Hasta

The hasta is a thrusting spear that gave its name to the hastati, the youngest and least experienced line of heavy infantry in the early Roman Republican army's manipular legion, though by the time the hastati are best documented in the historical record they had already largely replaced the hasta itself with the throwing javelin known as the pilum and the short sword called the gladius. The weapon consisted of a wooden shaft tipped with an iron point, used in a mixed formation for direct thrusting combat rather than throwing, in the tradition of earlier Greek and Italic hoplite-style warfare that Rome's own military system grew out of. As Roman infantry tactics evolved through the middle Republic, particularly after the reforms traditionally associated with the general Gaius Marius, the hasta as a front-line infantry weapon gave way almost entirely to the pilum and gladius combination, though the hasta's name persisted in Roman military vocabulary and unit titles long after the weapon itself had left common infantry use.