Jeremy Armstrong (University of Auckland)
Described by Polybius (6.23) and Livy (22.46) as a short, double-edged, thrusting sword, and made famous by Hollywood films, the gladius Hispaniensis has become synonymous with the Roman army. Associated with a brutally efficient stabbing motion (Bishop 2016), this weapon and its accompanying combat style is almost always what is described, depicted, or implicitly suggested when discussing virtually any period of Roman warfare – including that of the early and middle Republic. However, as its name suggests, the gladius Hispaniensis was likely a relatively late addition to the Roman panoply, associated with the wars in Spain in the second century BCE. Prior to this point, both art and archaeology suggest that Italy featured a dazzling array of sword types, likely associated with an equally dazzling array of combat styles. This complicates our picture of how a Roman army, and an individual roman soldier, may have behaved in combat, particularly in the period down to the middle of the second century BCE.
Although scholars have long worked to categorize the myriad extant weapon finds into various ‘types’ and ‘styles’ (e.g. Miks 2007, Weidig 2014), the most notable difference appears to be between the straight, double-bladed varieties (incl. the xiphos, Antenna, Fronton, and La Tene types) and the curved, single-bladed varieties (incl. the so-called kopis, machaira, and falcata types). Both straight and curved swords appear throughout Italy during the period in question. However, despite their widespread contemporaneous use, their fundamentally different forms suggest they would have been used in very different ways. The present paper will explore the possible functions of these two sword types in the context of Republican Italy, and the implications this may have for your understanding of how Roman soldiers may have behaved in combat.
The paper will begin with a brief overview of the evidence for the two broad sword types in Italy between c. 500 and 200 BCE, including both iconographic and archaeological evidence. Particular attention will be paid to the wider context of the finds, and the panoplies they are typically associated with. This will be followed by a discussion of the literary evidence for their use, for instance Xenophon’s (Eq. 12.11-12) comments about cavalry preferring the curved kopis in the fourth century BCE, hinting that the variation may relate to fundamentally different troop types – although a careful consideration of the evidence suggests it might not be so clear cut. The paper will then move on to some recent experimental work (e.g. Rover 2020), and well as other practical considerations associated with using both sword types and the types of armour they would be most effective against. The paper will conclude with some suggestions for what this means for our understanding of combat systems and norms in Republican Italy.