Gladius
Early ancient Roman swords were similar to those of the Greeks, called xiphe (pl., sg.
A fully equipped Roman legionary after the consulships of Gaius Marius was armed with a sword (gladius), a shield (scutum), one or two javelins (pila), often a dagger (pugio), and perhaps, in the later empire period, darts (plumbatae).
Gladius is generally believed to be a Celtic loan in Latin (perhaps via an Etruscan intermediary), derived from ancient Celtic *kladi(b)os or *kladimos "sword" (whence modern Welsh cleddyf "sword", modern Breton klezeff, Old Irish claideb/Modern Irish claidheamh [itself perhaps a loan from Welsh]; the root of the word may survive in the Old Irish verb claidid "digs, excavates" and anciently attested in the Gallo-Brittonic place name element cladia/clado "ditch, trench, valley hollow").
[9] Later, during the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, they found Hannibal's Celtiberian mercenaries wielding swords that excelled at both slashing and thrusting.
[9] A text attributed to Polybius describes the adoption of this design by the Romans even before the end of the war, which canonical Polybius reaffirms by calling the later Roman sword gladius hispaniensis in Latin and iberiké machaira in Greek.
[9] It is believed Scipio Africanus was the promoter of the change after the Battle of Cartagena in 209 BC, after which he set the inhabitants to produce weapons for the Roman army.
[12][13] However, the Gladius was not yet used by the Romans in the 4th century BC, and because of that this has been traditionally considered a terminological anachronism caused by the long established naming convention.
[8] It's possible that the Celtiberian sword was first adopted by Romans after encounters with Carthaginian mercenaries of that nationality during the First Punic War (264-241 BC), not the second.
[9][8] It has been suggested that the sword used by Roman cavalrymen was different from the infantry model, but most academics have discarded this view.
The weapon developed in Iberia after La Tène I models, which were adapted to traditional Celtiberian techniques during the late 4th and early 3rd centuries BC.
[15] By the time of the Roman Republic, which flourished during the Iron Age, steel and the steel-making process was known to the classical world.
The resulting pieces were called blooms,[16] which they further worked to remove slag inclusions from the porous surface.
A recent metallurgical study of two Etrurian swords, one in the form of a Greek kopis from 7th century BC Vetulonia, the other in the form of a gladius Hispaniensis from 4th century BC Clusium (Chiusi), gives insight concerning the manufacture of Roman swords.
The Vetulonian sword was crafted by the pattern welding process from five blooms reduced at a temperature of 1,163 °C (2,125 °F).
On its edges were placed four strips of low-carbon steel, 0.05–0.07%, and the whole thing was welded together by forging on the pattern of hammer blows.
The carbon content increased from 0.05–0.08% at the back side of the sword to 0.35–0.4% on the blade, from which the authors deduce that some form of carburization may have been used.
Epigraphic attestations of the gladiarii have been found in Italy, especially in areas of ancient metallurgic tradition such as Capua and Aquileia.
This use appears as early as the 1st century AD in the Biography of Alexander the Great by Quintus Curtius Rufus.
[19] The republican authors, however, appear to mean a specific type of sword, which is now known from archaeology to have had variants.
A solid grip was provided by a knobbed hilt added on, possibly with ridges for the fingers.
Blade strength was achieved by welding together strips, in which case the sword had a channel down the centre, or by fashioning a single piece of high-carbon steel, rhomboidal in cross-section.
[21] Though the primary infantry attack was thrusting at stomach height, they were trained to take any advantage, such as slashing at kneecaps beneath the shield wall.
The decoration on the scabbard illustrates the ceding of military victory to Augustus by Tiberius after a successful Alpine campaign.
