Just reading more of the great responses, and much appreciate hearing from everybody on this. This field of study has always seemed to escape my attention, possibly because of all the controversy, as noted by Rivkin. I'm glad to finally delve into it, and am especially impressed by the extremely esoteric knowledge constantly shared by all of you in your posts.
I think it is extremely interesting to see etymology, semantics and colloquial terms play a key role in historical investigation here and how socially applied terms evolved into perjoratives ( recalls similar instance in India where the practice of 'thuggee' evolved into the perjorative 'thug' for hoodlums etc.)
I honestly had not thought of the Roman term 'sica' and its apparant root for sickle either (really rusty in Latin
I had read of the possible derivation of Judas' name (?) Iscariot to one of the locations as Ariel mentioned, but it seems that the most compelling association holds to the more socially applied connotation to 'sicarri', and the Zealot groups as noted by Fernando and Fearn.
I agree that stealth attacks would require very concealable daggers and that the term 'sicarri' may well apply generally to daggers of varying sizes, up to those used in combat.
Thank you again guys for adding all the data on this, excellent discussion as well!
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All the best,
Jim
Fernando, thanks very much for the excellent thread link to the akinakes, has some great info....good to hear from you!!!