The camel paradox again

[Erpingham]

If true does this suggest something more like a long rapier than a Medieval greatsword or longsword?

Or an estoc perhaps?  If so, we would be thinking thrusting weapon.

BTW, is there any significance to the fact that the word rhomphaia isn't used? 

[Andreas Johansson]

Doesn't makhaira typically mean a cutting sword?

*****

If I may return to the original inspiration of the thread, Leo's Taktika is in many parts based on Maurice's Strategicon, but the advice about accustoming horses to camels is one of the new bits, and AFAIK it doesn't recur in any of the later manuals (though I haven't read all of them). Should we suspect Leo - who was more of a scholarly type than a soldier-emperor like Maurice or Nikephoros Phokas - of having included it more for showing off his erudition than out of any practical need? If it were valuable practical advice one might have thought it should have been repeated in the Praecepta Militaria or the Taktika of Nikephoros Ouranos.

(I can't but help feel it unhelpful of Leo not to give even one example of the "many battles" the Byzantines had supposedly lost due to horses being spooked by camels.)

[RichT]

I think machaira is just a sword or knife or blade without any particular shape, though Xenophon does use it for a cutting sword:

Xen. Horse 12.11 "for harming the enemy we recommend the machaira rather than the xiphos, because, owing to his lofty position, the rider will find the cut with the kopis more efficacious than the thrust with the xiphos."

Thanks Xenophon - so are a kopis and a machaira the same thing? cf. Xen. Cyrop. 1.2.13 (of Persians) "and in their right hands a machaira or kopis."

An even more lofty camel rider should find a cutting blade useful, but then why 'thin'?

As usual, Greek writers are not strong on technical words. Rhomphaia is another word used for several things - famously by Plutarch for the Thracian weapon (taken to mean the falx-like one we are familiar with), but used by Josephus apparently just to mean sword. I don't think, sadly, much can be read into the word used. Diod.17.2.1 also uses machaira for Semiramis' camelswords, FWIW.

Concerning Leo - yes I'd buy that Leo is showing that he knows that horses are traditionally afraid of camels, rather than giving any real practical measures.

[Erpingham]

Isn't machaira also used for the big swords wielded by Celts?

[Duncan Head]

Isn't machaira also used for the big swords wielded by Celts?

And for Roman swords, and Indian two-handers... as Rich says, it's pretty generic in most usages.

[Duncan Head]

By the way this is the only ancient representation ofa camel-rider with a sword that I can immediately think of - and four cubits long it isn't.

[Erpingham]

But then, who needs a four cubit sword?



An Egyptian camel soldier of the mid 19th century, one of a series of sketches compiled for the US Army on camel operations.

[Patrick Waterson]

From the descriptions given, the weapon was thin, probably for reasons of weight, but lacking an account of its use we do not know whether it was for slashing, piercing (a sort of substitute lance) or both.  I would suggest the latter, i.e. it would have had both point and edge (perhaps singular) and be used both for thrusting, probably mainly against attackers, and for shrewd hacks, perhaps principally at fleeing opponents.

Association with defeat may have meant the weapon went out of fashion, or the acquisition of camels with a smoother ride than old humpy-bumpy may have made javelin use more effective and hence preferable.  Conjecture, but my best guess.

It's interesting that at Magnesia the cavalry frightened the camels.

Yes, and it could perhaps have been the cavalry rather than the horses per se, i.e. it may have been the onset of what amounted to a controlled stampede which caused a surge of dromedarian dread which was maybe less species-related and more not-wanting-to-be-barged-and-trampled related.  Just a thought.

The ongoing hasty all-out departure of the scythed chariots next in line probably did not help.

But then, who needs a four cubit sword?

He who hath an insecure saddle.

[Swampster]

But then, who needs a four cubit sword?

He who hath an insecure saddle.

There may be something in this. I think the modern saddle may have been invented by then but I'm sure I've seen that it did not get adopted by everyone for a while. The position astride the hump would make the leaning pose in that 19th century picture much harder than the front of hump saddle.

[Andreas Johansson]

If I recall from Bulliet's The Camel and the Wheel, the Arabs of Antiochus' day would indeed have ridden at the top of the hump.

The front-of-hump seat hadn't been adopted by everyone even when he was writing in the 1970s.