03-05-2008, 11:01 PM
Quote:Huh? Where do you get this info? What are you talking about?
I'm referring to the Dacian wars in the broadest sense here and to the Adamklissi metopes and Trajan's Column.
Quote:....don't you mean maximum possible lifespan - and stretching a point at that ?...after all, we only hear of its use in combat around the second C BC. And since Valerius Flaccus 1st C AD reference is to
No, I mean minimum. The rhomphaia could have evolved earlier than the early 4th C. BC, but an example simply hasn't survived. Likewise, the rhomphaia could have been used after Valerius Flaccus' mention, but no trace exists in the literary or archaeological record of it.
Quote:Bastarnae with a blade and wooden shaft the same length, that reference can hardly be anything other than a Falx
Why would he refer to it as a rhomphaia? And numerous examples of excavated rhomphaiai have blade and shaft of equal length.
Quote:Let's keep it simple shall we? .....one-handed =Sica, two-handed = Falx ( while remembering that like swords there can be an almost infinite gradation, with'bastard' and 'hand-and-a-half' swords
So what differentiates a rhomphaia and a falx, then? If it's the curvature of the blade, when does a blade become curved enough to be a falx? And that mention above of Bastarnae carrying rhomphaiai, how would a soldier wield a thureos and a rhomphaia in combat if a rhomphaia (or, if you take it to be a falx, a falx) could only be wielded two handed?
Quote:....I will treat this as a serious question and answer it, though it has the ring of a mere 'doubting Thomas' about it......
Both the Column and Adamklissi were clearly designed to be "read" by their audiences, and to that end, the depictions on it had to be 'stereotypes', whether of soldiers or different peoples, which is why the same 'type' repeatedly appears. On both monuments, three distinct types of dress can be discerned that 'marry up' with the Dacians and their Bastarnae and Sarmatian allies, and are easily recognisable even to 'moderns'. The germanic Bastarnae wear what the Romans thought of as 'germanic' garb - loose trousers, bare chested, bearded and even hair tied in that most distinctive german 'Suebian knot' . Only warriors of this type wield two-handed falxes, and are quite distinct from depictions of Dacians.......This has been the accepted and settled view of scholars on the subject for well over 100 years. Smile
As Diegis has commented, it is not nearly so clear cut as you think. Why would subordinated allied troops be allowed to wear the cap that marked the Dacian nobility?
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
