A Hilt-to-Hilt Comparison of the Known Swords

One of the readers of my blog (Peter Geuzen) put together a composite image comparing the hilts of the various "known" swords that are now entangled in #Swordgate.

View post on imgur.com

Geuzen's comparison makes the similarities and differences pretty obvious: it's the same figure (i.e., from the same mold or copied from one another) but there are differences in the amount of detail that is present. The California sword easily preserves more detail than any of the others: you can clearly see the individual digits of the paws of the lion skin that Hercules is wearing, for example, as well as lines in his beard and the grain in his club. 

This begs an important question, of course . . . how does a supposed "copy" (the California sword) contain more detail than the supposed authentic swords (the Nova Scotia and Florida swords)? As I have mentioned several times (e.g., here), this problem could potentially be resolved if anyone could produce an original, authentic Roman sword with MORE detail than the California sword.  So far, however, the assertions that such a sword exists have not been accompanied by any actual evidence. 

Are you holding your breath waiting for that evidence of an authentic, museum-curated Roman Hercules-hilted sword to materialize?  I'm not.

And before we go CC'ing Steve and threatening me with legal action for violating copyright, I would point out that this page only contains a referring link to an image posted independently on imgur. I did not create that image and that image is not contained on this blog. Further, the use of a portion of the image of the Nova Scotia sword in a composite image falls under Fair Use as defined by 17 U.S.C. § 107:

"17 U.S.C. § 107

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