When facing enemies who use spear and shield as their main hand-to-hand military weapon, one either does the same thing better, or the same thing with more men, or tries something different. Two different weapon systems that were used were the two-handed pike (the Macedonian solution) or javelin and sword (the Roman solution). The javelin part of that solution should not be ignored - it's an important part of Roman fighting against spear and pike phalanxes. While the sword has less reach than the spear/pike, the javelin makes up for this, and gives the Romans the first blow in battle.

But it's unwise to do away with spears altogether, since being able to make a bristling wall of spearpoints can be useful in battle, especially against cavalry. The Romans never abandoned the spear. First, there were auxilia with spears. Second, the pilum could be used as a spear in hand-to-hand fighting.

The Roman system needs to be understood as a combined-arms system - it isn't just a bunch of soldiers with sword and shield. It's sword and javelin and shield, supported by spearmen, archers/slingers, and cavalry. Neither the javelin part nor the combined arms part can be ignored.

For some of my earlier thoughts on this same topic, see https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ae3b17/if_spears_were_generally_better_than_swords_why/

Also in that discussion, I note that even when the spear was the dominant hand-to-hand battlefield weapon, swords would sometimes outnumber spears on the battlefield (because spearmen, and archers, etc., would have swords as sidearms). Some further discussion by u/Draugr_the_Greedy and myself on swords as common sidearms in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bt56r6/why_were_swords_more_popular_than_maces_in_the/