#migration era

One of the more iconic cultural traits of the Romans and eventually the Byzantines (despite them being directly Roman, I’ll refer to them as Byzantines to avoid confusion) was the distinct ability to adopt the practices and tactics of those that they came across. Some of these are clearly apparent such as the adoption of pants in the form of braccae and others are less apparent. This brings me to point by which I’ve spent numerous hours digging into which is the appearance of the Paramerion in the Byzantine military. 

The paramerion, as the weapon seen above, is simply a single-edged slightly curved sword, very reminiscent of later sabres that pop into existence in Europe. The design originates with the Eurasian steppe tribes in the form of a pallasch-like weapon (a straight-ish single-edged sword designed for cavalry use) and spreads to Byzantium by the Avars and to the Islamic Kingdoms through the Khazars.

The Byzantines unabashedly admit that the Avars are a significant influence on their military in 7th-century treatises, namely Maurice’s “Strategikon”. Furthermore, Hungarian graves dated between the 7th and 8th centuries have yielded blades that were characterised by “narrow, shallow-curved blades” (as sourced by Piotr Grotowski in the novel “Arms and Armour of the Warrior Saints” page 358). The problem, however, is the fact that the name “paramerion” does not actually enter Byzantine literature or artistic depiction until the 10th century, leaving us with a gray area of upwards of 300 years. Even worse is the fact that only one, to my knowledge, extant example (of specifically a curved Byzantine sword) has been found and it lies within a private auction, raising numerous red flags for me (sword seen below).

We know for a fact that in the 9th century, this shallow, curved blade spreads up to the Slavic territories north of Byzantium. This can be solely attested to the invading Magyars from beyond the Ural Mountains who relied almost exclusively on observably curved bladed weapons. However, the extent to which the paramerion, without the actual name, was used before the 10th century by the Byzantines is unknown. There seem to be some occurrences of the blades appearing in the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript which depicts 811 CE to 1057 CE.

Unfortunately, more problems arise. Firstly, the manuscript was produced in the early 12th century and secondly, we have no explicit verification of the swords being in use until written manuals in the early 10th century. We know that the curve should only be a slight terminal curve, but very few swords in the manuscript look remotely like that and every observable scabbard is straight.

Things only get easier for the paramerion in the 10th century onward when, as mentioned, multiple treatises mention the usage. Firstly is the Taktica of Nikephoros Ouranos, the second being the Praecepta Militaria by Nikephoros II Phokas, and the third being the anonymous Sylloge Tacticorum. This is also eventually when depictions of curved swords spring majorly into frescoes as seen below.

Dr Scott Shell returns to Jive Talk this Friday night to discuss his findings in relation to Heathen iconography on bracteates of the Germanic Iron Age.