found at burial sites. The sword was often placed on the right side of the corpse. Many times the sword was kept over the corpse. In many late Iron Age graves, the sword and the scabbard were bent at 180 degrees. It was known as killing the sword. Thus they might have considered swords as the most potent and powerful object. Indian antiquity High-carbon steel for swords, which would later appear as Damascus steel, was likely introduced in India around the mid-1st millennium BCE. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions swords of Indian iron and steel being exported from ancient India to Greece. Blades from the Indian subcontinent made of Damascus steel also found their way into Persia. Greco-Roman antiquity By the time of Classical Antiquity and the Parthian and Sassanid Empires in Iran, iron swords were common. The Greek xiphos and the Roman gladius are typical examples of the type, measuring some . The late Roman Empire introduced the longer spatha (the term for its wielder, spatharius, became a court rank in Constantinople), and from this time, the term longsword is applied to swords comparatively long for their respective periods. Swords from the Parthian and Sassanian Empires were quite long, the blades on some late Sassanian swords being just under a metre long. Swords were also used to administer various physical punishments, such as non-surgical amputation or capital punishment by decapitation. The use of a sword, an honourable weapon, was regarded in Europe since Roman times as a privilege reserved for the nobility and the upper classes. Persian antiquity In the first millennium BC the Persian armies used a sword that was originally of Scythian design called the akinaka (acinaces). However, the great conquests of the Persians made the sword more famous as a Persian weapon, to the extent that the true nature of the weapon has been lost somewhat as the name Akinaka has been used to refer to whichever form of sword the Persian army favoured at the time. It is widely believed that the original akinaka was a 35 to 45 cm (14 to 18 inch) double-edged sword. The design was not uniform and in fact identification is made more on the nature of the scabbard than the weapon itself; the scabbard usually has a large, decorative mount allowing it to be suspended from a belt on the wearer's right side. Because of this, it