Going a little off-topic, one thing in the "Hype..." article that caught my eye was:

The sword was never the principal battle weapon. It has always been the weapon of last resort. The Roman relied on his pilum,...
While I knew swords were seldom primary battle weapons, I always thought the legionnaires were the exception to this. They threw the pila and then fought with the gladius. In which case, I would imagine the sword did more of the killing for them. As such, is not the sword better described as the primary battle weapon of the legionnaire?

Maybe this is just a point of semantics. But it does raise a more general substantive point which puzzles me - namely the relative effectiveness of swords compared to spears etc. The fact that throughout history, swords were seldom principal battle weapons implies to me that they were inferior as infantry weapons etc[1]. Yet the fact that sword-armed legionnaires seemed to outfight most of their non-sword armed foes makes them a rather puzzling exception. People in these forums may relate to this point, as the Total War engine gives swords a bonus against spears that seems a little questionable from a historical point of view.

[1] I know there are cost and anti-cavalry effectiveness issues in favour of the spear, but I do not think these invalidate the inference. Usually even soldiers who were equipped with swords did not use them as their main weapon against infantry. Similarly, spears lived on long into the post-gunpowder battlefield as bayonet and there was no tendency to rely on swords for infantry melees instead.