Roman Spatha

Origins

In the late Republic and early Empire the Roman legionary fought with the Roman Gladius, a short stabbing sword ideal for the close order of the legion behind the Roman Scutum. But Rome also recruited cavalry from the Celtic and Germanic peoples of its frontiers, and these horsemen brought their own long swords, like the Celtic La Tène Sword, which gave a rider the reach to strike an enemy on the ground. The Romans called this longer sword the spatha. By the first century AD it was the standard sword of the auxiliary cavalry, and the Roman army's workshops made it in quantity.

Design & Construction

A spatha has a straight, double-edged blade of iron or steel, usually sixty-five to eighty centimeters long and four to six wide, with a point suited to thrusting as well as a cutting edge. Early examples have long parallel edges and short points; the Straubing-Nydam and Lauriacum-Hromówka types of the later Empire, defined by the German scholar Christian Miks, have broader or narrower blades and different point shapes. Many later blades were pattern-welded, forged from twisted bars of iron and steel to make a tough blade with a decorative surface. The hilt followed the Roman style: a small guard of wood, bone or bronze, a grip of wood or bone, and a round or ring-shaped pommel. From the second century the sword was worn on the left side on a wide baldric, fastened with a decorated scabbard slide, rather than on the right as the gladius had been.

Combat Use

For cavalry the spatha's advantage was obvious. For infantry the change came more slowly, and it reflected a change in how the Roman army fought. Through the second and third centuries the Roman Legions adopted oval shields, longer swords and looser formations, fighting more often against mobile Germanic, Sarmatian and Persian enemies, and the spatha became the sword of the whole army. Late Roman infantry fought in close shield walls with spear and spatha, and the sword is shown on tombstones and in the grave goods of soldiers across the Empire. The Roman Lorica Segmentata disappeared in the same period, as the army moved to mail and scale.

Legacy

The spatha outlived the Western Empire. The Germanic kingdoms that replaced Rome kept it as their sword, and in the Eastern Empire it became the Byzantine Spathion. The Migration Period swords of the Franks, Anglo-Saxons and Lombards are its direct descendants, and so is the Viking sword, including the famous Ulfberht Sword. In a real sense the spatha is the ancestor of the medieval knightly sword, the Arming Sword, and the word survives today in the Italian spada, the Spanish espada and the French épée.