GLA´DIUS
GLA´DIUS (
ξίφος, poet.
ἄορ,
φάσγανον), a sword or glaive, by the Latin poets called
ensis.
The oldest Greek swords were of course of bronze, the one allusion to an iron
sword in Homer (
Hom. Il. 18.34) being
regarded as an interpolation; later they were mostly of iron, though the
older metal did not entirely go out of use. Bronze swords of a pre-historic
age have been found at Mycenae (Schliemann,
Mycenae, pp. 283, 304, &c.); some of these have hilts
inlaid with gold; they are long and thin in the blade, and resemble the long
light swords invented by Iphicrates for his peltasts; they run to 88
centimetres in length, whereas the longest Greek swords now preserved in
collections vary between a minimum of 34 and a maximum of 75 centimetres
(about 13 and 30 inches respectively). The ancient swords in the British
Museum all, without exception, look much shorter than the regulation sword
of the British army at the present day. The Homeric sword was
cut-and-thrust, with a straight two-edged blade (
ἄμφηκες,
Hom. Il. 10.256), rather long and tapering
very slightly towards the point. The
σπάθη,
used in early times (Alcae.
fr. 15), must have had a
broad blade, as the name implies, and, according to Droysen, was a cutting
sword with blunt point; the word is philologically interesting as having,
through the Latin
spathu, superseded every other
word for a sword in the Romance languages (Fr.
épée, It.
spada, Sp.
espada). The hilt of most of the ancient swords
is protected by a cross-bar, though sometimes by a very slight one (see
cut), and is usually of one piece with the blade; but the ornamented hilts,
which are sometimes very tasteful, are of wood inlaid with gold or silver.
The scabbard (
κολεός, Hom.
κουλεόν, Lat.
vagina) was either of metal or of leather with metal mountings.
The type of the primitive Greek sword does not seem to have greatly altered
until the 4th century B.C., when Iphicrates, among
his other improvements in arms and armour, greatly increased, or, according
to Diodorus (
15.44), doubled the length of the
blade for his peltasts or light infantry, while
[p. 1.920]the hoplites retained the shorter sword of earlier times: the sword thus
lengthened does not, however, appear to have exceeded 78 centimetres, or
about 31 inches for the blade exclusive of the hilt. The Greeks hung the
sword on the left side by a belt passing over the right shoulder, and drew
it with the right hand across the body; hence the
ACINACES of the Persians, worn on the right side,
was noticed by them as exceptional. For the
μάχαιρα or dagger, sometimes scarcely distinguished from the
ξίφος, see also
PUGIO (Droysen,
Kriegsalterth. in
Hermann-Blümner, p. 15 f.; Guhl and Koner, ed. 5, p. 319 f.) The
ῥομφαία,
rhomphaea or
rumpia, was a Thracian sword of great length. (L. and S. s. v.;
V. Fl. 6.98;
Gel.
10.25; Claudian,
Epigr. 22 (27).) In Livy (
31.39) it has been taken for a spear: but the
consistent usage of the Greek writers proves this to be a mistake.
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Greek Swords and Scabbard. (Guhl and Koner.)
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Of the sword used by the Romans before the Second Punic War little is known,
and of course nothing from monuments; they then, according to a notice in
Suidas (s. v.
μάχαιρα) which apparently
comes from Polybius, discarded the native pattern (
τὰς πατρίους ἀποθέμενοι μαχαίρας in favour of the
Spanish, though (he adds) they could not equal the Spanish workmanship and
fineness of the iron. They had learnt, it seems, to appreciate the
superiority of the Spanish sword over the Gallic when both were employed
against them at the battle of Cannae: Livy describes the two ( “Gallis
Hispanisque scuta ejusdem formae fere erant, dispares ac dissimiles
gladii: Gallis praelongi ac sine mucronibus, Hispano, punctim magis quam
caesim assueto petere hostem, brevitate habiles et cum
mucronibus,” 22.46). It has been inferred that the Romans had
themselves used the Gallic sword hitherto (Guhl and Koner, p. 776); but in
the combat of Torquatus and the Gaul, a century and a half earlier, the
Gallic broadsword, so large as to be unwieldy, is already contrasted with
the short thrust sword of the Roman (
Liv. 7.10;
Claud. Quadrig. ap.
Gel. 9.13). The anachronism
of these writers, pointed out by Marquardt, consists only in applying the
word “Spanish” to the Roman sword then in use; we agree with
Rich (s. v. Gladius) that the early Roman sword in all probability did not
differ much from the contemporary Greek. The Spanish type now introduced
was, therefore, larger and heavier than that previously in use, yet still
handy, as Livy tells us in the words quoted above. In the Macedonian war the
greater size and weight of the Roman sword struck terror into the Greeks
(Florus,
2.7 == 1.23 Jeep). The Romans ever
afterwards used the point of their cut-and-thrust sword much more than the
edge: Vegetius remarks (1.12) that the blow of the latter was easily parried
by the defensive armour, while with the former (in this resembling the
modern bayonet) “two inches of cold steel” often inflicted a
fatal wound. That the Roman sword could not have been short is implied in
the joke of Cicero upon Lentulus (i. e. Dolabella), a man of very low
stature, “Who tied my son-in-law to his sword?” (
Macr. 2.3.3.) The British glaive was still larger
than the Roman, and
sine mucrone (Tac.
Agric. 36); it may thus have been identical, or nearly
so, with the old Gallic broadsword. From time immemorial, as in the East
down to the present day, gold and jewels have been freely lavished upon the
adornment of hilts [
CAPULUS]
and scabbards. Either will suit the
stellatus ïaspide fulva
Ensis of Aeneas (
Verg. A.
4.261); but Juvenal interprets it of the sheath (5.44). The golden
acinaces of Mardonius was a trophy at
Athens (Dem.
c. Timocr. p. 741.129;
Paus. 1.27.1). The Gauls adorned their swords with pearls (
Plin. Nat. 32.23), probably not Oriental
but “British” pearls from their own seas (id. 12.116).
The Romans, at least from the time that they adopted the Spanish sword, wore
it as a general rule on the right side; the dagger, when carried, hung on
the left by a separate belt. Polybius--who, it is noteworthy, throughout his
description
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- 1. Monument of an Illyrian soldier, found at Bingen.
- 2. Scabbard (Mainz) and swords (various parts of
Germany).
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of the Roman arms and armour (6.22, 23) uses only the word
μάχαιρα, not
ξίφος---says expressly (23.6),
ταύτην
δὲ περὶ τὸν δεξιὸν φέρει μηρόν, καλοῦσι δ᾽αὐτὴν
Ἰβηρικήν: and
[p. 1.921]mentions no dagger as
worn on the other side. The columns of Trajan and Antoninus, and the Roman
monuments in Germany collected by Lindenschmidt (
Alterth. unserer
heidnischen Vorzeit), show the sword to the right, and the
dagger (which may have been introduced after the time of Polybius) to the
left, alike in the case of legionaries, auxiliaries, and cavalry. Curiously
enough, Josephus reverses this arrangement (
καὶ
μαχαιροφοροῦντες ἀμφοτέρωθεν:
μακρότερον δὲ αὐτῶν τὸ λαιὸν ξίφος πολλῷ, τὸ γὰρ κατὰ
δεξιὸν σπιθαμῆς οὐ πλέον ἔχει μῆκος,
B. J. 3.5.5): as do also some exceptional cases on the
monuments; a
signifer cohortis V. Asturum (Lindenschmidt, pt.
xi. pl. 6); an
eques of a praetorian cohort
(Fabretti,
Col. Traj. p. 226). The problem has been
satisfactorily solved by Rich (
s. vv.
“Gladius” and “Cinctorium” ), who figures a sword
to the left from a bas-relief in the Capitol: the common soldiers wear their
swords in the manner described by Polybius, on the right side, suspended by
a shoulder-band [
BALTEUS]; the
officers wear their swords on the left, attached to a belt round the waist;
and the swords of the cavalry are longer than those of the infantry. (Cf.
Marquardt,
Staatsverw. 2.327 f.; Guhl and Koner, ed. 5, p.
775 ff.)
[
W.W]