Dr. Bret Devereaux

Because it's a touch too short.

And one of the things that sort of the way that the kind of reception of the Gladius has varied over time is that you're kind of.

sort of first wave of like Victorian era historians and kind of early 1900s historians, because the gladius, particularly first, the gladii that they have, that they find first, are imperial era gladii, which are the shortest of the bunch.

The swords of the Republic and of the late empire are longer.

And then because it feels so much shorter than the sabers and rapiers that they're used to, often its shortness is somewhat overstated.

And so, you know, yeah, you know, uh, you know, foot and a half is what 18 inches.

It's not itty bitty, but, but that's on the, on the short end.

Um, I would think I'm trying to do conversions in my head cause I do blade lengths in centimeters.

The description, right, the broad blade, sharp point, two-edged, yeah, it's Gladius.

Very cool.

That's what's being described.

You can see this sort of Mainzer Pompeii type in your head, and that's almost certainly what he's thinking with.

It's not as like Greek swords would be.

It's not described as leaf-shaped.

We get later swords of Western East that are leaf shaped like a Greek syphos would have been.

That's the Greek sort of counterpart to the gladius.

But it's also not long and parallel bladed like a Laten sword would have been or an early medieval sword.

For those playing along at home, Laten is the fancy archaeological type name for the swords that would have been wielded by Celts and Gauls.

So I said La Tène swords think like the guys fighting against Julius Caesar in the aforementioned Julius Caesar examples.

We call them La Tène.