Why change to the Spatha?

[stevesarak]

Wellllllll..... That may be stretching things a little. During the Republic, after all, the sword was the *longer* gladius hispaniensis. It was only with the professional army of Caesar's era and after that the shorter blades come into use. I do agree that a shorter blade encourages aggression! But a longer blade doesn't necessarily make one a wimp, and maybe in the later Empire they liked the intimidation factor of longer blades.

Matthew, I think you missed my point. I never said that longer blades makes one a wimp, I was saying that an experienced fighter will use their head more, they don’t just blindly go charging in, or at least not to many times. A longer blade give one a chance to maneuver a little more and use a little more defense as well as offense. To emphasize my point, you and a sparring partner trying using a small rubber knife and go at it. It’s a totally different type of fighting, then using a sword. With a sword, you have the advantage of being able to use a little strategy, or technique, to get in and deliver the killing blow. And of course I’m not saying that the Gladius was like a knife, but you get my point.

Had they? Didn't the enemies of the 3rd and 4th centuries include mainly Germanic and Gothic people with little or no armor? The late Republican foes included many Hellenistic cultures with at least their front-rankers armored (Macedonia, Pontus, Carthage, etc.). Also bear in mind that Romans simply did not win all the time! So there were plenty of enemies on all sides who felt that going to war with the Romans was not suicidal, whatever the armor and weapons involved.

When your fitting your army, you certainly don’t think about the soldiers with the weakest armor, you plan on going against the strongest, or at least keep in mind the trend where the armor’s headed. True most of Rome’s enemies at the time wore nothing more then blue paint, but that’s not the focus when your fitting your legions for battle, you think of the what gives you the biggest problems, then plan against it, the rest, (shirtless enemies) are gravy. I think a smart general or whoever had the voice of how to best equip the legions, planed against the 10% of the enemies that was the hardest to kill, rather then the 90% that relied on numbers.

But they wouldn't bother to hit anyone in the armor--the idea is to strike at the UNarmored parts! If you have to hit armor, you don't use a sword, you use a mace or a pick of some sort.

As all of us knows, in the heat of battle, your opponent doesn’t always respect your wish to kill him and stand still so you can deliver that nice sweet shot. During the battle, he’s trying to avoid you as your trying to kill him, and sometimes your shot doesn’t always go where you’d like. How would you like your opponent to have crouched down a bit as he was trying to avoided a face shot, then you go for the neck, and slide the tip of your sword into a loop of his armor or imbed into a primitive chest plate made up of strips of wood, then he suddenly stands up, scared by your shot, and oops, their goes the tip of the Gladius. Sure your going to get pissed and kill him anyway, but you now have a sword with a broken tip. My point is that your shot doens't alway go where its planed.

And what do you mean, “If you have to hit armor, you don't use a swordâ€