Dr. Bret Devereaux

We tend to name archaeological type groupings after the first place we find them and the first place we found this sort of collection of different objects that are all similar that we then find all over the place was at La Tène, which is a lake in Switzerland.

And so we call them La Tène and then you...

you will chronologically, we'll talk about the 10, one, the 10, two, the 10, three is like chronological periods.

Fascinating.

If I, if I say with 10 here goals.

Yeah, and so your late Imperial Gladius is probably 60 centimeters.

They could go as short as 50 in terms of, we're talking here in blade length, so you can always add about 14 to 15 centimeters for the hilt for a one-handed sword.

Those tend to be very consistent in size.

Your Republican Gladius, closer to 65, 70.

Your Le Ten sword, 80.

And that's about 80 centimeters or so.

A blade length is about as much as you're going to get out of a one handed sword, even into the middle ages, your nightly arming sword, your one handed sword is about that size.

That's sort of, you've hit the, you've hit the limits of what an arm can do.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

And if you want to push much longer than that, if you want, say a meter long blade, you're going to extend that hill and allow the guy to get a second hand on it.

And there are, of course, famously bastard or hand-and-a-half swords that straddle that difference.

And we get into exciting controversies over what exactly the hell is a longsword.

Generally speaking, when we say longsword, we mean a dedicated two-hander as opposed to Dungeons & Dragons, which treats a longsword as a one-handed weapon.

Like, no.