Iron Age Sword - Greek Swords

Greek Swords

Ancient Greek terms for swords include:

  • xiphos ξίφος
  • makhaira μάχαιρα
  • rhomphaia ῥομφαία: broadsword used by the Thracians
  • kopis κοπίς
  • aor ἄορ (Homeric Greek, poetic)
  • phasganon φάσγανον (Homeric Greek, poetic)
  • spathē σπάθη: the term for a sword blade, which was loaned into Latin as spatha
  • engkhos ἔγχος: properly "lance", but also "weapon" generically, and sometimes "sword" specifically (e.g. in Pindar)

Terms attested in Mycenaean Greek, thus establishing continuity from the Bronze Age sword, are xiphos (Mycenaean qsiphos, attested as qi-si-pe-e) and phasganon (Mycenaean phasgana, attested as pa-ka-na).

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Famous quotes containing the words greek and/or swords:

    The gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern when we come close to them; but the gothic gets away.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)

    They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
    Bible: Hebrew Isaiah, 2:4.

    The words reappear in Micah 4:3, and the reverse injunction is made in Joel 3:10 (”Beat your plowshares into swords ...”)