Re: The Roman Army Knife (Score: 1) by Gwylym (lochmor@firststep.net) on Feb 05, 2010 - 10:57 AM (User info | Send a message) http://lochmorknives.com

received today from Mrs. Lucilla Burn from the Museum in Cambridge (UK) : "Object in Focus: The Roman ‘Swiss Army Knife’ What is it? This is a combination eating implement, its folding parts comprising – a knife blade (incomplete) – the bowl of a spoon – a three-pronged fork – a spike – a spatula – a pick. The first three implements have obvious uses as cutlery. It has been suggested that the spike implement could be used for extracting meat from snails, a use for the pointed ends of Roman spoons suggested by the Roman poet, Martial, in one of his Epigrams. The small spatula could be used for extracting paste such as garum, the Roman fish paste delicacy, from narrow necked bottles. The curved pick could have served as a tooth pick. The knife blade is made of iron and the rest of the implement is silver, the fork and spoon rotating on a hinge at one end so one or other becomes part of the handle when not in use. Near the centre is a small flat knob which fits through a lyre design at the end of the fork and when turned locks the fork against the handle. The other implements are held with rivets between a folded sheet of silver, in the centre of which is another cut-out lyre-shaped design. Date? We do not know where it originated. A similar object has been found in a third-century A.D. burial in Thrace (Bulgaria). This date would agree with the style of the spoon bowl and designs on the handle seen on other Roman artefacts. How rare is it? Roman forks are extremely rare but folding spoons and folding knives (like modern pocket knives) are relatively common. However, only four of these multi-combination implements have so far been discovered. The most elaborate one has seven attachments including a sieve. They are in several senses the ancestors of today’s Swiss army knife and the fact that they folded suggests that they were made for travelling, as a kind of convenient picnic set, or a modern soldier’s knife, fork and spoon that clip together. But they and the folding spoons and knives cannot be considered as Roman ‘army issue’ because they have not been found on military sites. They do however show that that the Romans were capable of inventing implements of surprising ingenuity. Apart from the damaged bowl and the broken blade, the implement is in a good state of preservation and shows little or no sign of wear in antiquity. Perhaps it was always regarded as something more to admire than to use.