spatha or gladius?

[Publius Aelius Hadrianus]

An interesting debate would be if there was a fall or not?

Nowadays more and more historians are arguing about this term "fall", which i believe is rather innacurate.

[chairman]

That is an excellent point, PVC. I remember a thread about whether a Roman legionary or Medieval knight would win in a combat situation, and what most people ignored, was that, it didn't matter who was more "disciplined" or "trained" or whatever, the armor and weapons that the knight would be using were composed of far superior metal to that of the legionary. So the same way that the bronze using Egyptians struggled against their iron age opponents, Republican and Principate legionaries would find their metallurgy to be inferior (if only slightly) to that of armies of Constantine's day or later. That is even having taken into account the masterful iron-working skills of the Iberian and Celtic smiths. As I have already mentioned, a similar evolution/revolution occured with the bronze-to-iron age change, with swords becoming longer as the metallurgy improved. So, while you can make all the arguments about spathas emerging due to the need for more mobile warfare or declining military quality or quantity (and some of these might be true), the fact that better iron working skills allowed longer blades still remains.

Chairman