Legionaries wore full body-armour, either a mail-shirt with additional shoulder pads or, increasingly, the new lorica segmentata formed of strips of steel strapped together. The javelin (pilum) was specially designed as a shield- and armour-piercing weapon, with small pyramid-shaped head, long metal shank (60 cm), and wooden shaft. A Roman imperial legionary was the finest heavy infantryman of antiquity, and a massed legionary charge was the ancient world’s last word in ‘shock and awe’.