I have finaly got the old digit out of you know what and started on my first own sword. It´s going to be a spathae for a impression of my Roman Auxilliary trooper from arlund the time of Trajan. Now, I am going to grind out the blade on this one. A local knifesmith and I made the rough shape of the blade and I are now in the stage of grinding out the fuller/fullers and edges and so forth. My cousetion now is that the plan I have for the sword is to have a short fuller aprox. the first quarter of the blad from the handle. It has a little distal taper and is also tapered about a total of 5 mm towards the point on each side. The blade has a with of 45 mm. But is this a plausiple shape of a spatha. On Peter Johnssons concept drawnings for Albions Next Generation there seem to be three totaly diffrent blades. I just wanna know so I don´t make a complete fantasy here.

Thanx in advance guys!

Martin

Ave!

I certainly encourage everyone to make more Roman swords! Bearing in mind that I have *not* done a ton of research on the spatha, I think your plans are close but a little off. As I recall, the spatha of Trajans's times should have parallel edges, not tapered (though distal taper is certainly fine), and I don't think there should be a fuller at all. A width of about 35 mm is better, too. The blade you describe could be a spatha from the 3rd century, perhaps, or later, but that's going out of my area (and era) of expertise. So doing it just as you describe could be a perfectly good Roman sword, just a century or so later than Trajan, that's all.

Good luck with it!

Matthew

AFAIK, fullers only came about when Roman designs started mixing with the Germanic ones used by their barbarian auxiliaries; the original Roman patterns of both gladii and spathae had a flat diamond cross-section, sometimes with a reinforced point, with no fuller.

Fullers start popping up on the celtic blades during the La Tene III period.

I really can't remember too many swords that have short fullers though, that seems to be a much later concept.

Shane

My first go round for one. I'm doing, -not done yet, a 150 layer straight lame, to flesh out a Pictish persona.

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