Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Iron xiphos, Thessaloniki museum. Stone's Glossary has xiphos being a name used by Homer for a sword. The entry in the book says that the sword had a double-edged blade widest at about two-thirds of its length from the point, and ending in a very long point. [2] The word is attested in Mycenaean Greek Linear B form as 𐀥𐀯𐀟𐀁, qi-si-pe-e.
The acinaces, also transliterated as akinakes (Greek ἀκῑνάκης) or akinaka (unattested Old Persian *akīnaka h, Sogdian kynʼk) is a type of dagger or xiphos (short sword) used mainly in the first millennium BCE in the eastern Mediterranean Basin, especially by the Medes, [1] Scythians, Persians and Caspians, [2] then by the Greeks.
While Xenophon states that the xiphos was the conventional sword used by the Greek soldier of his time, he recommended the makhaira for cavalry. "I recommend a kopis rather than a xiphos, because from the height of a horse's back the cut of a machaira will serve you better than the thrust of a xiphos." (Xenophon, 12:11). [6]
These swords eventually evolved into, among others, the Roman gladius and spatha, and the Greek xiphos and the Germanic sword of the Roman Iron Age, which evolved into the Viking sword in the 8th century.
A sword of the Iron Age Cogotas II culture in Spain. According to Polybius, the sword used by the Roman army during the Battle of Telamon in 225 BC, though deemed superior to the cumbersome Gallic swords, was mainly useful to thrust. [8] These thrusting swords used before the adoption of the Gladius were possibly based on the Greek xiphos. [9]
Unlike the xiphos, which is a thrusting weapon, the kopis was a hacking weapon in the form of a thick, curved single edged iron sword. In Athenian art, Spartan hoplites were often depicted using a kopis instead of the xiphos, as the kopis was seen as a quintessential "villain" weapon in Greek eyes. [47]
Xiphos: Greek one-handed, double-edged Iron Age straight shortsword; Xyele: The short, slightly curved, one-edged sword of the Spartans. [3] Migration Period swords. Spatha: continuation, evolved into Ring-sword (ring-spatha, ring-hilt spatha), Merovingian period; Viking sword or Carolingian sword; Krefeld type
A two-handed sword is any sword that usually requires two hands to wield, or more specifically the very large swords of the 16th century. [ 104 ] Throughout history two-handed swords have generally been less common than their one-handed counterparts, one exception being their common use in Japan.