Classical Era Armies in Bronze or Iron?

[Slytacular]

In the Classical Era, were armies equipped with more bronze or iron/steel? I started questioning after seeing Rome 2's Hastati which led to other video game's and illustration's same depictions. It weirds me out that the middle class and higher income troops of early Classical Era armies would not equip themselves with better protection as seen the change during the marian times? I would guess there were more of an abundance in leather, hides, cloth, and potentially iron? I find it difficult to believe somebody that fought in rank and file would be okay with wearing just a small chunk of bronze on their chest when the rest of the body is vulnerable to spear penetration. I would guess the linothorax and other similar developed designs were in use to provide armies with protection.

Spoiler

I've also been wanting to know the major events in Europe that surround charcoal and its use. I've had discussions with people about how plentiful bronze were as compared to using iron during the classical and ancient era. I know the Greeks and Romans had their tin provided by the tin islands through trade from Iberia, but were bronze actually used more than iron as depicted in video games? Somebody told me that production of iron tools and weapons picked up during the medieval ages when every village had its own blacksmith because that was when charcoal was used. That person told me that not a lot of people knew that iron could be made as a metal therefore the known world worked with copper, tin, gold, and silver. I looked on Wikipedia that charcoal has been around since the ancient times to produce iron, so I'm still very skeptic about bronze used more than iron in the classical and ancient times. I watched a Jared Diamond film of Guns, Germs, and Steel in high school which told that man knew how to make steel in prehistoric times. I also read this article that told me the Italians experimented with iron metallurgy since 12th century BCE http://www.academia.edu/1535647/Sicilian_hoards_and_protohistoric_metal_trade_in_the_Central_West_Mediterranean which the rise of Greek city-states arrived a few hundred years after. I'm also curious to how affordable bronze were compared to iron knowing that the copper and tin mines both come from far sources?

Its too much of a hint that the today's depictions of Classical Era armies were wrong and that modern artists only look at the first couple of images on Google Search instead of properly doing research (Total War series were known to never follow history closely anyways).

 

[kurczak]

I don't really know anything about this myself, but it picked my attention so I asked my friend who actually has PhD in metallurgy and he basically said that while iron smelting and even steel making was known centuries before iron/steel stuff was widely used the problem was with the ore and the effectiveness of the steel making process.

While copper ore was found about everywhere and in pretty good purity, iron ore is a ***** to get in good quality. On top of that, the pre-Bessemer steel making process takes much more time and labor than bronze making, so the large-ish production of steel in Europe didn't really kick in until quality iron ore was discovered and exploited in the Alps in cca 5th century BC and even then bronze was for a long time considered a reasonable cost-effective alternative especially for large items such as armor or shields. Also, bronze is (was, at that stage of steel technology) more resistant to corrosion than steel, let alone iron.

 

[Almalexia]

Well to counter that, bronze is expensive. The trick is you need both copper and tin, and these are difficult to find within the same area, thus requiring transportation and trade, whereas iron, though of lesser quality as you note, is more widespread and only requires a single type of ore.

 

[Slytacular]

The construction and techniques to working with iron is more of a mystery than generally knowing what Classical Era armies wore to battle. There is already very little information to the methods of how smiths worked metal in the medieval ages. If I remember that the Spanish has excellent deposits of iron that they don't need much technique to produce good quality metal, but if you look at the Japanese whom had crappy iron, they still managed to create some decent blades through technique. Good bronze for blades depend on the ratio of tin to copper. I believe that tin were a very expensive material that normally the nobility would use for bronze equipment as for the lower income classes would use some kind of iron/steel as those would seem as more affordable material. Maille was supposedly invented during the 4th century BCE, so wrought iron maille, blades, and armor may have been something seen during the start of the Successor Kingdoms.

 

[kurczak]

Both:

Dunno, I'm not a blacksmith or a chemist. But since armies evidently used both bronze and iron/steel stuff well into the Diadochi era (and not just for shinies for officers) there must have obviously been some advantage to bronze. So my friend's reasoning that the kind of steel that was superior to bronze in about every aspect was not really that available due to the bad state-of-art technology/quality ore ratio for a couple of centuries after the "official" start of the iron age seems to make sense to me. Making the really good steel as expensive or possibly even more expensive, especially after accounting for time and labor costs. The productive capacity surely wasn't unlimited, so if forced to choose between let's say 100 units of okayish bronze stuff or 10 units of really good steel stuff they might have (often) went for the former option. And wrought iron, while more accessible wasn't really that much of a deal.

I find it difficult to believe somebody that fought in rank and file would be okay with wearing just a small chunk of bronze on their chest when the rest of the body is vulnerable to spear penetration. I would guess the linothorax and other similar developed designs were in use to provide armies with protection.

Regarding this - pre-Marius armies were civic armies, meaning each soldier was not only expected but required to buy his own equipment. Hastati were by definition the poorest citizens who still qualified to regular infantry service, hence the limited equipment.

 

[Slytacular]

Necromancing this thread.

There are several different reasons why the ages are named as so and a few of them have nothing to do with what quality metals were used. Classical era armies I am describing were already well developed in the so called Iron age. Iron age as broadly described when iron were supposedly more commonly found and featured. Potentially you may be correct that bronze happened to be more available in the market at the time, but that brings the question of how big was the war industry? Maille and scale armours for example would normally be an expensive and tedious work, but if there are several workers and specialists only tied to doing a step of the procedure to the creation of the armours, wouldn't that be in return a more profitable and readily available quality product?

My point of the argument on the rank and file soldiers were why would people sacrifice trying to afford something like bronze to protect themselves in a limited amount rather than a cheaper material that could protect the entire body? I believe that the triple-disc bronze chestplate for example were more of an ornament to display wealth and status rather than actual protection.

 

[kurczak]

Potentially you may be correct that bronze happened to be more available in the market at the time, but that brings the question of how big was the war industry?

No idea, I think it's impossible to quantify with one number for the entire era. But we're still talking largely agrarian societies. Even at its peak, Roman metallurgy was roughly equivalent to very early industrial revolution levels (mid 18th century), when absolute majority of population still tilled the land.

Maille and scale armours for example would normally be an expensive and tedious work, but if there are several workers and specialists only tied to doing a step of the procedure to the creation of the armours, wouldn't that be in return a more profitable and readily available quality product?

More profitable yes. More available? Not really, not necessarily. In an ideal market, it eventually would, but ancient economies were more or less guild-based. Knowledge of a trade was quite heavily regulated afaik, thus creating significant barriers to entry for new metal workers seeking to profit from the demand for iron stuff, thus constricting supply. So, while the sellers would be happy to make all stuff iron for a large profit, the buyer was still stuck with the "10 units of iron versus 100 units of bronze" dilemma.

My point of the argument on the rank and file soldiers were why would people sacrifice trying to afford something like bronze to protect themselves in a limited amount rather than a cheaper material that could protect the entire body? I believe that the triple-disc bronze chestplate for example were more of an ornament to display wealth and status rather than actual protection.

Well, that's my point  - that just because iron ore was more common, doesn't automatically make iron goods cheaper. You have to account for technology and time costs.

 

[Slytacular]

I would hold off on saying there was a lack of technology because the progression and exact records of how blacksmiths work were lost in history. Modern people today just experiment and assume how blacksmithing may have worked (which I do believe its close enough). When you say there are a hundred units of bronze to ten iron, where do you get that from? I would also be interested in reading about the time costs of bronze to iron? That argument also goes against the broad definition of what the Iron Age is.

You should look up what is called Aristotle's Forge. Tell me what you think of it.

 

[kurczak]

The 100 vs 10 was an abstract example.

I don't know what tell you. As stated above, I'm not a metallurgist. I'm just rephrasing what my chemist friend told me - yes, iron is more common, but usually so impure it was sort of useless in ancient times, because they didn't have the technology to get it to those thousands degrees of celsius or if they did it took a very long time

However, there were some alloys of relatively pure iron, but they were actually more rare than copper and tin. So it started as an experiment/luxury item and as the technology improved, so did it become more common. Also, bronze on average corrodes less than ancient-time steel, which was definitely an important factor in outdoor equipment.

Honestly, I don't know, where you see a problem. It seems pretty reasonable to me. Stuff changed at a slower pace back then. Couple of centuries of mixed bronze and iron equipment doesn't seem suspicious to me.