Patrick has been busy and has made a new spatha -- looks very good to me.


http://www.templ.net/english/news.php


Cheers,

Paul

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Beauty. I was under the impression that Gladius hispanensis has a bit more waisted blade - like Ljubljanica gladius (inspiration for the scabbard) you can see here:





Article about the Ljubljanica river gladius scabbard:

http://www.mcbishop.co.uk/jrmes/j1101.htm

Or is that just corroded middle part of the otherwise straight blade blade?


Lol, and you can see Barta's thumb on the photo of hilt. He's got holes in his socks! Hard working guy :)

Lovely stuff. I, too, think of the gladius hispaniensis as having a waisted blade. Nevertheless, this new piece is another wanta-have-it item from Patrick Barta's shop.

Actually, most Hispaniensis gladii had fairly parallel edges, or were very subtly waisted, so Patrick Barta's interpretation is not too far off the mark. The fullers, though, I'm not too sure about... very attractive sword, in any case, IMO....

I have a replica of a gladius Hispaniensis with a blade based upon one found in Mouries, France, at the base of the Pyrenees. It has a fairly wide blade with parallel sides before it begins to taper to its point. It has a very subtly diamond shaped blade w/o any fullers so Patrick's interpretation is certainly w/in the realm of probability as swords were made by any number of individual smiths and not in factories at this time. What is curious about Patrick's sword to me is the length. At 948 mm, it is rather longer than his Roman Riding Sword, #102, at 905 mm. I have one of the latter and it is unquestionably a spatha and not a shortsword as the gladius Hispaniensis very clearly was, allbeit that the gladius Hispaniensis tended to be longer than the later versions. I wonder what the history of that blade was. He says that it came from a grave in Slovakia, which would suggest that it was carried by an auxiliary and not by a legionary if it is really of the period of the Late Republic. Indeed, was Slovakia even a part of the Empire at that point? My guess is that the sword was more likely carried by an auxiliary cavalry trooper and that it is really a spatha, as originally suggested.

I decided that I should ask Patrick if he knows anything more about the history of the person with whom that blade was buried. Was there a tombstone with something about his life on it, for instance? So I sent him an email and, if I get an answer, I'll post it.