Southpaws in the Roman Infantry

[GhostOfClayton]

You know how, during the night when you're not quite awake and not quite asleep, you sometimes get a niggling question rolling around your brain, and you seem to focus on it and get almost obsessed by it. And then you wake up, remember the question and think, "well that's just really trivial", and forget all about it?

 

Well, that happened to me last night, and it truly was a very trivial question . . . but I don't have an answer to it, so I'll plague you lot with it.

 

What did left-handers do in the Roman Infantry?

 

Let's take as an example a left-handed legionary called Marcus (to quote Blag from Chelmsford 123, "they're ALL called Marcus.") Presumably, whilst in any sort of formation, Marcus would have to hold his shield in his left hand, and his gladius in his right hand. No exceptions allowed, else Marcus (and the other members of his contubernium) would quickly feel to wrath of his Centurion's vine stick. Does that mean that Marcus had to fight with his weaker hand? Or could he swap hands when he was involved in the more hand-to-hand stile fighting. Or was there a Century tucked away on one side of the battle formation that contained only the left-handers? Or are these irrelevant questions, because poor old Marcus would have been drowned as an abomination when his horrified parents first became aware of his terrible affliction?

 

Last night, this REALLY worried me.

Edited October 12, 2010 by GhostOfClayton

[Kosmo]

My bet is Marcus had to use the right hand. For example in my country left handed people had to use their right hand in many activities. Warsaw Treaty weapons were made for right hand users only so even if you were left handed you still had to train to use it while conscripted. Left handed people like my father or my childhood best friend were taught and forced, in school and at home, to write with their right hand. My friend, a very talented artist, during class was taking notes with the right hand and was drawing comics with the left.

Given the attitudes of romans and greeks towards the sinister side of things I think one will want to use the right hand.

I don't remember well but I think a greek wrote about this and about the need to make soldiers/citizens ambidextrous.

[Melvadius]

I don't know about the Greek's advising training for ambidexterousness but my copy of Vegetius: Epitome of military Science, translated by Milner, has several sections which if they are

[Aurelia]

While searching for something else earlier today, I came across this old thread on left-handedness, which I thought you might find relevant.

 

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9981

[Melvadius]

Thanks for posting the link to the old thread Aurelia, it makes for some interesting reading due to the alternative sources quoted.

[guy]

While searching for something else earlier today, I came across this old thread on left-handedness, which I thought you might find relevant.

 

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9981

 

I also want to thank Aurelia for remembering the link. As Caldrail sugggested in his post (#3), fighting left-handed must have been rare since Commodus prided himself in mastering a left-handed technique while playing gladiator:

 

...after luncheon, [Commodus] would fight as a gladiator. The form of contest that he practised and the armour that he used were those of the secutores, as they were called: he held the shield in his right hand and the wooden sword in his left, and indeed took great pride in the fact that he was left-handed.

 

Source: Cassius Dio Roman History 73.19

 

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/home.html

 

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited October 12, 2010 by guy

[Lanista]

I can give you a practical answer. When our daughter was three, she announced that she wanted to play tennis. At that age, we had no idea what hand she preferred (we actually thought she was ambidextrous at the time), so we duly took her to lessons. She's now six and a confirmed lefty...but still plays tennis on the right!

 

Cheers

 

Russ

[caldrail]

Lefties were taught to fight right handed like evryone else and had better get used to it, because the legions weren't going to make allowances for common soldiers to disrupt tight formations with such demands as left handed sword play. As for ambidexterity, that's hugely exaggerated as a human skill and one that blossomed in the public imagination via RPG's and computer games. The vast majority of human beings favour one hand or the other by nature although as the posts above suggest, it's perfectly feasible to train someone to use their off-hand, though I do note the misery of left handed schoolchildren in past ages who didn't find writing altogether easy.

[Melvadius]

Lefties were taught to fight right handed like evryone else and had better get used to it, ..... I do note the misery of left handed schoolchildren in past ages who didn't find writing altogether easy.

 

When most weaponary could be used equally with either hand it probably didn't really matter for most irregular units but once the Romans started to fight with 'close order' drill in tighht formation then having everyone using their weapons in the same way probably became essential. I have met several people over the years with stories of being forced to write right-handed as children and can sypathise with the suffering they went through much of it probably due to the perceived need probably stemming from at elast thee Victorian period onwards for boys to be taught to use the machine made and so standardised rifles which were mainly if not all designed for right-handed use.

 

Picking up on a few of the comments in the previous thread what I do remember from my re-enactment days was the utter confusion of a very experienced left-handed fighter who joined our fight practices but as he held back slightly initially found that he couldn't beat any of the relatively novice fighters there. It took him until nearly the end of the practice session before he finally realised that both of our trainers were also left-handed, although most of the trainees right-handed, so we had actually been learning to fight against both types of fighters.

 

Mind you once he realised why he wasn't getting far holding back it became a lot harder to beat him but we still managed it now and again.