Pattern welded late roman blades

[caiusbeerquitius]

I'm sure as with all Roman things there is not one clear answer.....

Exactly. A large number of Late Roman swords was pattern-welded. For many originals we have, we nowadays simply don´t know if they were made this way or not, since preservation methods well into the 1970ies made the patterns invisible. Only a very minute magnified X-ray can often tell in these cases, but these are usually not conducted, since too expensive. So in the future many blades of earlier swords will as well turn out to have originally been pattern-welded, such as Mainz gladii etc., for which we now only have few samples with evidence for pattern-welding. However, there seems to be a tendency to use always more complicated patterns from the early to the late imperial period, as well as a tendency to use more pattern-welding in general. Consult Miks to make yourself a picture