The Falx

[Tarbicus]

You know, it's an interesting thread, as the accepted and almost exclusive Dacian use of the falx could be a classic example of, "Well, it just is, isn't it. Everyone says so, and has done for a long time."

Is there a specific reference in the primary sources to the Dacians using the falx? A quick search on Bill Thayer's website shows falx just means sickle or a similar instrument, and its use extends all the way back to the Greeks and Assyrians, and even inside Roman siege engines inside a testudo, like the asseres falcati (dragging hook for dislodging stones?) at Ambracia and the Dacian Wars.

The Geleni were noted for its use (Claudian, De Laud. Stil. I.110). It was the weapon with which Jupiter wounded Typhon (Apollod. I.6); with which Hercules slew the Lernaean Hydra (Eurip. Ion. 191); and with which Mercury cut off the head of Argus (falcato ense, Ovid, Met. I.718; harpen Cyllenida, Lucan, IX.662‑667). Perseus, having received the same weapon from Mercury, or, according to other authorities, from Vulcan, used it to decapitate Medusa and to slay the sea-monster (Apollod. II.4; Eratosth., Cataster. 22; Ovid, Met. IV.666, 720, 727, V.69; Brunck, Anal. III.157). From the passages now referred to, we may conclude that the falchion was a weapon of the most remote antiquity; that it was girt like a dagger upon the waist; that it was held in the hand by a short hilt; and that, as it was in fact a dagger or sharp-pointed blade, with a proper falx projecting from one side, it was thrust into the flesh up to this lateral curvature (curvo tenus abdidit hamo).

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... /Falx.html

This Romanian page on the falx has the following quote: http://www.gk.ro/sarmizegetusa/ranistor ... /arma.html
[quote]The shorter variant was called “Sicaâ€