[Spenser T.]

Hello again myArmoury,

I'm wondering what advantages (if any) a short sword (by this I mean a sword with the blade length of a roman gladius or shorter) would have over a longer sword (by this I mean such swords possessing a length of about a roman spatha, celtic la tene long sword, or germanic migration period sword).

I'm primarily asking this because one of my friends is an iron age germanic re-enactor and martial arts practitioner, and he has what I think is a better than average amount of knowledge on this stuff (so I generally believe what he tells me about these things). He said to me once in conversation that in the iron age it could be seen that longer swords were cavalry weapons and short swords were infantry weapons. He told me that this could be observed in the roman, mainland celtic, and germanic cultures of the time.

Why would iron age warriors outfit their foot-soldiers with shorter swords, instead of swords the same length as those given to cavalry? does this indicate that there was some advantage to having a smaller sword if you were an iron age infantryman? or would this have been this way for an entirely different reason?

Thank you for any input you may offer on this

[Emil Andersson]

Hi Spenser,

I'm not an expert on any on this but the romans' infantry fought in close formations with their large shields, and there the shorter swords could be used to stab around the shields more effectively. Longer swords would get locked out if people get close enough to you, whereas cavalry used longer swords to be able to reach opponents on the ground.

Other iron age peoples might have faced the same kind of issues as the romans, I can't really tell you for sure.

[Luka Borscak]

The question is, if there really is a tactical advantage of short swords for infantry, why did Romans adopted spatha for their infantry too in the last two or three centuries of their Empire?

[Tom King]

[Matthew P. Adams]

[Timo Nieminen]

[J.D. Crawford]

[Matthew Amt]

For the Romans, the short sword encouraged aggressiveness. Putting a highly-trained and motivated psychotic armored knife-fighter right in the face of face of the average farmer was pretty intimidating. Heck, it's intimidating even for the average unarmored warrior. The Romans were all about aggression and brutality on the battlefield.

As others have said, it's also handier to lug around the empire, and handier in the crush of battle (though the Romans preferred to have a little elbow room, as most other folks did).

I *don't* think cost had anything to do with it, judging by the completely needless amount of decoration that went onto most Roman equipment.

And it's worth repeating that Roman infantry only used the short sword *instead* of longer swords for maybe 3 centuries. In the Republic they used the longer gladius hispaniensis, and in later times there were various forms of longer spatha that became popular.

Matthew

[Timo Nieminen]

[Spenser T.]

These are all really great points! Thank you all for taking the time to share this info here

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

It may be wroth noting that, although most sixteenth-century Western European military theorists preferred swords with approximately 36 inches of blade for infantry, numerous Landsknechts during this period wore and wielded katzbalgers with 24-or-so-inch blades. None of the classically oriented Italian, French, and English sixteenth-century military writers I'm familiar with wanted to go back to sword blades as short as the Romans used, even as they recommended reviving use of the shield and various Roman tactics and forms of organization. The one military writer to specifically address katzbalgers noted their utility in the press of combat but expressed contempt for the lack of sharp points. Yet while perhaps a step down from the Swiss, Landsknechts were nonetheless some of the best infantry around and apparently fared well enough with their curious little round-pointed swords.

I suspect short Roman infantry swords at least got the job done satisfactorily, both because of the potential advantage listed by others in this thread and simply because a foot or so of blade length wasn't so important alongside all the other factors at play on the battlefield. Additionally, the mediocre quality of Roman metallurgy - as Alan Williams describes it - likely increased the appeal of a robust design.

[Spenser T.]

Benjamin,
Thank you for your post, it was very interesting. I would never have thought to look at the landsknecht mercenaries for insight into this enquiry.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

Another factor with the Romans specifically could be how a short blade facilitated wearing the sword on the right side, which allowed them to draw their swords without interference from their large shields.

(You can draw a longer sword worn on the left side under a large shield, but it requires different movements. See the attached images from an early seventeenth-century shield drill manual.)

[Matthew Amt]

[Jason S. Gleason]

The gladius was a better thrusting weapon than a spatha. The point of impact was closer to the hand, which meant that less of the force of the thrust was lost due to torque if a stab wasn’t perfectly in line with its point of impact. In the chaos of battle, that’s pretty frequent. On top of that, a shorter blade gives better leverage at the point of impact, especially with a thrust. As such, driving a two foot blade after the initial momentum encounters resistance is easier than doing so with a blade half a foot longer.

Both weapons were made of the same iron (or crappy steel). Because they were tempered, carbonized iron rather than crucible steel (like the wootz steel of Iran and Afghanistan), they were too brittle to be thin, agile weapons. The spatha’s blade had to be thick, which pushed its center of gravity out to about a third of the length of the blade. The gladius had a center of gravity much closer to the hilt, which makes a huge difference when thrusting.

In the first and second centuries, the Romans favored tight formation fighting (although not as tight as the Greek hoplites). They carried large shields (scutum) and had a man standing to either side of them. As such, they could typically chop or stab down over their shield, thrust forward by angling their shield open, or raise their shield and thrust beneath it. Moving from and overhead attack to a below-shield stab behind your own shield has to be done quickly in order to take advantage of an opponent’s weak point. In such quarters, maneuvering a 30” blade necessitates rotating it out to the side, in space that’s occupied by your brother; an 18”-24” blade does not have that limitation.

Finally, the Roman gladius Hispania was a terror against maille armor. It had an awesome, wedge shaped point that was heavy and durable, and opened up the rings of butted maille very effectively. With a direct strike, a Roman gladius punched through butted maille like a hot pugio through butter. Butted maille could usually withstand a slash from a spatha, although a few slashes could tear a hole in it. Even those spathae that were crafted with the same wedge-style point as the gladius Hispania did not penetrate lorica hamata as well as a gladius, because of the aforementioned mechanics of transmitting force down the longer blade.

In the third and fourth centuries, Roman battle formations opened up a bit. Shields got smaller and individual units got more maneuverable. Steel got better and cavalry was more commonly employed. All of these factors contributed to the further development and adoption of the spatha. But, even with the widespread use of the spatha, the Romans continued to employ a shorter sword, referred to as a “semispatha”. Which (from what little we know) seems to have conformed to the fundamental characteristics of a shorter gladius.

[Matthew Amt]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

According to Alan Williams, steel production and hardening techniques did get significantly better in the fourteenth century in Europe (earlier elsewhere in some cases). See The Sword and the Crucible and The Knight and the Blast Furnace. Many Roman swords - half of those Williams surveyed - weren't even hardened.

[Jason S. Gleason]

[Timo Nieminen]

[Jason S. Gleason]