Sword 21: Daga Romana (by Pablo Benavente)

1/14/2017

This is a guest blog post contributed by Fake Hercules Sword Whisperer Pablo Benavente. There's been an uptick in the pace of discovery, and it's been difficult for me to keep all of our information up to date. Thanks to Pablo and JA Sterling for continuing to shake primary data out of the internet.

What Swordgate discoveries does 2017 hold? Last year was exciting, and I have enjoyed every discovery. But how many more of these things could there be?

Leave it to JA Sterling in her spare time to find this beauty:

If you scroll down to the end of this post about the "Sonja sword" (Sword 8), you'll see a photo from a newspaper that shows a sword with a strange blade shape (that's Sword 11 in the database -- we know nothing about it other than what's in the article). The photographer in me thought that the strange shape could have been a result of the photo being taken with a wide angle lens. Now, in the presence of evidence, I change my position! It's obvious that swords with "pugio" blades were indeed made at some point.

The sword shown above (Sword 21 in the database) was for sale on an auction website in 2013. The description on the website can be translated as follows:

"Model of Roman Dagger, XX Century. Iron with green patina, with a figure of a warrior on the hilt. Length: 67 centimeters"

That description and the single photo is all we have. It's not clear how detailed the Hercules is or if maybe he's "thinner" Hercules (maybe sign of an older model?). The blade shape is obviously different, and the central rib is a feature we haven't seen anywhere else. Assuming the reported length is correct, this is the longest Fake Hercules Sword we know about. The description of "iron with green patina" is curious.

I'm looking forward to hear everybody's opinions about it.

Killbuck

1/14/2017 05:57:32 am

Santa is still leaving presents!

Peter Geuzen

1/14/2017 08:05:27 am

So type P becomes official, or do we come up with something more specific after a little research?

Andy White

1/15/2017 02:09:54 am

Let's chew on it for a bit. I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that this kind of sword is actually (maybe?) the parent of the Type F's . . . but I'm not yet sure how to test that idea when all we've got is one photo.

Someone on Facebook suggested calling this "Type X" (for Xiphos), which I think sounds good. But let's kick it around a bit.

Graham

1/14/2017 05:02:53 pm

Interesting. That design with the full length rib running down the center of the blade looks like the 'fullers' on the California and Sonja blades. Could one of these 'daggers' have been broken in two near the hilt and then used to cast those blades.

Hopefully one will turn up for sale again and we can get one for comparison.

Andy White

1/15/2017 01:58:56 am

I think you could be onto something there!

If that's true (that a sword like this one is the "parent" to the Type F swords), we'd expect the Hercules figure to have comparable detail to that seen in the California sword. It's hard to tell from the photo, but that might actually be true: I can see two distinct bumps on the top of the log (they're reduced in the J and Design Toscano versions), I can see individual digits in the lion's claws, I can see vertical lines in Hercules' beard, etc.

Maybe this blade configuration is the "original"? It would make sense . . . we could set that up as a working hypothesis and do some thinking on it.

Jonathan Feinstein

1/16/2017 08:27:59 am

That is something I thought early on about the California and Sonia swords (I don't recall if I said so, however), but seeing this blade certainly makes it look like something like that might have happened. I seem to recall, though, that the fullers on the California Sword did not end with sharp straight edges, although the pictures are not entirely clear about that. If my memory is correct, however, using a broken version of this sword could still have been used this way as the caster might well have worked to make the ends of the fullers look natural.

Several of the sword blades look like they were attached or repaired at about the point where the fullers end on the California and Sonja Swords, so maybe.

If I were to bet on it, I think I'd place some money on your hypothesis being correct.

Uncle Ron

1/15/2017 09:08:13 am

Perhaps it is just the poorer resolution but sword 21 does not appear to have the three "dots" at the bottom of the hilt that are seen on all the other swords.

Kill Bill

1/25/2017 09:43:32 pm

Andy are we still going to ignore the fact that all these replicas mention that they are models of an actual "roman dagger". Do you really believe all these swords you are finding just came into being all around the world with slight variations while all mentioning they were inspired by an actual ROMAN ARTIFACT, one that must surely has existed...

Only Me

1/25/2017 11:53:44 pm

First, being inspired by an actual artifact is not the same as declaring a replica sword IS the artifact that provided the inspiration. This is backed up by the fact the OI sword has been proven to be a replica.

Secondly, the existence of said artifact isn't evidence of Roman incursion into North America. You'd have to prove the artifact was discovered in North America for that to be true. Nobody has been able to do that.

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Sword 21: Daga Romana (by Pablo Benavente)

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