many pugio blades without any hilt parts. The reason for the hilt parts missing might be that these were made of purely organic material. If these pugios would have had hilts with the metal plating over the handle, the metal plating should have been found (in some cases anyway). However simple and logical this answer might be, i find it suspicious the book never mentions this (possibility). That's why i wonder if i'm missing something obvious, and would love some feedback on this subject.


2)

While i'm at it i would like to discuss something else, as i feel somehow my first question might have an easy answer to it anyway. This is where it gets interesting:

In the book the argument is made that many pugios were fitted with handles similar to gladii. This happens with the introduction of the rod tang on pugios. This rod tang didnt have the 'biglobular' shape and thus allows for other shapes of handles instead. The book presents certain evidence for the gladius-shaped handle;
- gravestone of 'Firmus'
- Vindonissa wooden grip found without a blade - the hole in this handle is supposed to be too small for a gladius and thus made on purpose for a smaller blade
- Vindonissa pugio (with a rather small blade of 17,7 centimers) and a wooden/bone grip of gladius-shape
- pugio of Saalburg found with a metal plate (as its guard) similar to construction method of certain gladii, and the conclusion that the rest of the handle probably also is similar to that of (that kind of) a gladius
- many of the pugios with rod tang and without hilt have a tang that is beaten at the end; this would be done AFTER insertion of the guard and handle but before the pommel (IIUC) IF the pommel was made of wood (because wood would be glued on top of the handle)(if the pommel was made of metal the tang would not be beaten because the pommel would be inserted on top of the tang in a similar way to the guard and handle)
- the "virtual test" works as an example to show a certain gladius handle on top of a certain pugio without handle. My problem with this example is that i think it would have been relevant to add the lenght of the blade of this specific pugio, as it seems very long indeed, almost like a gladius. I couldn't find this pugio in the list with 216 pictures of all found pugios either, so couldnt find the measurement of the blade there either.
- this argument is actually not brought forward but i think it's relevant anyway: the pugio find in Herculaneum shows a gladius-like handle of wood. The book says this weapon can not definitively be classified as pugio. Why is this? The size seems to be right from the pictures. There's one picture on google where it is laying besides the gladius also found at the exact same location. The gladius is clearly a lot longer.

So the first three arguments i understand, but the one about the beaten tang not so much. Is the (implicit) argument being made here that many gladii (with wooden pommels) had a beaten tang, so if pugios had a beaten tang as well then they would likely have a similar handle? What if the handle would be a regular bi-globular one, and the D-shaped pommel would be made of wood for example. Wouldnt the tang be beaten in that case as well? So how is the beating of the tang in that case an argument for gladii-formed handles on pugiones? I would love some insight in this. Having said all that i really appreciated the book greatly, thanks authors!

Thanks!

Floris

[Crispvs]

Hello Floris,

Sorry you had to wait so long for a reply to your questions.

Sadly, the truth is that as most organic materials rot away over time, we will never know how common it was, or even if it was common, for pugiones to have purely organic handles. Very few pugiones survive with any of the original organic material of the handle still in place. Those that do, such as the one from Colchester, have surviving bone plates under their iron grip plates. Any wood or horn plates on other pugios have long since disappeared and many surviving pugiones which still retain their grips have grips of the thin embossed type, which have been left hollow due to the disappearance of the original organic layers.
While most pugiones with rod tangs survive without their iron grip plates, there have been a great many finds of unattached solid iron grip plates. It stands to reason that many of the pugiones which survive without grips had grip plates which have become detached. Added to that, the ivory handles from Heddernheim and the Walbrook demonstrate a form of handle which is likely to have been more normally made from a hard wood, as ivory was always a very expensive substance and bone is unlikely to be found which is thick enough. This type only featured one iron grip plate, on the recessed side, so the loss of a single plate would result in the pugio surviving without any hint of its handle other than its tang. Not all pugiones with rod tangs featured this sort of handle, of course, as demonstrated by a pugio from Usk which had the normal arrangement of a silver inlaid front grip plate and a plain rear grip plate. How the organic layers beneath the grip plates were formed is unknown, as it has not survived, but the two most likely options are a single block drilled with a longitudinal hole to accommodate the tang or two organic plates fullered to fit around the tang which were then sandwiched between the iron grip plates.

Regarding your second question, the notion that it may have been common for pugiones to feature gladius style handles is spurious and is a clear example of the authors trying to fit the evidence to their theory, rather than the other way around. The Vindonissa pugio was the recipient of a replacement handle. It features the striker plate from a Mainz type gladius hilt and a gladius grip which has been jammed onto the tang. There is not enough space between the two for there to have been a Mainz type guard to match the striker plate. Therefore the obvious conclusion is not that the pugio originally had a sword style handle but instead that it had lost its handle and some stray sword handle parts were used to make it back into a serviceable weapon. The same probably applied to the Saalburg example. Another example of a pugio which was brought back into service after the loss of its handle is one from the Wallbrook in London, which has had a lathe turned tool handle fitted over its tang.
The Firmus stele is also a red herring, as the pugio depicted on the stone is quite damaged and so it cannot be ruled out that it originally showed a normal pugio handle. To my eyes, it still appears to retain what is probably the central expansion of a pugio grip, with the guard being damaged, so I would fall on the side of it having depicted a normal pugio grip rather than a sword grip.

The Herculaneum soldier's pugio is really the only concrete thing to suggest that there may have been pugiones with sword style handles, but extreme caution must be exercised here, as the pugio is extremely large (I have seen it myself from the distance of only about two feet) and its width appears to be quite close to that of a Mainz type sword. There is a possibility that it too may be an example of recycling a broken weapon, in this case a sword, which has had its broken blade ground to a new point for reuse as an oversized pugio. Unfortunately the blade is unable to be seen clearly, as its wooden sheath has survived well, apparently made especially for the weapon from what I could see. Therefore, until it is properly published, we will not know the full details of the blade.

You mention the ends of tangs being peened over. This is normal and would apply to both gladius and pugio handles, as the end of the metal must be spread to prevent the handle slipping back off the tang. Swords often feature a decorative 'nut' which the tang passes through before being peened over. Something similar applied to pugio handles applied to rod tangs, which generally featured a flat plate of metal or antler lying on top of the pommel expansion which the tang was peened over on, often flanked by a pair of decoratively headed nails hammered downwards into the pommel expansion.

I hope this helps. Again, sorry for having to wait so long for an answer.


Crispvs

[Posca]

Thanks Crispvs! Good to hear an expert's opinion on this matter, I had a similar feeling but about the gladius handles but couldn't quite substantiate it.