So what else do I do with my Pugio

[Crispvs]

"Here is a photo of a pugio recovered from Vindonissa in Switzerland. It looks like a small pugio blade with a gladius style grip, and a guardplate. One thing I noticed was how small all of the pugios from this site were. The almost reminded me of toys, even the couple of gladius blades. Are we as re-enactors making our items larger than their historical counterparts?"

Primvs,

Thanks for the picture. I do have a line drawing of this dagger already but I had not seen a photo of it before. I had always been led to believe that that dagger was simply one of the many which had rod-tangs and had consequently lost their handles, being replaced in this case and another example from London with sword grips and large replacement guards. The blade, although small, is a fairly normal type 'B' blade and I suspect that we are looking at a pugio brought back into service after being rendered useless rather than one made from an old sword.
The detail about the small size of the blade is interesting and I had not noted it before. However, many surviving daggers, including most of those from Vindonissa, are very narrow and so some might apear to be slightly smaller than they actually are. Some blades, particularly of type'A' can be very large, reaching nearly a foot in length, although there is no standard size for a pugio and surviving examples vary considerably.

Crispvs