Bret Devereaux

They appear in Livy at earlier points, but I suspect it's accidental. The best really clear depiction of velites doing velites things is in Upper Macedonia in the 2nd War.

Yeah, but that’s later. If your question is when they first appeared, I think our best evidence is Campania. Prior to that I think different words are used.

Livy 26.4.4: Young men, fast and agile, were selected from all the legions and supplied with shields somewhat shorter than those used by the cavalry. Each was furnished with seven javelins, four feet long and tipped with iron heads similar to those on the hasta velitaris

ex omnibus legionibus electi sunt iuuenes maxime uigore ac leuitate corporum ueloces; eis parmae breuiores quam equestres et septena iacula quaternos longa pedes data, praefixa ferro quale hastis uelitaribus inest. Can’t this also describe leves? Where’s the philological hook?

quale hastis uelitaribus, "of a kind with the hasta velitaris" Livy calls these same men velites later in the passage.

Right, but the subject there is the spear, not the person, right? He’s just saying these guys have the fast-spear. Or am I misreading the Latin?

A couple of sentences later he calls those men "the velites" This suggests that when he says "like the hasta velitaris" he's not saying they were a different corps than the velites in that army, but their spear was perhaps the ancestor/prototype of the velites' spear

But Livy refers to velites in earlier books. But their use of the hasta velitaris and shield here is difficult to establish earlier. Not sure when the sword comes in either, or when this armament became standard.