Byzantine Weapons and Warfare

[Orlirva]

I agree with 10th c. start for Menaliva but thought this image from a silver plate was also dated 10th C. Uh, I suppose I don't know anything about it exactly, do you know its provenance, where it is now, any analysis?

The helmet choice of one of the figures does suggest a possible earlier date but otherwise the kit looks plausibly 10th C. to me. If its 6th C. that does rather blow my theory out of the water.


The "christmas tree" head is not a heavy pole arm like a halberd. Its still primarily a point weapon. On the other hand, it is clearly capable of delivering a hewing cut far better than any other type of spear. Thus, I think of it as sort of a compromise ... or maybe even an early version of a polearm class that later became heavier and more specialized. As such, a 10 foot or maybe even 11 foot length would work fine for it.

I'm inclined toward a 8-9 foot length.
Along the way, I did a couple of years of (japanese) naganita study and I consider this of more or less the same light-polearm class with a strong anti-cavalry reason for existance. Although the naginata is a tad shorter, I can do all of my naganita drill with this weapon in that length.


I still think that the boar-spear type head is a great candidate, but a light polearm seemed to be a good fit to the requirements.
-Rick

Orlirva wrote

http://www.kismeta.com/diGrasse/Byz/MenavCandidate.JPG is the model

My major problem with this is that AFAIK menavlia are first mentioned in a 10th century treatise, but the representation this reconstruction is based upon dates to the 6th century. Just seems like too much of a stretch to me. There's no indication as far as I can see, in the original description, that would suggest an edge of this sort on a menavlion.

Also, I would take issue with the idea of the menavlion being a relatively short pole-arm on the lines of a glaive or halberd. The length of the shaft is specified in Nikephoros Ouranos' Taktika as 1.5 to 2 orguiai ("fathoms"). This has been interpreted [Schilbach] as being equivalent to 2.8-3.7 metres (9'2"-12'2") or even 3.2-4.2 metres (10'6"-13'9"). gis would make it far too long and unwieldy to use in this manner.

Tim Dawson's treatise "Fit for the Task" in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies (Vol 31 No. 1 of 2007), using an interpretation that considerably reduces the length of an orguia from Schilbach's, proposes 2.3-3.1 metres (7'6"-10'2"). But even with this reduced length, it's hard to see it being possible to use it like a halberd or glaive.