Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Machaera

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

MACHAERA (μάχαιρα). A sword which has only one edge (Isidor. Orig. xviii. 6. 2.); consequently, in an especial manner adapted for cutting rather than thrusting; as the passages in which the word occurs, with any context to illustrate the manner of using it, also distinctly imply an operation like that of chopping or cleaving. (Plaut. Mil. ii. 5. 51. Suet. Claud. 15. Senec. Ben. v. 24.) By the Homeric Greeks it was worn next to the sword-sheath, and employed as a hunting-knife, for sacrificing animals, and cutting up meat at table; but it came originally from the Oriental nations, who are especially characterised for the use of it (Aesch. Pers. 56.). It is, moreover, distinguished from the leaf-shaped, two-edged, cutting and thrusting sword (ξίφος, gladius, Xen. Symp. ii. 10. Plato, Symp. p. 190. A.). All these circumstances induce a belief that the machaera was similar to the hunting-knife (culter venatorius); and that its peculiar form is exhibited in the annexed woodcut (Machaera/1.1) from an engraved gem (Agostini, ii. 26.), on which it is used by a gladiator, evidently of a foreign race; as it likewise is by a bestiarius contending with a leopard in a Roman bas-relief inserted at p. 83.

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  Machaera/1.1