Metallurgy and Roman swords

[Damianus Albus]

This is wrong. Metallurgical analysis shows that by the late Republic and early imperial period almost all Roman swords were medium and/or high-carbon steel. Modern steel is the wrong steel composition, but the Romans were using steel.

See "Study of the Metallography of some Roman Swords" and "Metallographic Examinations of some Roman Republican Weapons from the hoard of Grad near Smihel."

I did study roman metallurgy and as far as I know, Romans had used high carbonized iron or you can call it soft steel.
It has nothing to do with medieval steel becasue Romans did not have medieval's technology.

There is a reason by some high officers prefered bronze swords, becasue bronze was stronger than early steel.

We have even sources how the sword were acting. Ceaser writes than pilum bends after each use, jsut like sword during fight so you need to step on it and "rebind" it. That's not how steel works. That's carbonized iron.

Whole "steel" was made by forging and hammering so during this proces which was reapted X times, iron absorbed carbon and became "soft steel".

Yes, they could produce steel at some level but it was too expensive, they didnt have technology and it was uneconomical.

You could call it steel by romans standards but by out modern standards it wasn't steel like today or even if some pieces provides iron wirh 2% carbon, it's very uncommon and cannot be treated like normal thing becasue it isnt until medieval.

As for the spathas, like I mentioned, vast majority of them have less than 1% od carbon.