Greek Kopis

Origins

The main weapon of the Greek hoplite was the spear, the Hoplite Dory; the sword was a secondary weapon, drawn when the spear broke or the fighting closed in. Greek soldiers carried two kinds. The Greek Xiphos was a straight, double-edged sword suited to thrusting. The kopis was its opposite: a single-edged, forward-curving blade built for heavy cuts. The name is used in modern scholarship somewhat loosely — ancient authors also used the word machaira for curved blades of this kind — and the type appears in Greek art from the sixth century BC. Its origins are debated; similar forward-curved blades appear in Etruscan Italy and Iberia, and the shape may have arrived in Greece from the west or grown out of large chopping knives.

Design & Construction

The kopis blade is the key to the weapon. It curves forward, concave on the cutting edge near the hilt and widening toward the point, so that the center of mass sits well forward. This makes it cut like a heavy knife or an axe, while the point remains usable for a thrust. Blades were of iron, typically forty-eight to sixty-five centimeters long, with a single edge and a thick back. The grip curves back to form a hook that protects the knuckles and keeps the sword from slipping out of the hand on a hard blow, and it often ends in the stylized head of a bird or animal. Scabbards were of wood covered in leather, hung from a baldric under the left arm.

Combat Use

In the crush of a hoplite battle, a heavy downward cut with a kopis could strike over the rim of an enemy's Greek Aspis or break a limb. Spartans appear with curved swords in vase painting and sculpture, and Plutarch preserves a famous exchange in which a Spartan, told that his sword was too short, replied that it was long enough to reach the enemy. The kopis was also the cavalryman's sword: Xenophon, writing in the fourth century BC, advised the horseman to carry a machaira rather than a straight sword, because a cut from horseback does more than a thrust. The army of Alexander the Great, fighting with the Macedonian Sarissa, used it widely, and the famous Alexander Mosaic shows curved swords among the combatants.

Legacy

The forward-curved blade reappears again and again in later history, from the Iberian falcata that fought Rome to the Ottoman Yatagan and the Kukri of Nepal, though these developed separately. The kopis is one of the defining weapons of the classical Greek world alongside the spear and shield, and it features in modern accounts of battles such as Battle of Thermopylae. Surviving examples are rare and are held in museums in Greece and across Europe; reproductions are popular with reenactors and collectors.