Gladius or how to correctly read gladius (Latin Gladius - sword) is a common name for four types of Roman swords. The word gladius itself may well come from the Celtic “kladyos” (“sword”), although some experts believe that the term may also come from the Latin “clades” (“damage, wound”) or “gladii” (“stem”) ). The center of gravity is shifted to the handle due to the enlarged spherical pommel (counterweight). The tip had a fairly wide cutting edge to give the blade greater penetrating power. Used for combat in the ranks. It was possible to chop with a gladius, but slashing blows were considered preliminary; it was believed that the enemy could only be killed with a strong piercing blow, for which the gladius was intended. Gladiuses were most often made of iron, but you can also find mention of bronze swords.
The oldest finds of Roman swords date back to the 200s. n. e., they were of extremely low quality; according to numerous testimonies, legionnaires after the battle had to jump on them in order to bend them back. Considering the fact that in antiquity the sword, due to the inconvenience of conducting combat, was much inferior in popularity to the spear - the first gladus were brought to the republic from the Celtic Spanish lands by the warlike tribes of the Celtiberians. Realizing what was happening, the Romans quickly adopted the outlandish technology, but its mass use began only 200 years later, with the beginning of the Imperial period.
The small size of gladiuses was dictated by the battle tactics characteristic of the Greco-Roman world. In individual fights, wielding such a short sword required incredible skill and dexterity, as it implied very close contact with the enemy. According to contemporaries, the battle between two warriors on gladiuses was very spectacular and bloody, which is why the sword was often used as the main weapon of gladiators (from the word gladius). Outside the Roman Empire, gladiuses were popular in Greece and Sparta, as well as among their neighboring barbarian tribes. After the decline of the Roman Empire and the plunge of Europe into the “Dark Ages,” the tactics of combat were forgotten, and the gladius was replaced by the spatha, a previously cavalry weapon distinguished by a much longer blade.
During their existence as the main weapon of the Roman legions, gladiuses transformed in a remarkable way. There are four main types of these swords.
Spanish gladius (Gladius Hispaniensis, that is, simply “Spanish sword”)
Total sword length: 75-85 cm.
Blade length: 60-68 cm.
Maximum blade width: about 5 cm.
Sword weight: on average 900 g, some up to 1 kg.
Period of use: 216 BC – 20 BC
The oldest, largest and heaviest gladius, with a pronounced leaf-shaped blade geometry. It is obvious that this is a transitional form from the older chopping xiphos.
Gladius Mainz. Named after the German city where this weapon was produced and individual samples of it were found.
Total length of the sword: 70-75 cm, later 65-70 cm.
Blade length: 50-60 cm, later 50-55 cm.
Maximum blade width: about 7 cm, while the blade itself is quite narrow.
Sword weight: average 800 g.
Period of use: 13 BC – III century AD
Found only in northern Europe, they were presumably produced at a large military base in modern-day Germany. The shortest and lightest examples served side by side with the more advanced Pompeian gladiuses until the 3rd century.
Gladius Fulham. The first samples were found in the city of the same name in Great Britain.
Total sword length: 65-70 cm.
Blade length: 50-55 cm.
Maximum blade width: about 6 cm.
Sword weight: average 700 g.
Period of use: 43 AD – 100 AD
Not a very common transitional form from Mainz to Pompeian gladius.
Pompeian gladius. The name comes from the first finds of this type, discovered in the famous city of Pompeii.
Total sword length: 60-65 cm.
Blade length: 45-50 cm.
Maximum blade width: about 5 cm.
Mass
and swords: on average 700 g.
Period of use: I – V centuries AD.
The late, most common type of gladius is obviously the most perfect for its context of use. Lightweight, thin, with maximized piercing ability.
Gladius, as noted by the Greek historian Polybius (207–120 BC) in his “General History,” had an advantage over the weapons of their opponents: “Having deprived the Galatians of the ability to chop - the only way of fighting characteristic of them, for their swords do not have an edge, - the Romans made their enemies incapable of fighting; They themselves used straight swords, with which they did not chop, but stabbed, which is what the tip of the weapon served for.”
The Roman historian Titus Livius (end of the 1st century BC - beginning of the 1st century AD) reported that “in former times the Romans had round shields, but since the soldiers began to receive salaries, they replaced them with large oblong ones." The soldiers were armed with a spear, which they first threw at the enemy, and then with a sword and shield they went into hand-to-hand combat, maintaining a tight formation. Naturally, with a short sword the risk of injuring a comrade was reduced. At the same time, those same large shields of the Roman legionnaires covered almost the entire body, so the battle technique mainly consisted of advancing on the enemy, hiding behind the scutum, and delivering piercing blows.
Spata
Spatha (spatha) is a foot sword borrowed from the Celts, but since it was convenient on horseback, it began to be widely used by cavalry and replaced the gladius in the middle of the 2nd century. Slightly heavier (2 kg), longer and narrower (from 75×100 cm in length and 5×6 cm in width), in the dense Roman formation it was inferior to the gladius in compactness. It is believed that the Romans wore the spatha on the right side, rather than on the left: this made it more convenient to remove the sword from its sheath without risking the life of the warrior standing next to it.
Initially, the spatha was a chopping sword with a rounded or rectangular end with a blade up to a meter long, then it became pointed. The piercing form of the gladius was due to the inability to deliver effective slashing blows in a closed Roman formation (the short length of the gladius is also associated with the fighting technique in a closed formation). Outside of closed infantry formation, the gladius was in all respects much inferior to Celtic or Germanic swords. In fact, the spatha, adopted by the Romans in the 3rd century for infantry, was a kind of compromise between the gladius and the barbarian long spathas, and so successful that it became the main sword of the Great Migration of Peoples and was transformed into swords of the Vendel and Carolingian types.
Roman spatha, length 872 mm, weight 900 g. The middle of the blade is forged under Damascus, with uniform steel edges, four fullers, copper figures of Mars and Fortune, a copy of a 3rd century sword.
In the 13th-14th centuries, due to the invention of new types of steel and methods of processing it, armor could protect well from slashing blows, and medieval swords began to be made more piercing than slashing, as a result of which piercing blows to the joints became the main technique in sword fighting armor The modified spatha was a relatively compact cutting and stabbing sword weighing up to 2 kg, with a blade 4-5 cm wide and 60 to 80 cm long.
For combat in close formation, the spatha was worse suited than the gladius, but it combined greater opportunities for individual combat with ease of wearing and could, in principle, due to its relatively low weight and low center of gravity, be used by both a rider on a saddle with stirrups, and without stirrups ( especially in a horned Roman saddle). Since the main (and often the only) formation of the Great Migration and the Dark Ages was a wall of shields or a wedge, the inconvenience of a spat in the formation was not important - when swords were used, the formation was far from monolithic, and the presence of a point helped, although worse than a gladius , but work in line.
The great similarity between the spatha and the naue sword is striking. But if you look at the typology of gladius, it becomes clear that the great-grandfather of spatha was still xiphos, from which the Spanish gladius came. We can say that Naue was ahead of his time: the gladiuses finally came to the spa
those, and it almost completely repeated the much more ancient Naue.
Bronze naues (from 1700 BC, Black Sea and Aegean region)
However, in those days xiphos were still more popular. This may be due to the fact that the bronze blade of the Naue sword, without the weighting characteristic of a xiphos, did not provide sufficient cutting power. But this is just a guess, however, if it is true, it is instructive: “everything has its time.”
It was from spatha that most of the cutting-and-piercing European swords of later periods originated.
German spatha
The spatha with a characteristic scabbard is decorated with a figurine of Mars.
