Roman sword

Hello and welcome to the very first and I hope not the last entry of my blog, here I’ll talk about stuff, criticize movies, books, TV shows and rant once in a while (some times more than “in a while")

This is the first and I want to answer a question a friend asked me time ago.

It was “Why the Romans used that short sword?” at the time I didn’t knew, but after looking after it I found why.

The reason for the short sword is not a simple fashion look, it is, as everything in the Roman army part of a well thought and evolved method of war.

The simple reason is because it was the more practical weapon for the formation and they way they move.

The long answer is…

The Romans always fought as a unit, so forget the opening scene of “Gladiator” and see all the armor and weapons of the soldiers and also the evolution from Greece.

The Greek people had a formation known as phalanx the one they use in “300” but they used a bronze armor and weapons, that is the why  of the beginning of the short sword, because in that formation the Greek used the spears as main weapon and the sword was the last choice.

The Romans had the steel and allowed them to had better armors and better swords so they adopted the phalanx but they improve it, instead of using the spears, that will inevitable break during the fight they used the swords, instead of stand in a line side by side like this ------their formation was more like /\/\/\ so when the enemy face them they would fight not one Roman but 2 or 3 at the same time.

Also the formation was made with rows of romans that alternate during the fight, so every 5 minutes of fight the front of the line step aside and a new fresh rested soldier took his place for the next 5 minutes.

Well that is the why of the length of the sword, the reason of why they didn’t conquer the world and stuff is longer and History Channel already did it, so look for it, or if you like it you can ask me and I’ll answer it.

Also I wanted to do the animated gif of the formation but by the moment I’m limited in resources (We require additional pylons)

See ya, until next time :D