Historical Swords From Around the World (Image Gallery) p. 13

Image Gallery

by Arienne King
published on 07 April 2021

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Mainz Gladius

by British Museum
published on 01 March 2021

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Mainz Gladius — View Full-Size Image

A Roman gladius pictured beside its bronze sheath, which is decorated with tin and gold. The Mainz gladius was longer and had a more triangular point than the older Gladius Hispaniensis.

The ornate sheath depicts the Roman general (and future Roman emperor) Tiberius (r. 14-37 CE) symbolically ceding victory to Emperor Augustus (r. 27 BCE - 14 CE). The Roman war god Mars and the goddess Nike, the personification of Victory, are also pictured. It was likely commissioned by a Roman officer to commemorate a victory over the Germans in the Alps region.

Found near Mainz, Germany. Made c. 15 CE. Blade: 57.5 x 7 cm (22.6 x 2.7 in). Sheath: 58.5 x 8.7 cm (23 x 3.4 in). The British Museum, London.

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The British Museum has released this image under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. You can read more about the British Museum and Creative Commons here. Original image by British Museum. Uploaded by Arienne King, published on 01 March 2021. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.