Sword in Kind Arthur?

K Williams

K Williams

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Nov 17, 1998
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In the movie "King Arthur", one of the knights had a long, curved sword. Does anyone know what type of sword it is? Thanks.
 
It looks like its a falchion.
 
Never saw the movie, assuming that the tried to keep their swords at least European it would have been a falchion, or perhaps a kriegsmesser or grossemesser. If you have a picture it would help.
 
For those that saw the movie, I'm referring to the knight that fought the Saxon king before Arthur fought him. The sword looked between 3' and 4' long with a blade that curved towards the tip.
 
THere is a fellow named Kirk Spencer over in SwordForums in their "Sword Movies and Movie Swords" forum who said that the sword was a Chinese Golden Quill saber. I am not familiar with Chinese weaponry, but remember reading somewhere that the style dated from around the 17th Century in China. Thus, we have rather of a paradox in that sword.
 
FullerH said:
THere is a fellow named Kirk Spencer over in SwordForums in their "Sword Movies and Movie Swords" forum who said that the sword was a Chinese Golden Quill saber. I am not familiar with Chinese weaponry, but remember reading somewhere that the style dated from around the 17th Century in China. Thus, we have rather of a paradox in that sword.
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Sigh figures...
 
i saw the movie...it is a Chinese goose quill saber. the sword did not quite belong in the movie...but then again it is a beautiful sword. so i didn't mind seeing it battle against a viking sword.
 
I was very interested in the Sarmatian knights after seeing this movie, and did a little research. One of the guys who works for my father is an armchair anthropologist, and loaned me some books on the Sarmatians. They traveled as far east as China/Mongolia, and as far west as England, IE the Sarmatian knights/commandos that serve under Arthur in the movie. Most of the weapons depicted were actually used in combat by the Sarmatian warriors. The sword was out of place in Europe, but people were travelling all over the world long before Marco Polo or Columbus set out on their journeys. After reading these books and several online posts, I firmly believe that Arthur was in fact a Roman land baron who led the Picts and his own Sarmatian knights to victory against the Saxons and other invaders. The mythical and mystical Arthurian legend is very cool, and everyone on these boards is probably just like me, looking for their own Excalibur, but, surprisingly, this version from Jerry Bruckheimer is dead on. I don't know if Guenivere was as hot as Keira Knightley :eek: (so good looking, but needs some implants up top and a little bit o' meat on her bones), but they got the gist of the story down pat. I will get the titles of the books and post them for the group.
 
Don't know anything about King Arthur, but...

The Sarmatian were semi-nomadic horse people. They were known for their use of heavy cavalry, and controlled a large territory. The Roman legions under Marcus Aurelius (the last of the five Good Emperors) suffered serious difficulty in dealing with the Sarmatian hit and run tactics. The Sarmatians yielded after a battle in which a freak thunderstorm ruined their cavalry charge, and a Roman scouting unit found the Sarmatian army's baggage train and families (predictably, they killed everyone). A levy of Sarmation troops was sent to Britain, but it is unknown whether these troops were heavy cavalry. In any case, like the Asturian auxilary also stationed in Britain, the Sarmatians probably were not distinguishable from the native population after a couple of generations.

So the Sarmatians don't really fit into the movie's time frame. Sorry. Good movie though...

I don't know if Guenivere was as hot as Keira Knightley (so good looking, but needs some implants up top and a little bit o' meat on her bones)
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Pretty tall order there...I think she looks fine as is.
 
I've always liked them with a little somethin' somethin', not fat or even overweight, but some curves, big fan of the hourglass, like say Danni Ashe. I would count Keira and Natalie Portman (are they twins?) as my top favorites if they just filled out a little. :D
 
The Sarmatians were sent to serve up along Hadrian's Wall, which meant that they were used patroling the hills to the North of the Wall. This would actually have been good country fro heavy cavalry as it would have been mostly the rolling hills and the coastal plain of the Scottish Lowlands. It is known that the Sarmatians had a very strong influence on the heavy cavalry that developed in the later Roman Empire, especially during the Dominate Period of Diocletian's reign and on to the end in the West with its highly mobile Field Armies. When the Magister Militum, Count Theodosius, came to Britain in 364CE to deal with the "Barbarian Conspiracy", he brought a Field Army with him, including the cataphracti which were the heavy armored cavalry based upon the Sarmatian model. In the East, where they were based upon a Parthian/Persian model, they were called clibanarii. A clibanum, from which the term, clibanarius, came, was an iron oven and if you consider what it must have been like to wear all of that metal armor in the deserts of the Middle East you will quickly understand the term.

From the above, the tradition of the Sarmatians in Britain and the later appearance of the cataphracti of Theodosius' Field Army, I draw the connection between Arthur's cambrogi or comrades and these heavy cavalry. It was not at all uncommon for leaders to have their own private armies, known as bucellarii in the Late Roman Empire and bukellari to the Byzantines, and to have an elite group of household troops made up of men who were personally oath-sworn to the leader. Such were most likely Arthur's cambrogi, a group of men, bound by oath to Arthur, who were armed, equipped, and trained as heavy cavalry. Consider that the most common placement of Arthur has him in the hills to the East of Wales, tapering down to the Salisbury Plain and to the Moors. In these locations, the use of heavy cavalry against the basically infantry Saxons would have been most effective, especially if backed up by infantry from local petit kings.

I am not asking for mysticism or romanticism here, although I firmly believe that such has a part in the story just as it does in the Illiad and the Odyssey and the Norse sagas. I am talking about either a High King or a war leader who could and did unite the bickering Celto-Roman inheritors of Roman culture in Britain in a final effort to stave off the Teutonic onslaught. History shows that the Teutonic tide was turned back for about 50 years around 500CE and then picked up again and swamped the local peoples to the point that Britannia became Angle-land which became England.
 
With all of the above, I forgot to note that curved saber-like or scimitar-like swords did not really come into use until somewhere around the First Millennium, CE or later. They had become the chosen weapon of the steppe warriors such as the Turks and the Mongols and that is how they penetrated into China and into Europe and the Middle East. Before that, the common sword was straight, or nearly so, and usually double edged.

No, I am not ignoring the sickle swords of the Bronze Age Near East, but these had been superceded by the straight swords up until the steppe warriors brought in the saber. So, that curved chopper shown in the movie was not only out of place geographically but temporally as well.
 
saint o' killers, did you lift your board name from the Preacher comic? Did you hear something about a Preacher movie?
 
OK, you have the kopis/machaira/falcata type of swords, almost more of an axe than a sword. But it is a sword. What curved Roman type did you have in mind?

Please note that I was talking about the "curved saber-like or scimitar-like swords" in my post. While there may have been some sort of saber type bronze swords used in Italy in the pre-Roman period, they had been superceded by the hoplite sword by the beginning of the Roman Republic and then, of course, the Romans adopted the gladius hispaniensis and its other shortsword descendents.
 
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