5. _Roman._--The equipment of the Roman soldier, like the organization of the army (see ROMAN ARMY), passed through a great number of changes, and it is quite impossible to summarize it as a single subject. In the period of the kings the legion was the old Greek phalanx with Greek armour; the front ranks wore the Greek panoply and fought with long spears and the circular Argolic shield. The early Roman sword, like that of the Greeks, Egyptians and Etruscans, was of bronze. We have no direct statement as to its form, but in all probability it was of the ordinary leaf-shape. We gather from the monuments that, in the 1st century B.C., the Roman sword was short, worn on the right side (except by officers, who carried no shield), suspended from a shoulder-belt (_balteus_) or a waist-belt (_cingulum_), and reaching from the hollow of the back to the middle of the thigh, thus representing a length of from 22 in. to 2 ft. The blade was straight, double-edged, obtusely-pointed. On the Trajan column (A.D. 114) it is considerably longer, and under the Flavian emperors the long, single-edged _spatha_ appears frequently along with the short sword. The second period ending with the Punic wars witnessed a change. The _hastati_ and the _principes_ are both heavily armed, but the round shield has given way to the oblong (_scutum_), except for one-third of the _hastati_ who bore only the spear and the light javelin (_gaesa_). The third period--that described by Polybius--is characterized by greater complexity of armour, due no doubt in part to the experience gained in conflicts with a wider range of peoples, and in part to the assimilation of the methods peculiar to the new Italian allies. Thus we find the skirmishers (_velites_) armed with a light javelin 3 ft. long and 3/4 in. thick, with an iron point 9 in. long; this point was so fragile that it was rendered useless by the first cast. For defence they wore a hide-covered headpiece and a round buckler 3 ft. in diameter. The heavy-armed carried a _scutum_ formed of two boards glued together, covered with canvas and skin, and incurved into the shape of a half-cylinder; its upper and lower edges were strengthened with iron rims and its centre with a boss (_umbo_). A greave was worn on the right leg, and the helmet was of bronze with a crest of three feathers. The wealthier soldiers wore the full cuirass of chain armour (_lorica_), the poorer a brass plate 9 in. square. For offence they carried a sword and two javelins. The former was the Spanish weapon, straight, double-edged and pointed, for both thrust and cut, in place of the old Greek sword.