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Short description

These Thracian warriors wield the double bladed Rhomphaia, a potent longsword, and can wreak havoc when charging enemy infantry or cavalry.

Description

These Thracian warriors are armed with the Rhomphaia, a two bladed longsword that was usually used with both hands. The devastating weapon is equally effective in cutting through men or horses. A carrying strap allows its wearers to bear a big thureos shield at the same time, and thus protect their body. This is necessary, because most Thracians do not wear body armour, but only tunics with coloured stripes and the zeira, a cloak similar to the Greek chlamys. Phrygian and sometimes Chalcidian helmets, as well as javelins complete the equipment of the Rhomphaiophoroi (“Rhomphaia bearers”) and make them a flexible all-round infantry unit. It will therefore come as no surprise that they were popular mercenaries throughout the Hellenistic world.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Thracians became famous as Peltasts. Since the 6th century BC or even earlier, they had fought with javelins and the well-known round or crescent Pelte shields. Yet, as the avid TW player will know, king Rhesos of Thrace already fought in melee with heavy armour during the Trojan War. According to one version, he was so successful that Hera and Athena bestowed divine powers on Diomedes of Argos so that he could defeat Rhesos (Pind. fr. 262 = schol. bT Hom. Il. 10,435 Erbse). Body armour remained rare in Thrace (E.g., Plut. Aemilius 18, 5), but from the 4th century BC on, they were commonly using the so-called Rhomphaia for melee. Its double-blade was on average 2.8cm wide and 60cm long, with a similarly long handle (the surviving copies can be found in various museums in Bulgaria). While some shorter Rhomphaiai could be wielded in one hand, most needed to be carried in both hands, like the medieval Zweihänder swords known from M2TW. You may think this made the Rhomphaiphoroi vulnerable to missile fire, but the Thracians found a way to hold a shield at the same time! First, a carrying strap was attached to a hook at the Romphaia's handle. The leather strap was then hung around the neck, as shown by the Bulgarian conservator Georgi Iliev in an experiment. This way, one could hold a shield in the left hand and easily grasp the sword when needed (Cf. Webber, Gods of Battle (2010), fig. 19: yet, there was also a scabbard). Alternatively, the Rhomphaia was worn over the right shoulder and the shield hung on a strap on the left arm (Burckhardt, Leonhard, s.v. Rhomphaia, in: DNP online). Despite this solution, the Rhomphaia still needed a lot of space to be operated effectively, and Livy mentions a case where the Thracian infantry was hindered by long grass (Liv. 31.39.11).

The shield of choice was the oblong Thureos. It is already shown on a ring from Chernozem, dated to the 5th century BC, and more clearly on the famous Kazanluk tomb paintings which were created around 300 BC. On a side note, the popularity of the Thureos shield in Thrace makes it quite likely that the Greeks simply adopted it from their neighbours, not necessarily from the Galatians and certainly not from the Romans. In any case, the Thracian infantry equipment was completed with javelins (Fischer Bovet, Army and Society (2014), p. 139), greaves (Plut. Aemilius 18,5), and Phrygian respectively Thracian or Chalcidian helmets (Stoyanov, Warfare, in: A Companion to Ancient Thrace (2020), pp. 430-431). Plutarch quotes the Roman politician Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum (ca. 20-141 BC), who commanded a contingent that fought against the Antigonid Rhomphaiophoroi at the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC:

“First the Thracians advanced, whose appearance, Nasica says, was most terrible, — men of lofty stature, clad in tunics which showed black beneath the white and gleaming armour of their shields and greaves, and tossing high on their right shoulders battle-axes (rhomphaiai) with heavy iron heads.” (Plutarch, Life of Aemilius 18,5)

Nasica emphasises their tunics and thus the lack of body armour: many Thracians did, however, wear a cloak similar to the Greek chlamys, the zeira, which protected them against the cold and the wind (Head, Armies (2015), p. 247). Most of the Rhomphaia unearthed by archaeologists (14 have been found in Bulgaria) were found in the territory of the Bessi (as Webber (2010) repeatedly mentions), but Nasica’s description of the warriors at Pydna leaves no doubt that the Odrysian kings, who reigned over the Bessi for most of their history anyway (e.g., in Polyb. 23, 8, 4 they are seemingly mentioned as dependent allies of the Odrysians in the early 2nd century BC), also deployed Rhomphaiophoroi. Warriors equipped in this way also served the Thracian kingdom of Bithynia in Anatolia. On the stele of a Bithynian nobleman called Diliporis from the middle Hellenistic period, the son of the honoured, Mokazis, wears a Rhomphaia, a short, belted tunic (the belt is also represented on the unit model), a zeira and a yellow-brown Thureos (but no body armour; Post, Bithynian Army (2022), p. 89).

Thracian foot soldiers were so popular that most Hellenistic kings attempted to create a permanent reserve of fresh recruits. The Egyptian village of Pitos, south of Memphis, already had a major Thracian population under Ptolemaios II (r. 285-246 BC) (Griffith (1933), p. 119) and 4,000 Galatian and Thracian Katoikoi (“Landowners”) fought in the Ptolemaic army at Raphia in 217 BC (Polyb. 5.65.3-4; 10). Their opponents, the Seleucids, had settled Thracians in the Persis (Diod. 19.27.5; Polyaen. 7.39; 40) and at Raphia, 2,000 of them fought under the command of the Carian officer Menedemos of Alabanda (Polyb. V, 79, 6). Even these Katoikoi kept their native equipment since they could fulfill special roles on the battlefield for which the traditional Hellenistic infantry units were not suitable (Head, Armies (2015), p. 66; Bar-Kochva, Seleucid Army (1976), p. 34; 42). In Macedon, Thracians were definitely settled in various towns under Philip V (r. 221-179 BC), but possibly earlier (Liv. 39.24.3-4). Even these measures did not satisfy the demand: in 171 BC, Philip’s son Perseus (r. 179-168 BC) leased 1,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry from the Thracian monarch Kotys III for six months, paying several hundred talents for them (Griffith (1933), p. 306). Finally, Athens had a long history of Thracian mercenaries. The peltasts were first introduced to the city by the tyrant Peisistratos (r. 546/545- 528/527 BC), and inscriptions show that Thracian foot soldiers were still hired by the Athenian authorities in the early Hellenistic period (IG II², 1956, Griffith, Mercenaries (1933), p. 240).