A few days ago, a reader by the name of John wanted to know about the historicity of the swords used in the 2006 film 300 about the Persian Wars (Q&A here). I thought I’d dwell for a little longer on this topic, because swords in ancient Greek warfare are a funny thing.

Our focus on the sword as a necessity for heroics is a modern bias.

Despite the fact that swords went out of soldier fashion a long time ago, the two words – sword and warfare – are still closely connected in our minds. But, this is where we differ from the ancients. Classical Greek doesn’t even have a proper word for ’swordsman’ and the art of fencing was not a drill but an expensive way for out of shape aristocrats to get some exercise, and a late addition at that.

To the ancient Greek hoplite, the sword was something of a last line of defence. If formation broke, his spear snapped and he stood faced with an enemy, one on one, he had his sword. It ranked somewhere between having a spear and picking rocks off the ground and throwing them. When Athens reorganised its army in the late 4th century, Aristotle tells us, the state issue did not even include a sword.

The most important weapon in ancient Greek warfare was the spear.

Like most ancient European swords, the ancient Greek sword was rather short. Lengths varied, but at most it would have been around 0.6m (2 ft) long. The Spartans in particular were known, even in antiquity, for using exceptionally short swords. Specimens dating from this period of 300 film have been found which were as short as 0.3m (1 ft) long. It was seen a testament to their fierceness as they would have to get much closer to their enemies to make up for the lacking sword length. Spartan mothers, always known for their tough love, are supposed to have told their sons to, when complaining about the shortness of their swords, simply “add one step forward”.

Like today there were in antiquity essentially two types of swords: stabbing swords and slashing swords. The Greek stabbing swords were very similar to those found amongst the Celts and other European peoples. They were short and slightly leaf shaped with the widest part near the tip. Slashing swords on the other hand were single-edged and shaped like a bill. While stabbing swords were used from the Bronze Age and onwards, these slashing weapons only started gaining popularity in the late 5th century BCE. Because they need to be swung, slashing weapons cannot be used in close proximity of other combatants and might, as Xenophon suggests, have been primarily a weapon of mounted cavalrymen.

So, let’s recap. If you were a Greek hoplite chances are you would not be issued a sword, you would have to pay expensive fees to a trainer if you wanted to learn any sword fighting at all, and if you were going to die in battle you would probably do so before getting any use of your sword anyway (in particular one remotely close to Leonidas’s sword in 300).

This is why the ancient Greeks spoke of land “won by the spear” and not “by the sword”.

About the author: E P Wohlfart is a twenty-something freelance writer with a Classical Archaeology degree, a laptop and a maxed-out library card. Aside from administrating PastPresenters.com, which she started in 2008, she works with several historical publications and is a regular contributor at Suite101.