page_title: Mace (bludgeon)
section_title: Antiquity
hierarchical_section_title: Mace (bludgeon) / Antiquity
caption_attribution_description: English: Flanged maces (pernath and two shestopiors). Русский: Пернач и шестопёры.
context_page_description: A mace is a blunt weapon, a type of club or virge that uses a heavy head on the end of a handle to deliver powerful strikes. A mace typically consists of a strong, heavy, wooden or metal shaft, often reinforced with metal, featuring a head made of stone, bone, copper, bronze, iron, or steel.
  The head of a military mace can be shaped with flanges or knobs to allow greater penetration of plate armour. The length of maces can vary considerably. The maces of foot soldiers were usually quite short. The maces of cavalrymen were longer and thus better suited for blows delivered from horseback. Two-handed maces could be even larger.
  Maces are rarely used today for actual combat, but many government bodies, universities and other institutions have ceremonial maces and continue to display them as symbols of authority. They are often paraded in academic, parliamentary or civic rituals and processions.
context_section_description: Persians used a variety of maces and fielded large numbers of heavily armoured and armed cavalry (see Cataphract). For a heavily armed Persian knight, a mace was as effective as a sword or battle axe. In fact, Shahnameh has many references to heavily armoured knights facing each other using maces, axes, and swords. The enchanted talking mace Sharur made its first appearance in Sumerian/Akkadian mythology during the epic of Ninurta.
  The Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata describe the extensive use of the gada in ancient Indian warfare as gada-yuddha or 'mace combat'.
  The ancient Romans did not make wide use of maces, probably because of the influence of armour, and due to the nature of the Roman infantry's fighting style which involved the pilum (spear) and the gladius (short sword used in a stabbing fashion), though auxiliaries from Syria Palestina were armed with clubs and maces at the battles of Immae and Emesa in 272 AD. They proved highly effective against the heavily armoured horsemen of Palmyra.
caption: Pernach (left) and two shestopyors
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