Research and Discussion Forums

I have an interest in learning longsword and arming sword and buckler, but unfortunately, there is really nobody else in my area with experience to study with. I go to college near Boston and I was going to try to see if I could get a group together interested in studying mediveal and renaissance sw...

Here is an excellent article on the gladius, but it includes some information on roman warfare too : http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_ironempire.html

gladius is in the latin english dictionary as a word for sword.

and yes I am aware that spain as it exists today, did not exist in roman times, but they did refer to the iberian peninsula with the blanket term of hispana. . .

gladius is the latin word for sword, and hispanensis means "from spain" the glaidus was adopted from the spanish tribes, before that the romans used a different style of short sword.

spatha also means sword. . . the modern greek word for sword is "spathion"

well, the spatha began to replace the gladius in the later empire. My assumption is that it probably came into favor when the army started to become largely germanic (in the west) and it was a more comfortable weapon for them to use because it was similar to their own swords. I know, however, this a...

touche on some of those points. . . a lot of my roman military history is getting rusty.

the spatha was definitely much more of a slashing weapon, and it also became the standard infantry weapon in the later armor, I'll have something to say about it in a bit.

In all likelyhood they did, unfortunately, this is probably lost to us, because pretty much all the images of roman soldiers training or fighting shows them with a shield. Chances are, that any fighting without the shield wasn't codefied so it was really up to experience and what other soldiers deve...

Well, the gladius was stolen from the spaniards around the time of the punic wars, the Romans were not averse to adopting things from other cultures and they found it to be a very effective short sword. The tower shield the romans used was actually indiginous to the latin peoples, and was pretty muc...

That is a good idea, and very valid. And the tactics romans used to fight different enemies did change over time. The following can be said of the period of the rise of Agustus to about the end of the Flavian Emperors: One thing that Boudacia and the Jewish Revolts showed, is that the Roman army is ...

I do agree, that any handling of a sword, especially in combat, is considered fencing, what I meant by my comment, is that there was probably little to no fencing in the individual duel sense, given the nature of the roman military formation. The cohesiveness of the formation was central to roman mi...

I agree that the gladius was most definitely primarily a stabbing weapon. There are some illustrations that can be found of romans training different stances, and some mention is made of the use of the gladius use in various histories. One stance I have seen is of a roman soldier crouched in a low s...

At the beginning of a karate class a couple of months ago my sensei was relating a story that a friend of his in the SCA asked him to duel at a get together so my sensei was pitted with his fillipino escrima against an SCA swordsman. As the story went eventually after warding off a flurry of sword a...

I'm in the mainline. . . just outside the city

Are there any arma people in the philadelphia area?. . .I checked the list already and there's no study group too close

but for that matter, how about the boston area too?

thanks