Gladius to the left? Gladius to the right?

I’m illus­trat­ing the new ver­sion of Auda (yup, we’re still work­ing on it, it’s not for­got­ten)  and when doing so it’s easy to go a bit bonkers. Not only should they help with con­text, vocab­u­lary and learn­ing. They should be as accu­rate as pos­si­ble. That is atleast my goal. 

Illus­trat­ing Roman sol­diers (milites) I’ve come across sev­er­al inter­est­ing things that I had no idea I want­ed to know, but that now that I know them things makes a bit more sense. I’d like to share one of the with you, one about the gla­d­ius, the Roman short sword:

The ordi­nary sol­diers many times kept their sword on the right side. Nor­mal­ly a swords­man would keep his sword to the left for easy draw­ing of said sword in a fight. It just comes nat­u­ral­ly if you’re right hand­ed. This was also the cus­tom of high­er offi­cers. Keep the sword on the left hand for easy draw­ing. And to show rank.

So why did the milites keep it on the right? It would mean you had to draw it straight up. 

One expla­na­tion has to do with the scu­tum, the shield. The shield was held in the left hand close to your body, so a left hung sword would be in the way (or vice ver­sa). Keep­ing the sword and shield sep­a­rate made sure you didn’t have to low­er your guard to draw your sword. And, because it was short (a gla­d­ius was rough­ly between 45–70 cm long) it was pos­si­ble to draw in straight up, mak­ing the right hand hung gla­d­ius a hit. 

Until next time!

Amelie