Del Tin Swords

[Matthew Amt]

and (gladius, but early and very like some Greek swords on vase paintings, both in hilt shape and blade shape) at [url:21m0dboq]http://www.deltin.net/203a.htm[/url]

Ah, that one. It's actually a Spanish Fronton style sword, dating back to the 4th or 5th century BC. They basically copied it from illustrations in Connolly, who wrote his book back when this was thought to be the Gladius Hispaniensis, the predecessor to the Mainz style gladius. But it is not! It had fallen out of use long before the Romans got to Spain, and is not really as similar to the Mainz as a few tiny pictures might suggest.

They've changed this repro in the last couple years. The hilt looks marginally better, but the blade shape has "melted down" to something unrecognizable. If it can be reworked into a usable hoplite sword, great, but it doesn't really look like a Spanish Fronton, nor like anything Roman! (Actually, you might be able to use the blade for something very early Republican Roman, but yes, with a completely different hilt.) Probably easier just to modify something that is already meant to be a hoplite sword, though!

Valete,

Matthew