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In other words, for the soul to become a power. These three formed the Lyra prayer, of which the two first are immeasurably the in more important. I believe in the human being, mind and flesh; form and soul. It happened just afterwards that I went to Pevensey, and immediately the ancient wall swept my mind back seventeen hundred years to the eagle, the pilum, and the short sword.
"Grant me not, O Jupiter, my life this day!" It needed no eye of veteran to read the sentence that was writ. Driven, at last, within the rails, as went the saying, there was no room in all that weltering mass to use the sword, much less the pilum.
The Triarii were armed with the pilum, thicker and stronger than the Grecian lance, four and a half feet long, of wood, with a barbed head of iron, so that the whole length of the weapon was six feet nine inches. It was used either to throw or thrust with, and when it pierced the enemy's shield the iron head was bent, and the spear, owing to the twist in the iron, still held to the shield.
A phantasm seemed to have come before every member of that mad, murderous band; for they saw, as it were, in the single champion before them, a long, swaying line of men of slight stature like him; of men who dashed through their phalanxes and spear hedges; who beat down their chieftains; whom no arrow fire, no sword-play, no stress of numbers, might stop; but who charged home with pilum and short-sword, and defeated the most valorous enemy.
Down, pikes!" he cried, and as the trumpet peal rose loud and clear, fresh legionaries came hurrying through the Damascus arch, and the pilum and spatha of Rome bore back the shields and lances of Palmyra. The pilum was the Roman pike, and the spatha the short single-edged Roman sword.
The weapons were a light spear, a pilum or javelin six feet long, terminated by a steel point, and a sword with a double edge, adapted to striking or pushing.
Besides a lighter spear, the legionary soldier grasped in his right hand the formidable pilum, a ponderous javelin, whose utmost length was about six feet, and which was terminated by a massy triangular point of steel of eighteen inches. This instrument was indeed much inferior to our modern fire-arms; since it was exhausted by a single discharge, at the distance of only ten or twelve paces.
The heavy weapons of their ancestors, the short sword, and the formidable pilum, which had subdued the world, insensibly dropped from their feeble hands. As the use of the shield is incompatible with that of the bow, they reluctantly marched into the field; condemned to suffer either the pain of wounds, or the ignominy of flight, and always disposed to prefer the more shameful alternative.
The Hastati were so called because they were armed with the hasta; the Principes, for being placed so near to the front; the Triarii, from having been arrayed behind the first two lines as a body of reserve, armed with the pilum, thicker and stronger than the Grecian lance, four and a half feet long, of wood, with a barbed head of iron, so that the whole length of the weapon was six feet nine inches.
"And why?" Slowly and with assumed severity she spoke. "Because I do not love you." "Cruel one!" said he, turning and biting his lips. "Your words are as the blow of the pilum." "Have they indeed wounded you?" She touched his hand with a look of sympathy. "They have made me sick at heart." "Then would I not believe them," said she, tenderly, slipping her slender fingers into his.