Later, during the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, they found Hannibal's Celtiberian mercenaries wielding swords that excelled at both slashing and thrusting.
These thrusting swords used before the adoption of the Gladius were possibly based on the Greek xiphos. Modern English words derived from gladius include gladiator ("swordsman") and gladiolus ("little sword", from the diminutive form of gladius), a flowering plant with sword-shaped leaves.Ī sword of the Iron Age Cogotas II culture in Spain.Īccording to Polybius, the sword used by the Roman army during the Battle of Telamon in 225 BC, though deemed superior to the cumbersome Gallic swords, was mainly useful to thrust. Gladius is generally believed to be a Celtic loan in Latin (perhaps via an Etruscan intermediary), derived from ancient Celtic * kladi(b)os or * kladimos "sword" (whence modern Welsh cleddyf "sword", modern Breton klezeff, Old Irish claideb/Modern Irish claidheamh the root of the word may survive in the Old Irish verb claidid "digs, excavates" and anciently attested in the Gallo-Brittonic place name element cladia/ clado "ditch, trench, valley hollow").
The word appears in literature as early as the plays of Plautus ( Casina, Rudens). However, gladius in Latin refers to any sword, not only the sword described here.
New types and variants of the gladius, such as the "Mainz gladius" and the "Pompeii gladius", were used since the first century AD, until they were replaced by the " spatha" in the third century.Ī fully equipped Roman legionary after the reforms of Gaius Marius was armed with a shield ( scutum), one or two javelins ( pila), a sword ( gladius), often a dagger ( pugio), and, perhaps in the later empire period, darts ( plumbatae). From the 3rd century BC, however, the Romans adopted a sword based on the weapons used by the Celtiberians in Hispania late into the Punic Wars, known in Latin as the gladius hispaniensis, or " Hispanic sword". Early ancient Roman swords were similar to those of the Greeks, called xiphe (plural singular xiphos). Gladius ( Latin: ) is a Latin word meaning "sword" (of any type), but in its narrow sense, it refers to the sword of ancient Roman foot soldiers.