The falcata, romantic myth or reality? – History Archives

Undoubtedly the first weapon that comes to mind when talking about the Antiquity in Iberia it is the falcata This apparently unusual sword, with such a characteristic profile, has become a symbol of “the Iberian” over the last centuries and has transcended popular culture to the point that for many the “Hispanic” of antiquity did not it is such without its lethal and feared falcata. As a relatively recent example of this image we have the historically unfortunate TV series “Hispania”in which the resistance of the Hispanics (although specifically Lusitanians) was nourished by dozens of falcatas practically manufactured in series that were presented as the ethnic weapon of the Hispanics (despite the few finds of falcatas in the Lusitania area) , unknown to his enemies and feared by them.

But is this really so? Was the falcata an ethnic weapon of the Iberians or Hispanics in general and exclusive to them? Was it really a problem for the Romans?

Advances in recent decades in the study of this weapon, not only in Iberia but throughout the Mediterranean, allow us to provide a comprehensive answer to these questions.

The myth

At the dawn of Archeology in the Iberian Peninsula the sword finds had a series of changing and confusing attributions. It is so the first falcatas found were attributed to the Romans, and are recorded in some texts as “Roman machete-swords” to finally appear and consolidate the Latinized term “falcata sword” in this period (18th-19th centuries). However, the Romans never used this term, perhaps taken from the Latin word “ensis falcatus”, literally sickle-shaped or sickle-shaped sword, mentioned by Ovid although in reference to the weapons of the Geto-Dacian peoples, but ‘machaera’a term that however seems to have been used to refer to other weapons and that was taken from the Greek ‘machaira’also used to name this type of weapon along with ‘kopis’less common in the latter case.

It was not until well into the 19th century, with the discovery of finds of falcatas as important as those of the necropolis of Los Collados in Almedinilla that the falcata begins to stand out among the weapons found in Iberia, not because of its number or distribution but because of its particular characteristic shape and the great beauty of the examples found. In this century, Europe experienced a strong indigenist claim by nationalisms that seek ethnic and “racial” continuity between the nation-states and the ancestral peoples that inhabited the space that delimited their borders. Here we have German nationalism with its Germanism that was projected to the Third Reich, French nationalism with its statues of Napoleon characterized as Vercingetorix vindicating their Gallic past -and curiously the Breton centrifugal nationalists, who claimed the same people as the French, but refused to use that term out of sheer confrontation with France creating and popularizing the term “Celtic” to refer to that culture – and also to the spanish nationalism, who looked back at Iberia’s pre-Roman past. In this way, some elements were established, such as the falcata itself and, later, although following the same criteria, the guerrilla warfare Y the false Iberian racial salute as exclusive elements of the Iberian people, on which a false unity and homogeneity was presented that ended up consolidating the falcata as an ethnic weapon of Iberia.

The weapon

There are, however, many copies ofIberian falcatas” (more than six hundred) that allow us to completely delimit the reality of the historical weapon:

We are faced with a weapon robust and brutal handling, which allows a purely offensive fencing aimed at a type of combat in which the shield plays a fundamental role. The leaf has a characteristic curved profile, although in the Iberian case there is often an ascending third of the leaf that draws a sinuous profile. It is in this final third to the tip that a back edge is added, exclusive to the Iberian models (in which it appears in more than 90% of the cases), which indicates that in the peninsula the weapon acquired a defined character as an infantry weapon intended for a close combat, violent and lethal in which the descending and ascending thrusts and the cuts towards the neck and behind the knees and ankles, both in open and closed formations, shared prominence with the powerful descending slashes that are presented as the main handling technique in weapons of this type. It is not a weapon that presents a balance between the handle and the blade, since it seeks precisely to channel the power of the blow in the last third, creating a kind of “ax effect”, capable of transmitting powerful slashes even with small swings capable of reaching the enemy over the shield. In this type of fencing, the shape of the hilt, closing the warrior’s fist (in many cases completely), prevents the loss of the weapon and the hilt slipping.

Is about a relatively short weaponwhose maximum sheet length we could set in the 55 centimeters (compared to the Greek and Italian models that exceeded 80 centimeters), with a closed handle around the fist that presents zoomorphic ornaments (mainly horses) and it is built by an extension of the blade, forming a single sheet to which scales of wood, bone or other materials were added. The blade is forged from one piece of iron or, in many cases, the joining of three pieces by hot striking. There is a belief that the Iberian techniques for forging weapons were especially advanced, although the findings show a relatively primitive forging in relation to the Roman and Greek cases, and the fame that some Roman chroniclers present is probably due to unfounded beliefs. The steeling of the iron happened accidentally, as it absorbed the carbon from the charcoal used in the forge and it is possible that, at least in some cases, the elimination of impurities and the strengthening of the iron was sought by burying it, through a process that applied anticorrosive properties based on the oxidation of magnetite and that gave the weapons a characteristic black or dark color. East black metal tone it was often decorated with rich silver damascening, present on fully functional swords and signs of frequent use. Likewise, several grooves along the bladewith purely aesthetic functions.

It is evident that there existed around the “Iberian falcata” a kind of mysticism and relationship with the sacrificial practice and the burials of warriors are common in which the falcata is the only weapon present, in many cases folded and rendered useless in a ritual way, symbolizing their “death” together with that of the warrior.

The origin

Regarding the origin of the Iberian falcata, several hypotheses have traditionally coexisted:

Professor J. Maluquer de Motes gave the falcata a possible autochthonous origin and he presented it as a weapon derived from a series of knives with a curved profile dating back to the Bronze Age in the Iberian Peninsula. However, this hypothesis is practically ruled out and was hardly accepted.

Another possible origin raised is the central european linked to the culture of Hallstatt. The hypothesis, defended by Bosch Gimpera, was based on a supposed evolution of curved knives linked to antennae swords, which added to the central location of the Central European iron cultures in relation to the three great centers of presence of falcatas (Iberia , Italy and Greece) would make us suppose an origin linked to this point and to these cultures. However, Bosch Gimpera himself ended up rectifying his position in the face of new evidence in 1944.

The third hypothesis, the one currently accepted, poses a mediterranean origin for the Iberian falcata (and in fact also for the «afalcatado» knives present in much of Europe) locating the origin of the single-edged curved swords that we know as falcata/kopis/machaira in the Balkans. Weapons of this type appear in this region since the 10th century BC, which we can consider as consolidated predecessors of the Greek ‘machaira’, which in turn would be the origin of the Italic ‘machaera’, and an armory tradition with curved weapons is also maintained of a single edge, of different dimensions, throughout Antiquity. The transmission of the ‘machaira’ to the Iberian Peninsula is still a matter of debate, although it is mainly suggested that it was the greekseither in their colonies or more likely in their armies in which they used Iberian mercenarieswho served as the vector of this weapon that we can consider Mediterranean, although some authors defend that they could be the etruscans who fulfilled this role.

It seems that the Greeks considered that the origin of these weapons was located in Persia and it is possible that his look towards the east when determining it was not entirely wrong since the possibility arises that they were the Greeks of Asia Minor who first adopted the ‘machaira’ from the Thracian area to later transmit it to mainland Greeks. It is also a weapon used in Persia and in fact in many other places, since it is a practical design that gives us throughout history many cases of functional convergence.

Name

There is some recurrent controversy about the correct term to name this Mediterranean weapon of curved profile and single edge (or one and a third, in the Iberian case). The term falcata, as we mentioned before, is a modern cultism that was never used in ancient times and that derives from the Latin word ‘falx’ which means sickle, by the term used by Ovidensis falcatus‘, literally “sickle sword”.

In ancient times reference is made in numerous texts (starting with the Homer’s Iliad) to this type of weapon with the terms ‘machaira’ (pronounced “májaira”) in Greek and ‘machaera’ in Latin, and ‘kopis’, and therefore these texts are generally cited as examples of the existence of a specific name for these types of weapons. The problem is that reality is significantly more complex. In ancient times (and in fact until a few centuries ago) there was not remotely the classifying desire that we have today and there were terms that defined a multitude of weapons indistinctly. In the case of the chronicles, there is also the factor of the conscientious use of numerous polysemous terms in order to enrich the text and we thus find that the terms ‘machaira’ and ‘kopis’ are used to define elements as different as sacrificial knives, war chariots and utility knives, as well as all kinds of swords.

However, it seems that in general in Hellenic texts the term ‘machaira’ has a predominant relationship with…