Quote Originally Posted by MeinPanzer
The answer here is that they could be expensive, but they needn't necessarily be expensive. This entire point is moot, though, because anyone who could afford a helmet, which was probably more expensive than a sword, could afford a sword.
I'd like to see your proof that the majority of lower-class Achaemenid troops carried swords. Do you have any historical account, or is your source an artists' rendering which is highly open to interpretation a) when it is first produced and b) when it is unearthed ?

Talking strictly on peninsular weaponry, the amount of iron ore necessary to produce a sword would be relatively large as the efficiency of the smelting process was low, resulting in a small quantity of usable iron. Further, the quality of the metal was not always the best, most not usable for weapons as complex to make as swords [not unless you didn't want a good sword anyway, which was definitely not the case in this particular location I'm talking about].

On the process of actually forging the sword, you needed a swordsmith to do the thing, not your everyday blacksmith that produced the agricultural implements for the communities [and that could easily make a mediocre spear or a javelin head]. It is a complex fabrication technique that requires a specialized forge and set of skills that was simply not available everywhere. Time was also a factor, since it is a time consuming process, especially when talking about those that weren't mass-produced. Time is, and was, money.
Quite.

I wonder whether pantodapai phalangitai generally wore helmets, and, if they wore them, whether they would be bronze, iron, leather or linen.