Chapter XXV: Conclusion (6)

[631] The stater of Crœsus was the first gold coin known to the Greeks. Most of the classical authors declare that silver was first coined at Ægina by order of Pheidon (circa B.C. 869).

[632] Hamilton (_Asia Minor_, vol. i. pp. 145–6) has carefully described this most interesting monument.

[633] See the ‘colossal male head’ in General Palma di Cesnola, _Cyprus_, p. 123.

[634] Preface to _History of Egypt_, p. xvi; and vol. ii. 124, where a list of racial names is given. Brugsch, it should be noted, is here entirely opposed to his predecessors, De Rougé, Chabas, &c.

[635] As opposed to the Aqaiuasha or Achæans of the Caucasus (ii. 124).

[636] ‘I have seen it affirmed that in those times (early Roman) the youth was instructed in the Etruscan learning, as they are now in the Greek’ (Livy ix. 35).

[637] Described in _Etruscan Bologna_, p. 144. The blade is in Count Aria’s collection. The Sword of Misanello, _une longue epée de fer_, also in that museum, is noticed in p. 359, _Transactions of the Congress of Bologna_ in 1871.

[638] One vol. folio large quarto, with 17 Tables. It was preceded by ‘Di una necropoli a Marzabotto nel Bolognese,’ 1865, large quarto, with 20 Tables. Count Gozzadini is one of the earliest students who followed in the steps of M. Boucher de Perthes.

[639] A fine specimen of a dagger from Thebes with the rapier-blade, and a broad flat hilt of ivory, is in the Berlin Museum.

[640] _Di un antico Sepolcro a Ceretolo nel Bolognese_ (Modena: Vincenzi, 1879), p. 9.

[641] This weapon resembled the bronze forms found at Broilo in Tuscany and in the great collection discovered in 1875 and called the ‘Fonderia di Bologna.’ An account of the latter is found in _Note Archeologiche_, &c. (Bologna: Fava e Garagnani, 1881).

[642] The learned French anthropologist compared these weapons with those found in the Marne graves. (_Les Gaulois de Marzabotto, Revue Archéol._ 1870–71, &c.)

[643] Count Gozzadini replied in M. G. de Mortillet’s _Matériaux pour l’Histoire primitive de l’Homme_; and the paper was entitled by the Editor (not by the author), ‘L’Élément Étrusque de Marzabotto est sans mélange avec l’élément gaulois’ (Jan. 1873).

[644] _L’Étrurie et les Etrusques_, vol. i. p. 93. Atlas, p. 2, Pl. II.

[645] Genthe, _Program_, &c. p. 15.

[646] The bronze is in the British Museum; the iron in the possession of Mr. H. S. Cuming (Meyrick).

[647] XXVIII. cap. 45.

[648] Vol. iv, Pl. XXX.; it is copied by Meyrick.

[649] The writer of this sentence is, curious to say, the learned Dr. Birch (p. 5, vol. i., _Soc. Bib. Archæology_, 1872). Even Justin (lib. i.) knew better; he makes Sesostris (ii. 3) 1,500 years older than Ninus, ‘the most ancient king of Assyria,’ whom he places in B.C. 2196–2144 (Wetzel).

[650] In the LXX Orech; the Cuneiform Uru-ki (City of the Land); in Talmud, Urikut, City of the Dead for Babylon (_hod._ Warka); and in Greek Orchóe, whence perhaps ‘Orcus.’ Urukh became among the Classics of Europe ‘pater Orchamus.’

[651] _Assyrian Discoveries_ (London: Sampson Low & Co., 1876), p. 447. He gives, as a scheme of Abydenus and Berosus, the Chaldæan:—

Years.
Alorus and 9 kings before the Babylonian Flood 432,000
86 kings after B. Flood to Median conquest
(1st dynasty) 34,080 (33,091)
8 Median kings (2nd dynasty) 224 (160?)
11 other (3rd dynasty ) unknown
49 Chaldæan (4th dynasty) 458
9 Arabian (5th dynasty) 245
Semiramis
45 kings (7th dynasty) 526

Nabonidus, the antiquary king (B.C. 555), according to a Cylinder found at Sipar (Sepharvaim, Sun-city) and studied by Mr. Pinches, assigns a date to the deified Sargina of about B.C. 3,800 years. He unburied, 18 cubits below the surface, the Cylinder of Naramsin, son of Sargina (B.C. 3750?), ‘which no king had seen for 3,200 years.’ Sir Henry C. Rawlinson (the _Athenæum_, Dec. 9, 1882) is disposed to accept the date ‘within certain limits.’

[652] The word is Har-Minni, or Mountains of the Minni. The oldest Armenian inscriptions date from the eighth century B.C.

[653] It was in attacking these Khita that Ramses II. (Sesostris) left his three ‘columns’ or tablets on the rocks near the Nahr el-Kalb of Bayrut (chap. ix.). Six Assyrian inscriptions were also known there, bearing the names of Assur-ris-ilîm, Tiglath-pileser, Assurnazirpal, Shalmanesar, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. No epigraphs were found on the north side of the river, where an ancient aqueduct, overgrown with luxuriant verdure, turns a mill. About three years ago, however, the proprietor, when making a new channel, broke away part of the rock, and a fragment bearing cuneiforms attracted the attention of Dr. Hartmann, Chancellor of the German Consulate. No other steps were taken till October 10, 1881, when M. Julius Loytved, Danish Vice-Consul for Bayrut, bared the face of the cliff and discovered five cuneiform inscriptions, one containing 45 lines. They seem to have been hastily cut, as they follow the shape of the rock whose surface has not been dressed. According to Professor Sayce, they are Babylonian, not Assyrian.

[654] Or Asshur, ‘the Arbiter of the Gods,’ represented by the winged disc of Egypt.

[655] Nineveh, destroyed by the Medes (Manda or Madu) and Persians in B.C. 583, had thus a life of 1,617 years, assuming its origin at the middle term, B.C. 2200.

[656] Brugsch, vol. i. chap. xvi., shows that Seshonk (Shishak) and other Pharaohs of the Twenty-first Dynasty were Assyrians who ruled ‘Mat Muz-ur,’ the people of Egypt.

[657] The great scholar derives from Egypt the Cuneiform Syllabarium, which was originally pictorial:—drawing everywhere preceded writing. The astronomy of Mesopotamia is Egyptian (the unit of measure being the ell of 0·525 mètre); and the architecture, that prime creation of the human mind, shows by temples, temple-towers, tombs, and especially pyramids (e.g. that at Birs Namrud), an imperfect imitation of the Nile Valley. Herodotus attributes to Babylon the discovery of the Pole, the Sun-dial, and the twelve hours of day, all well known to ancient Egypt. The ‘Sabbaths’ are Assyrian.

[658] The _Athenæum_, July 24, 1880.

[659] That the Assyrians had books appears plainly from the inscriptions: ‘In the night-time bind round the sick man’s head a sentence taken from a good book’ (a soporific!). Parchment was most probably the first material (_Trans. of Soc. Bib. Archæology_, vols. ii. 55, and iii. 432); and the language proves that the papyrus-scroll (Duppu-ga-zu) was known.

[660] We find in Assyria the wild goat standing upon a capital, now the arms of Istria. The same appears at Palmyra (Prof. Socin’s Collection). The winged bulls probably suggested, like the Egyptian Cherubs, our angels’ wings. These motors should now be forbidden in statuary by Act of Parliament; or the artist should be compelled to supply the pinions with the muscles necessary for working them. I need hardly say that the required development would convert the human dorsum to the appearance of the two-humped camel. The late Gustave Doré’s admirable illustrations of Dante (_Purgat._ xix. 51) sin greatly in this way.

[661] A goddess in alabaster has in each hand a lotus flower, which she holds against her breasts. This is characteristic of old Egypt, which derived the plant from the Equatorial African Lake-region. The same figure again wears a large Egyptian wig, the hair falling in ringlets upon the shoulders.

[662] The Soma, a weed in India (_Asclepias gigantea_), is a derivation from Homa. The Persea, or Egyptian Tree of Life, was probably the _Balanitis Ægyptiaca_.

[663] The careless confusion of Svastika, the worshipper-sect, with Svasti, the symbol, was made by me in my Commentary on Camoens (chap. iv. ‘Geographical’). Burnouf (Emile), in _La Science des Religions_, made the Svasti the feminine principle; and the Pramantha, or perpendicular fire-stick, the male. If used on sacrificial altars to produce the holy fire (_Agni_), the practice was peculiar, and not derived from every-day-life: as Pliny knew (xvi. 77), the savage uses two, never three, fire-sticks. The Svasti is apparently the simplest form of the guilloche. According to Wilkinson (II. chap. ix.), the most complicated form of the guilloche covered an Egyptian ceiling upwards of a thousand years older than the objects found at Nineveh. The Svasti spread far and wide, everywhere assuming some fresh mythological and mysterious significance. In the north of Europe it became the Fylfot or crutched cross.

[664] Assyria, like Egypt, cultivated geometry and algebra, which have been supposed to originate from revenue surveys and altar measurements. She used the Astrolabe and popularised square roots and fractions, with a denominator of 60, the sole representative of the decimal and duodecimal systems. With her fall (B.C. 555) coincides the birth of literature in Greece, where writing became general about B.C. 500. The Assyrians were great in magic and in divination, such as birth-portents, dog-omens, &c. &c.

[665] Again Egyptian. Wilkinson, II. chap. vii.

[666] The nearest site would be the Caucasus, which in early ages yielded a small supply. Layard (p. 191) supposes the tin to have been obtained from Phœnicia; and, ‘consequently, that used in the (Assyrian) bronzes of the British Museum may actually have been exported, nearly three thousand years ago, from the British Isles.’

[667] A ‘copper instrument from Koyunjik’ (Layard, p. 596) is shaped exactly like the so-called Etruscan razors. See chap. ix.

[668] Layard, _Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 163.

[669] See chap. vi. He figures one of the latter (_Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 195): it measured 3 feet 8 inches long by 4⅝ inches in breadth.

[670] ‘Assyrians placing a human-headed bull on a car,’ with levers and ropes (Layard, p. 112), reminds us of the statue of Ramses II., and shows that the people could move enormous weights. Both societies had ‘unbounded command of naked human strength.’

[671] Demmin, pp. 293–94.

[672] We have still to explain ‘Kakku’ (weapon?) and ‘Gizzin’ (scymitar?).

[673] In the Tablets we read of the ‘Star of the double Sword’ (Kakab gir-tab) [Cuneiform]. ‘Hammasti,’ also, is the ‘blade of the double Sword.’

[674] ‘Ashur create a Son,’ B.C. 673. _Assyrian Discoveries_, by G. Smith (London: Sampson Low, 1876).

[675] For instance, that in the bas-reliefs of Burs Nimrúd, B.C. 1000, now in the Louvre. The hippopotamus is now never found out of Africa.

[676] With cavalry as well as infantry (Layard, p. 55). Upon this, a very complicated subject, I shall have much to say.

[677] Whence the French _cravache_.

[678] This abomination popularly derives from Semiramis (Sa-am-mu-ra-mat) of Assyria, and extended far and wide. Even in the earlier part of the present century eunuchs were manufactured for Christian and Catholic Rome. The practice is still kept up in Egypt, Turkey, and Persia, although strictly forbidden by the Apostle of Allah.

[679] Col. Hanbury exhibited it at the British Museum. Notes by Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen, read April 6: _Trans. Soc. Bib. Archæology_, vol. iv. Part II. 1876.

[680] Nebo, in the inscriptions, holds a golden reed or rod, as the Homeric Hermes is Χρυσόρραπις; he also leads the ghosts to Hades. The Chaldæan gods were, like the Egyptian, deceased ancestors, and they were followed by natural objects, _Anu_ (sky), _Bel_ (earth), _Hea_ (sea), personified into a vast and various mythology. Sun, moon, and æther, were the first Triad of Babylon. Thus the Chthonic gods of Greece, Uranus (the Egyptian _Urnas_), Gaia and Thalassa (Assyrian), preceded the Olympic anthropomorphism. Of course they were represented with human shapes. Presently the priest introduced as godheads cosmo-poetic causes and effects, which presently peopled the Pantheon with glorified men. For, I repeat, man worships only one thing—himself.

[681] George Smith, _Chaldæan Genesis_, pp. 62, 95.

[682] _Sibri_ or _Sibirru_. I have noted the probable derivation of this word from the Egyptian Sf, Sayf, or Seft; and its resemblance to our ‘sabre.’

[683] Budil (says Mr. Boscawen) succeeded his father in B.C. 1350. He defended the north-eastern peoples, the Nari and the Guti, Gutium or Goim; he also built largely, and his son, Vul-nirari (Vul is my hope), from whose palace the Sword came, was one of the greatest of the early Assyrian kings. The British Museum has a long inscription recording his restoration of the causeway leading to the Temple of Ashur.

[684] Layard advocates the theory that the Persians and Hindús separated from a common centre about B.C. 1500. But of what Hindús does he speak? Certainly not of the ‘Turanian’ tribes, which peopled the peninsula before the Brahmin immigration.

[685] The Greeks having no _sh_ sound, turned Kurush into Kyros.

[686] Media was North-Western Persia, from Armenia to Azerbáiján, south of the Caspian. ‘Great Armenia’ afterwards included Georgia and Abkhasia. From their racial name Manda or Mada came the Greek Mantiene and Matiene. (See _Bib. Archæology_, Nov. 9, 1882.)

[687] Herod. i. 136, 138, &c. All writers assure us that the ancient Egyptians and Persians, the Chinese and Hindús (Marco Polo), were truth-telling races who abhorred a lie. ‘How sweet a thing is truth!’ exclaimed a Nile-dweller. In the Carpentras Inscription the Lady Ta-Bai ‘spoke no falsehoods against any one.’ In the trilingual Behistun Inscription (B.C. 516) Darius the king says, ‘Thou who mayest be king hereafter, the man who may be a liar, and who may be an evil-doer, destroy them with the destruction of the Sword’ (col. iv. par. 14). They are now emphatically the reverse. The wild tribes, such as the Bedawin, the Iliyát, and the outcasts of India, still preserve the old characteristic. ‘The word of a Korager’ is proverbial on the West Coast of the Hindu Peninsula. I cannot but attribute the deterioration to extensive commerce, contact with strangers, and change of faith. The subject, however, is too vast and important even to glance at in these pages; but I may note that the Hindú has deteriorated even in my day. In 1845 the trade-books of a Sahukár (merchant) were received as evidence in our law courts. In 1883 the idea would be scouted.

[688] The conquests of Alexander the Great had given the civilised world a unity of language. The Ptolemies, having asserted Greek mastery in Egypt, established that perfect toleration which is proved by the Septuagint, Manetho and Berosus.

[689] Famous in the Book of Esther (Amestris), which contains scant traces of the faith of Israel. This terrible virago (B.C. 474) caused the massacre of 800 men at Shushan, and 7,500 in the provinces. From the Pehlevi name of Xerxes (Khshhershe), possibly we may derive the modern titles, ‘Shah’ and ‘Shahanshah.’

[690] Hence, perhaps, Pukhtu or Pushtu, the Afghan language, an old and rugged dialect of Persian type.

[691] The South American lasso has been pitted, of course on horseback, against the Sword. Many a murder has been committed with it in the Argentine Republic, the victim being ‘thugged’ unawares and dragged to death. Needless to say, the lasso was well known in Egypt (Wilk. i. 4), where it was used to catch the gazelle and even the wild ox. The Pasha or Indian lasso was ten cubits long, with a noose one hand in circumference. It was composed of very small scales, ornamented with leaden balls; and was not regarded as a ‘noble weapon.’ The Roman gladiators, called ‘Laqueatores,’ derived their name from the lasso: they must not be confounded with the ‘Retiarii.’

[692] _A. J_. xx. 7, sec. 10.

[693] To be noticed in a future chapter (xii.).

[694] Chap. ix.

[695] _Travels in Georgia, Persia, &c._ (1817–20), by Sir Robert Ker Porter. Other illustrators are Le Bruyn, Chardin, Niebuhr, and Leake (_Athens_, ii. pp. 22–26).

[696] It may, however, have been treated as a dagger, while the Sword was worn on the left.

[697] Wilkinson (_Egyptians_, II. chap. v.) remarks, ‘If there is any connection between the religions of Egypt and India, this must be ascribed to the period before the two races left Central Asia’; and Layard, it has been said, would place that period about 1500 B.C. I again protest against the idea that the Egyptian ever came from, or had ever anything to do with, ‘Central Asia,’ beyond civilising it.

[698] Chandragupta (Sandracottus?) B.C. 316; his son Bindusara, B.C. 291; and his grandson (Dharm) Asoka or Priyadasi, B.C. 250–241, whose children divided the empire. The Topes are probably Phallic buildings.

[699] I would explain the fact that India is confounded with East Africa by the classics and by mediæval geographers as a survival of the connection of the continents in the Miocene and, perhaps, in even later ages.

[700] Utilised by Horace Hayman Wilson in his article ‘On the Art of War as known to the Hindús.’ Dhanu (Sanskr. the bow) came to signify any missile or weapon; and hence, Dhanúrvidya comprised the knowledge of all other arms. The bow was also named; for instance, that of Vishnu was called Shárnga (Oppert, p. 77).

[701] The Commander-in-Chief drew four thousand Varvas (gold coins) per mensem. Prof. Oppert, with true German _naïveté_, says (p. 8), ‘If this scale of salaries is correct, and if the salaries were really paid, one would be inclined to think that an extensive gold currency existed in ancient India.’ That the country worked its gold mines is proved by the Wynaad and other diggings, lately reopened, but we may fairly doubt the coinage;—at least, till a coin be found.

[702] I now borrow from Professor Gustav Oppert, _On the Weapons &c. of the Ancient Hindus_ (London: Trübner, 1880). Unfortunately the work is unillustrated. Its capital fault is not adducing proofs, or offering highly unsatisfactory proofs, of the antiquity to be attributed to its authorities, the Shukraniti (p. 43); the Naishedha (p. 69), and the various pagodas showing firearms (p. 76). The Mánavad-harmashástra, or Institutes of Menu (Halhed, p. 53), speaks of ‘darts blazing with fire,’ a well-known missile, but not to be confounded with firearms proper. And the Institutes in their actual form are comparatively modern.

[703] Prof. Oppert gives the names of all these subdivisions; and, at the same time, a lesson in Hindú absurdity (p. 11).

[704] Here we have the true Indian imaginativeness. The idea of a Western anthropomorphising a bow after this fashion!

[705] Prof. Oppert says that Book III. of the Nitípra-kashika is entirely devoted to the Khadga. In the Shukraniti, as will be seen, the word denotes a two-handed Sword six feet long. The Professor translates it ‘broadsword.’

[706] He lived between the tenth and thirteenth centuries and wrote a notable Ovidian work. A translation is now being printed (not published) by the Hindoo Káma-Shastra Society of London and Benares.

[707] The Italian word is evidently a diminutive of the Latin _stilus_, or rather _stylus_ (στῦλος). Dagger (Germ. Dolch) is from the Keltic _dag_, point. Degen, a larger weapon, originally means a warrior; hence the Anglo-Sax. Thaegn and our Thane.

[708] Strabo (xv. 1, § 66) makes the Indian Sword three cubits (= four feet and a half) in length; and the Greeks of the Alexandrine day notice two-handed Swords and bow-drawing with the feet.

[709] Roteiro, p. 115.

[710] This is evidently inverted. The huge falchion, an exaggeration of the Kukkri, may be seen in the British Museum, one blade inscribed with Pali characters. Most of these huge weapons were used in sacrificing; and the low-caste Mhars still behead with falchions the buffalos offered to Kali.

[711] He constantly appears in the Mahabhárata, especially in Book I.

[712] Some writers are determined to find chess amongst the Romans, and quote the Panegyric of Piso, and the game of Latrunculi. But if so, where are their chessmen? The earliest allusion in any known author is in Anna Comnena’s Alexias, when the First Crusade had done some good by mixing the Eastern and the Western worlds.

[713] _Loc. cit._ p. 61.

[714] _Sport in British Burmah_ (London: Chapman and Hall, 1879).

[715] Lib. ii. cap. 53.

[716] The earliest date of the famous siege is B.C. 1370 (Justin, like the Arundelian marbles, gives B.C. 1184), and the latest is B.C. 724–636. In _Troy and its Remains_, we find (p. 123) that the age proposed for the founding of the city is B.C. 1400; that the war took place after the reigns of six kings (p. 27), say two centuries, or in B.C. 1200; and that Homer lived 200 years after the destruction of the city (p. 91), or in B.C. 1000. Thus Herodotus and Dr. Schliemann do not agree; but what possible agreement can there be upon such a subject?

[717] Would it not be more prudent to say ‘not hitherto found’?

[718] Dr. Schliemann, _Ilias_.

[719] The Arab, or rather the Moslem, practice of Koran-reading may explain that of ancient Greece. There are two distinct ways: the vulgar, as though it were a profane book; and the learned with peculiar intonation (_Kirá’at_), of which there are some seventy systems. The Hindús recite with a similar artful modification. So the Hellenes would either pronounce their scriptures, Homer and Hesiod, according to popular accent, or intone by quantity. That men ever wrote accents without pronouncing them is one of those wild theories which can commend itself only to a savant. Besides, we know that as late as the eleventh century there were Greek authors who wrote indifferently according to accent or quantity.

[720] The tools known to the _Iliad_ were those of Central Africa, anvil, hammer, and tongs (_Il._ xviii. 477, and _Od._ iii. 434–5).

[721] viii. 14; ix. 41.

[722] xxxv. 12, 43.

[723] E.g. δέσμοι, bands or ties; ἥλοι, studs; περόναι, pins, fibulæ; and κέντρα, points (_Il._ xviii. 379; xi. 634; Pausanias xi. 16).

[724] iii. 2.

[725] _Il._ viii. 20. The Assyrian Hadi or Bet Edi, ‘House of Eternity,’ probably Grecised, by an afterthought, to ἀϊδής—invisible. See the earliest ‘Miracle-play,’ the descent of Ishtar into Hadi; _Soc. Bib. Archæol._ vol. ii. part i. p. 188.

[726] Eur. _Ion._ 1.

[727] From the copper trumpet comes χαλκεόφωνος, ringing-voiced (_Il._ v. 785). The _Iliad_ applies the epithet to Stentor (_Il._ v. 785), and Hesiod (_Theog._ 311) to Cerberus.

[728] _Od._ iii. 425.

[729] For instance, Stasinus or Hegesias, author of the _Kypria_ or Cyprian _Iliad_ (Herod. _Lib._ ii. 117), assigned to the end of the eighth century B.C., when Kypros may have had her ‘Homeric School.’ It was in nine books, of which the argument has been preserved by Proclus in Photius; and it forms a kind of introduction to the _Iliad_. See Palma’s _Cyprus_, p. 13. ‘Homer’ is said to mention iron thirty times.

[730] Dr. Evans (_Bronze_, p. 15) quotes Dr. Beck’s suggestion that the -eros of Sideros is a ‘form of the Aryan _ais_ (conf. _æs_, _æris_). In another place (_Stone_, p. 5), he alludes to the possible connection of Sideros with ἀστὴρ (a meteor), the Latin Sidera, and the English Star.

[731] _Od._ ix. 391.

[732] This is a fair instance of ‘elegant translation.’ What Homer says is:

E’en as a blacksmith-wight some weighty hatchet or war-axe
Dippeth in water cold with a mighty hissing and sputt’ring,
Quenching to temper, for such is the strength and steeling of iron.

The reply will be that Homer does not say it in this way; and to this reply I have no rejoinder.

[733] Hes. _Opera_, 174, sq.

[734] _Ibid._ ix. 366.

[735] xi. 34, 35, &c.

[736] Dr. Schliemann is assuredly singular when translating the Homeric Cyanus by ‘bronze’ (Preface to _Mycenæ_, p. x.). Millin (_Minéralogie Homérique_) holds it to be tin. The ‘Cyanus’ of Pliny (xxxvii. 38) is lapis lazuli.

[737] _Opera_, 149; _Theog._ 161, and _Scut._ 231.

[738] _Erga_, 742–43.

[739] _Il._ xv. 677.

[740] xi. 629.

[741] _Scut._ Ll. 125–132.

[742] _Scut._ 216–224.

[743] _Ibid._ So early was that detestable invention, the metal scabbard, introduced. Thus we must understand the φάσγανα καλὰ, μελάνδετα (_Il._ xv. 713). Compare Eurip. _Phœn._ 1091. There is much more to be said concerning ‘Phasganon.’

[744] _Il._ vii. 220.

[745] _Il._ iii. 292.

[746] _Il._ v. 330.

[747] _Il._ xviii. 474 sq.

[748] _Il._ vi. 236.

[749] x. 1.

[750] _Il._ iv. 242, xiv. 479.

[751] _Il._ xi. 385.

[752] The Romaic _gh_ is, as far as I know, the only modern European representative of the ‘Semitic’ _ghayn_, which French writers must transliterate by R: e.g. Razzia for Ghazweh.

[753] Even in the army of Perseus we are told by Livy (xliv. 40), the Thracians marched first brandishing, from time to time, Swords of enormous weight.

[754] xiii. 576.

[755] xxiii. 307.

[756] i. 210, 220.

[757] _Il._ i. 190, it is called a Phásganon.

[758] ii. 45.

[759] _Il._ xi. 30.

[760] Studs, flat-headed, like rivets, are still let into the iron blade by modern Africans.

[761] iii. 334.

[762] _Il._ xvi. 130.

[763] xx. 475.

[764] _Il._ xvi. 335.

[765] xviii. end.

[766] So Aristophanes (_Clouds_, 1065) alludes to the Sword forged by Hephaistos and presented to Peleus by the gods, as a prize for resisting the temptations of Atalanta.

[767] _Il._ x. 256.

[768] xv. 712–12.

[769] _Iliad._ xxiii. 824.

[770] Sanskritists hold it to have been originally ἄσορ, and to derive from असि (asi), a Sword; whence आसिक (ásik), a swordsman (Fick, _Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Grundsprache_). It is probably connected with ἀείρω, because ‘carried’ on the shoulder by the bauldric.

[771] _Od._ xi. 24.

[772] _Il._ xvi. 115.

[773] xvi. 473.

[774] _Il._ xiv. 385.

[775] In his illustrations of the _Iliad_, Flaxman rarely arms his warriors with the Sword, even at the Fight for the Body of Patroclus. It is to be hoped that artists in future will kindly take warning.

[776] _Il._ xv. 256; also _Hymn to Apollo_, 396.

[777] _El._ 837.

[778] _Odys._ viii. 401–5.

[779] _Odys._ iv. 695.

[780] Line 125.

[781] _Odys._ i. 180.

[782] iv. 83–4.

[783] xi. 520. In Buckley’s translation (Bell, 1878), χαλκός is mostly translated ‘steel’ (pp. 62, 72, 198). Translators are almost as misleading as dictionaries.

[784] xxi. 3.

[785] xxi. 10.

[786] v. 230.

[787] xxi. 127.

[788] xvi. 295.

[789] xix. 13.

[790] x. 535, xxi. 34 and 119, xxii. 329 &c.

[791] Line 40.

[792] _Il._ vii. 187.

[793] _Il._ vi. 169.

[794] xiii. 28.

[795] He also mentions writing on leaden plates and on linen cloths as in ancient India; such, probably, were the books of Numa.

[796] v. 29.

[797] vii. 186.

[798] From _Kshatram_ (crown, reign) and _-pá_ (defender). These viceroys of Asia Minor, who sometimes held more than one province, received and despatched embassies, levied armies of mercenaries, and even engaged in foreign wars without orders of the Great King (Herod, iv. 165–7; Thucyd. i. 115 &c.).

[799] ix. 62.

[800] vii. 64.

[801] Grote, _History of Greece_, iii. 323.

[802] This word is erroneously translated ‘Scymitar,’ a weapon which, in its present shape, dates from about the rise of El-Islam.

[803] Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, 60. The learned commentator quotes Müller, _Hist. Græc._ (iv. 429), Amm. Marcellinus (xxxi. 2), Jornandes (_De Reb. Geticis_, cap. xxxv.), Niebuhr’s _Scythia_ (p. 46, E. Tr.), &c. In vol. iii. 60, he gives a ground-plan of the tomb, whose chief place also yielded a gold shield, a whip, a bow, a bow-case, five statuettes, and an iron Sword. The space by the side contained a woman’s bones, with a diadem and ornaments in gold and electrum. Other barrows in Russia and Tartary showed bodies resting upon sheets of pure gold weighing forty pounds, with bronze weapons and ornaments set with rubies and emeralds. Herodotus’ description of the scalping (ἀποσκυθίζειν, iv. 64) would apply to the North American ‘Indians’ of our day; and the sending a messenger to Zalmoxis, god of the Getæ (iv. 94), is the practice of modern Dahome and Benin.

[804] Rawlinson, iii. 54.

[805] ‘Mongol’ denotes an especial race; the word is much abused by non-Orientalists.

[806] iv. 70.

[807] This process of ‘mixing bloods,’ as a token of brotherhood, is familiar to all travellers in pagan Africa.

[808] ii. 2.

[809] _Mycenæ, &c._ (London: Murray, 1878). It is regretable that this handsome and expensive volume should be printed upon blotting paper.

[810] _Il._ i. 320.

[811] These illustrations are from photographs bought at Athens.

[812] ix. 29–31.

[813] P. 307.

[814] _Troy_, 330–31.

[815] P. 279.

[816] Jähns (pp. 91, 92) cannot but suspect that many of the weapons which show a marked Oriental cast are not Atreidan but Carian. This tribe about the thirteenth century B.C. spread itself, under the mythical king Minos, over the Ægean Archipelago, and colonised even the seaboard of Greece. Such words as Hymettos, Lykabettos, &c. are supposed to be Carian. The symbol of their gods was the double-axe, so common in Mycenæ; and, as Thucydides said, their practice was to bury weapons with the dead, which was not customary in Greece.

[817] Yet soldering iron was known to Egypt in the Eighteenth Dynasty.

[818] The position may be seen in life all over India, where the jugglers teach goats to stand and be hoisted in that position.

[819] The Etruscans, however, like the Jews, disposed the feet of the corpse eastward, as told in _Etruscan Bologna_ (p. 22). Although the author should not say so, the public has not done wisely to neglect this book; its most valuable part, the osteological details of the Etruscan, deserved a better fate and, perhaps, secured a failure. Yet it had the prime advantage of angry abuse by a certain critical journal, whose predilection for the commonplace (_quâ_ commonplace) is expressed by vituperation of all that is not commonplace. In my case I may say of it with Diderot: ‘Perhaps they do me more credit than I deserve; I should feel humiliated if those who speak ill of so many clever and worthy people took it into their heads to speak well of me.’

[820] See ‘Analysis of Mycenæan Metals’ (pp. 367–376, _Mycenæ_.) But the book is almost as self-contradictory as _Troy_.

[821] For instance, by Mr. W. J. Stillman, a traveller and a scholar. In the New York _Nation_ (August 18) he writes on ‘The True Age of the Mykenæ Finds’; and, after a fresh examination, he declares the objects post-classical, ‘probably representing the burial-place of a colony of Celts between the fifth and the second century B.C.’ What chiefly militates against this theory is the cremation of the human remains.

[822] Dictionaries derive this word from σπάω (to draw). I find it in the Egyptian ‘Sft.’ It is evidently a congener of Σπάθη (dim. σπάθιον), also Romaic, and verb σπαθάω = I wield (the weapon). Spáthe means primarily a broad blade of wood or metal; secondarily a weaver’s spatel or spaddle, a spatula (Latin _tela_); an oar-blade, a scraper (for horse-currying), and a broadsword. Scotchmen still apply ‘spathe’ to the weaver’s lath (_The Past in the Present_, p. 11), which preceded the ‘pecten.’ It is also used for Carnifex in Tertullian (_De Cult. Fem._ cap. xiii.), and in botany for a shoot of fructification. In Anglo-Saxon it became _Spad_; Icelandic _Spadi_, our spade. The Latins (Tacit. _Ann._ xii. 35; Veget. _De Re Mil._ ii. 15) converted it to _spatha_; and hence the neo-Latin _espée_ and _épée_, _espada_ and _spada_, from which we derive our (suit of) ‘spades.’ See the play of words upon ‘Metal de Espadas’ in Camoens’ ‘Rejected Stanzas’ (canto iv. vol. ii. p. 437 of my translation). It has been subjected to other corruptions; and in Chaucer (_Knightes T._ 1662) ‘Sparth’ is a battle-axe:—

‘He hath a sparth of twenti pound of wighte.’

Even the learned Major Jähns derives ‘Spatha’ from ‘Spatel.’

[823] Quoted by Colonel A. Lane-Fox, _Anthrop. Coll._ p. 174.

[824] I have described it in _Scoperte Antropologiche in Ossero_ (Trieste, 1877). The point is evidently broken off.

[825] See chap. viii.

[826] See chap. iii. The Danísko is the hatchet-yataghan of Demmin, p. 397.

[827] Gen. iii. 24; Zech. xiii. 7; Apocalyp. i.

[828] Here we find St. Michael a heavenly archetype of St. George. In the vault of the Superga, Turin, Monseigneur carries a rapier instead of a flamberge.

[829] Xenophon, _De Re Eq._ xii. 11.

[830] A world-wide juggling trick, which seems to have originated in Egypt. In Apuleius (_Golden Ass_, lib. i.) a _circulator_ or itinerant juggler swallows a very sharp two-edged cavalry broadsword and buries in his entrails a horseman’s spear. This ‘Thracian Magic’ is still practised by the well-known Raf’ai Dervishes.

[831] He figures the blade in his Tour (i. p. 443).

[832] Galatians, Keltic Gauls, who established themselves in Western Asia Minor after the destruction of their leader Brennus at Delphi (B.C. 279). Florus (ii. 10) calls the Gallo-Græcians ‘adulterated relics of Gauls’: Strabo also alludes to the Phrygians and the three Galatian peoples (iv. 1). As Ammian. Marcell. tells us (xv. cap. ix.), ‘Galatæ is the Greek translation of the Roman term Galli.’ They consisted of three tribes, each with its capital: the Tolistobogii (= Tolosa + Boii) at Pessinus; the Tectosages (of Aquitaine) at Ancyra, now Angora, famous for wool and cats; and the Trocmi, with Tavium for principal city, lay to the east bordering on Pontus. This people, like the Gauls, their kinsmen, was ‘admodum dedita religionibus’ (Cæs. _B. G._ vi. 16).

[833] x. 32.

[834] Livy, xxxviii. c. 17.

[835] _Il._ i. 190.

[836] _Il._ xvi. 437.

[837] _Il._ xxii. 310–60.

[838] _Il._ xiv. 405.

[839] In the _Iliad_ (iv. 185) we find the ζωστὴρ and the ζῶμα different. Menelaus wears the former outside, the Sword below it, and a μίτρα or metal plate on the breast. The ζωστὴρ was probably a broad girdle strengthened with metal, and considered part of the ὅπλα: thus ζώννυσθαι, to ‘gird one’s loins,’ is to prepare for battle.

[840] Doubtless Pythagoras and Socrates were monotheists after the fashion of the Egyptian priests; but the Olympus of the many-headed was peopled by a charming bevy of _coquins_ and _coquines_.

[841] From the treatise of M. Rodios, ΕΠΙ ΠΟΛΕΜΙΚΗΣ ΤΕΧΝΗΣ (Athens, 1868); the soldier wears an Etruscan helmet, and the pelta shield resembles an ivy leaf.

[842] _Philip._ i.

[843] To name merely the _sommités_: Alexander the Great, Eumenes, and Ptolemy; Hannibal; Sulla, Fabius, Marius, Sertorius, Cato, Brutus, Julius Cæsar, Mark Antony, Pompey, Metellus, Marcellus, Trajan, and Hadrian. All these commanders were famous swordsmen, concerning whose personal feats with the weapon we have ample notices.

[844] The Albanians still preserve the four castes which do not intermarry. These are: Soldiers (or Landowners), Tradesmen, Shepherds, and Artisans.

[845] Some of the Greek statues were larger than any Egyptian. Olympian Jove stood 60 feet, Apollo 45 (Pausanias), and the Image of the Sun (commonly called the Colossus of Rhodes) 105 feet, exceeding everything in the Nile Valley. I need not refer to Mount Athos and the Charonion of Antioch. The oldest known Greek statue is a portrait produced at Miletus in B.C. 550, and inscribed: ‘I am Chares, son of Kleisis, rider of Teichiousa, an offering to Apollo.’ The style of this and other archaic works (vases, &c.), which are rare, connects it with Assyrianism, about the age of Assurnazirpal (B.C. 880).

[846] _Iliad_, ii. 362 and iv. 297 sq.

[847] _De Ages._

[848] But who is to do this under a Republic? And here we foresee troubles for our neighbours in the next Prusso-Gallic War.

[849] For instance, the ‘Holy City’ of Miletus, with its 300 dependent towns. When we speak of ancient Greece we must remember that it extended from Asia Minor to Sicily, Italy, and even Southern France; and from Egypt to Albania. Modern Greece is a mere mutilated trunk.

[850] Demmin (p. 106, &c.) tells us that ‘the Greeks had not even a term to denote the action of riding on horseback’; and that ‘even in French a proper verb does not exist, as the expression _chevaucher_ means rather to stroll (_flâner_) on horseback.’ As his English translator remarks, the assertion is hardly admissible in the face of such words as ἱππεύειν (_equitare_), _cavalcare_, to ride the horse; ἱππεία (riding), ἱππεὺς and ἱππότης (a rider, a knight), and ἐπιβεβηκώς, mounted (_scil._ on horseback). His interpretation of _chevaucher_ is equally erroneous. _Chevaucher_, a fine old word, now only too rare, exactly expresses our ‘to ride’: _Il chevaucha aux parties d’occident_, is quoted from a French MS. (early fourteenth century) by Colonel Yule in his preface to Marco Polo; and the word occurs twice in the same sentence with the same sense.

[851] Lord Denman’s translation.

[852] D. K. Sandford.

[853] ‘Armour’ is from the Lat. _armatura_, through O. French _armeure_ and _armure_; _armoire_ is _armarium_, originally a place for keeping Arms, and _armamentarium_ is our arsenal. It is not a little curious that ‘finds’ of Roman weapons are so rare, bearing no proportion to the wide extension of the rule. We must also beware of the monuments which are apt to idealise and archaicise: this is notable in the shape of the helmet, the pilium, and the Sword. Jähns specifies as the best place for study the Romano-German Central Museum at ‘Mainz,’ under Professor Dr. Lindenschmit (p. 192).

[854] In our day the only ‘Fecialists’ are the Moslem States.

[855] _Polybii Historiarum quæ supersunt._ The voluminous and luminous writer, a contemporary of Scipio Africanus, and a captain who witnessed the destruction of Carthage, was born A.U.C. 552 (B.C. 204), nearly three centuries after the Latin conquest of Etruria. He was called ‘Auctor bonus in primis,’ and Scipio said of him, ‘Nemo fuit in requirendis temporibus diligentior’ (Cicero, _De Off._ iii. 12, and _De Rep._ ii. 14).

[856] _De Linguâ Lat._ iv. 6.

[857] Livy, viii. 8.

[858] Also called Adscriptii, Supernumerarii, and Velati, because wearing only the _sagum_ or soldier’s cloak, opposed to the officer’s _paludamentum_. Properly speaking, they were rear-troops, ranged in battle order behind the Triarii. During certain epochs the Rorarii stood next to the Triarii, and the Accensi, less trustworthy than either, formed the extreme rear.

[859] The weapon is well shown in a monumental tablet on the Court wall of the Aquileja Museum.

[860] The Clypeus, or Clipeus, of favourite Greek use, was also round, but larger than the Parma. Our ‘buckler’ (_buccularius clypeus_) takes its name from having on it an open mouth (_bucca_, _buccula_), in Chinese fashion, instead of the _umbo_.

[861] In Livy’s Phalanx (A.U.C. 415) the Velites were light-armed men, carrying only a spear and short iron pila (viii. 7).

[862] A congener of the Keltic _Ast_ = branch; whence the Fr. _arme d’hast_. It was the Greek κοντός, _contus_, or lance, an unbarbed spear, a royal sceptre: under the Republic it collected the hundreds (_hastam centumviralem agere_); it noted auctions (_jus hastæ_), it was the weapon of the light infantry-man (_hasta velitaris_), and it served to part the bride’s hair (Ovid, _Fast._ ii. 560). _Hastarius_ and _hastatus_, _hasta_ and _quiris_ are synonyms; the _gæsum_ was a heavier weapon and barbed, and the _jaculum_, with its diminutives, _spiculum_, _vericulum_, or _verutum_, was a lighter javelin. Virgil uses _hastile_ poetically.

[863] _Loc. cit._

[864] The number of men greatly varied; the extremes of the Legion are 6,800 including cavalry under Scipio, and 1,500 under Constantine. In Livy’s Legion there were 5,000 infantry and 300 horse (viii. 8). Perhaps we may assume an average of 4,000 foot—a full Austrian regiment. Each line of the three numbered 10 cohorts, and each cohort three maniples. The latter were named from manipulus, a handful (of grass, &c., _Georg._ i. 400), because this rustic article at the end of a pole was the standard of Romulus.

[865] The Signa, ensigns, or standards, were different in the legions. The Vexillum, or colours of cavalry, was a square of cloth, also called Pannus (πῆνος). The word is a congener of the Gothic _Fana_ and _Fan_; the Ang. Sax. _Pan_; the Germ. _Fahne_; the French _bannière_ and our _banner_. Hence, too, _Gonfanon_ = _Gundfano_. When the Eagle became imperial, and the Vexillum a Labarum with a cross, this standard was splendidly decorated, and led to the French oriflamme. The latter was made of the fine red (silk?) stuff called _cendalum_, cendal, or sendel.

[866] These ‘light bobs’ were re-organised and regularly established in A.U.C. 541, after the battle of Cannæ.

[867] In fact, it formed phalanx, a word originally meaning a block or a cylinder.

[868] The officer’s was adorned by way of honourable decoration with three (ostrich?) feathers black and scarlet.

[869] The original kilt was the waistcloth, man’s primitive dress in the Tropics and the lower Temperates. It became an article of defence under the Greeks and Romans; and thence it spread over most of Europe. The Maltese long preserved it, and the _Fustanella_ is still worn in Greece and Albania. In Ireland it was ancient, as it is modern in Scotland.

[870] Livy, ix. 35.

[871] Livy, viii. 8.

[872] _Pilum_, like our ‘pile,’ a congener of the Teutonic _Pfeil_, is not a Roman invention, and was probably borrowed from the Samnites (Sallust. _Cat._ 51, 38). The _pilum murale_, used for piercing walls (Cæsar, _B. G._ v. 40), was a round or quadrangular shaft of three cubits, with an iron of the same length (Polybius, vi. 23, 9). The _pilum_ was perpetually changing size and proportions; moreover, there were two kinds, the heavy and the light. The figures in the text are those of the Mayence _pilum_ (Jähns, p. 201).

[873] Livy, xxi. 8.

[874] Under Trajan and Septimius Severus the cavalry adopted the iron or bronze _Hamata_, hooked metal chains, forming a kind of mail-coat, and the _Squamata_, scales sewn on to linen or leather, Demmin (p. 121) erroneously makes the latter ‘chain-armour,’ and yet his illustration shows the scales.

[875] _De Re Mil._ i. 16.

[876] _Essais de Montaigne_, l. ii., chap. 24 (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1874).

[877] Or _maître d’armes_, a word borrowed by Rome from Etruria. The legionary teachers were termed _armidoctores_ and _campidoctores_.

[878] Athenæus (iv. 41) relates from Hermippus and Ephorus that the Mantineans were the inventors of Gladiatorism proper (μονομαχοῦντες), suggested by one of their citizens, Demus or Demonax, and that the Cyreneans followed suit.

[879] Livy, xxviii. 21.

[880] In early Roman days the Gladiator was infamous; even Petronius Arbiter (_Satyr._ cap. i) uses ‘you obscene gladiator’ as an insult.

[881] _Philip._ ii. 25.

[882] Marius and Pompey the Great both ‘kept up’ their swordsmanship in these schools and in the Champ de Mars, the latter till the age of fifty-eight.

[883] Hence his simple medication when _hors de combat_, ‘refreshing himself with a drink of lye of ashes.’ Can they mean the antiseptic charcoal, whose use has been revived of late years?

[884] _Nat. Hist._ xxxvi. 24.

[885] _Sub v._ Epicurus.

[886] _Deipn._ vi. 105. Eunus was the slave-leader in the Servile War, which began B.C. 130.

[887] The first Roman artist who painted gladiators was Terentius Lucanus (Pliny, _N. H._ xxxv. 34).

[888] The Mirmillo, _alias_ Gallus, is supposed to be derived from a Keltic word, meaning a fish.

[889] If Nero was the monster represented by the commentaries and the contemporary Christians, we must wonder how this anti-Christ was loved in life by Acte, the ‘sweet and pure-minded Christian’; and why the citizens of Rome sorrowed for his death. And there is much suggestion in the fact that the greatest persecutors of the earliest Christians were the best of the Cæsars, for instance, Vespasian, Titus, Diocletian and Julian.

[890] See the character given to him by Eutropius, viii. 4.

[891] _De Morib. Germ._ xxxiii.

[892] Mariette, _Recueil_, No. 92.

[893] The learned Mr. Tylor is notably in error when he informs Mr. Herbert Spencer (_Ceremonial Institutions_, pp. 174–75) that the Japanese two-sworded man (Samurai) wore sword and dagger. The blades used to be of equal length. Of the Japanese sword I shall treat in Part II.

[894] Copied by Smith (_Dict. of Ant._ p. 456) from Winckelmann (_Monumenta Inedita_, Pl. 197): the latter, by the by, was murdered at Trieste.

[895] The word seems to be a congener of _Sahs_, _Sax_, or _Seax_, the weapon supposed to have named the Saxons. It was either straight or curved, the main object being to fit it closely to the body or under the armpits. Hence it was a favourite with the Sicarius (Ital. _sicario_), the Assassin. Gregory of Tours has (ix. 19) ‘Caput sicharii siccâ dividit.’ A fanciful derivation of Sicily is from _sica_, because Cronos threw one away at Drepanum. From the diminutive form _Sicula_ and _Silicicula_ comes the English ‘sickle.’

[896] This hide-shield, which supplanted the _clypeus_ or _clipeus_, the large round article of osier-work, was also Sabine.

[897] Petronius Arbiter, chap. i. 7.

[898] _Falx_ is properly a large pruning knife, plain or toothed, with a coulter or bill projecting from the back of the curved head. Besides this, there are many forms; one is a simple curve; another is a leaf-shaped blade with an inner hook, while a third bears, besides the spike, a crescent on the back. ‘Falx’ is the origin of our ‘falchion,’ an Italian augmentative form, or perhaps the Spanish _facon_. Cæsar (_Comm._ iii. 14) speaks of _falces præacutæ_.

[899] _Loc. cit._, copied by Smith.

[900] Mentor is mentioned by Pliny (viii. 21). The tale of Androclus is well known; he was pardoned, and presented with his friend the lion, whom he used to lead about Rome, doubtless collecting many coppers.

[901] He is called by Captain Godfrey ‘the Atlas of the sword,’ and Hogarth immortalised this valiant ‘rough’ in the _Rake’s Progress_ and _Southwark Fair_.

[902] It is regretable to see this unmanly and ignoble ‘sport’ spreading abroad: there was pigeon-shooting at Venice during the Geographical Carnival, _alias_ Congress, of September 1881. All honour to the English Princes who are discountenancing the butchery at home. Fox-hunting is another thing; the chief good done by it seems to be the circulation of about a million of money per annum.

[903] I have described cock-fighting in the Canary Islands (_To the Gold Coast for Gold_, i., chap. 9). The celebrated story of Themistocles and the game-cocks made the pastime classical. Alexander the Great is said to have crucified a tax-gatherer at Alexandria who killed and ate a famous fighting-cock. Verdict, S. H. R.

[904] So Μελίη and the O. Germ. _Ask_ (an ash-tree) signify a bow: there are many instances of such nomenclature.

[905] Quinctilian, _Inst. Orat._ xii. 11. Marchionni (p. 123) makes the Gladius short and broad for infantry, and the Ensis long and broad for cavalry, in fact, synonymous with Spatha. This view is not unusual.

[906] In _Claud._ cap. 15.

[907] Florus, ii. 17.

[908] This blade greatly resembles one found in Ostirbotten, Finland, except that the latter preserves the tang. _Trans. Congress of Bologna of 1871_, p. 428.

[909] The point was called _cuspis_, which never applies to the _mucro_, _acies_, or edge. ‘Differt a mucrone quæ est acies gladii,’ says Facciolati.

[910] See chap. vii. In Hugues de Bançoi’s _Battle of Benevento_ we read: ‘Le Roy Charles’ (brother of St. Louis, and then fighting to take Sicily from Manfred) ... ‘crioit de sa bouche Royale à ses Chevaliers de serrer les ennemis, leur disant, _Frappez de la pointe, Frappez de la pointe, soldats de Jésus Christ_. Et il ne faut pas s’en étonner, car ce Prince habile avait lu dans le Livre de l’Art Militaire que les nobles Romains n’avoient pas imaginé de meilleure manière de combattre que de percer les ennemis avec la pointe de l’épée.’

[911] Livy, xxxv. 12. According to Spanish tradition, Toletum (probably a Carthaginian-Punic word) was founded B.C. 540 by Hebrews, who called it Toledoth, in Arab. Tawallud, the ‘mother of cities.’

[912] Properly the South-Danube country from the Wienerwald to the Inn. The great seat of the iron works was at Lauriacum (Lorch, near Enns). After B.C. 16 the province was ruled by a Procurator.

[913] See chap. vi.

[914] In Tonini’s _Rimini avanti l’ era volgare_ (p. 31) we read that the Spatha-blade ‘Come ognuno sa, presso i Greci quanto presso i Latini, _est genus gladii latioris_; onde Isidoro nelle _Origini_ (xviii. cap. 6) ha che alcuni _spatham latine autumant, eo quod spatiosa sit, id est lata et ampla_.’ But this is a dictionary derivation. In chap. viii. I have traced it back to the Egyptian _Sfet_, and in chap. xiii. I shall show that it is the straight broadsword as used by the Kelts.

[915] Parazonium = παρά + ζώνη. _Pugio_, our ‘poniard,’ is from _pugnus_ (πύξ), the fist; others take it from _pungere_ to prick.

[916] Smith (_Dict. of Ant._ p. 809) borrows figs. _a_ and _b_ from Beger (_Thes. Brand_, v., iii. p. 398, 419).

[917] See end of chap. viii.

[918] Smith (_loc. cit._ p. 195) renders _capulus_ by ‘hilt.’ Pommel, however, best explains Ovid’s legend of Theseus (_Met._ vii. 423), who, appearing for the first time before his father Ægeus, was known by the carving on his ivory _capulus_, and thus escaped Medea’s aconite. Moreover, a ‘golden hilt set with beryls’ would have been very awkward to handle.

[919] Virg. _Æn._ xii. 942.

[920] Section Beaumont. The grip has four hollows to fit the fingers. This indentation-system has been revived of late years, as shown by the swords of Victor Emmanuel and General Lamarmora in the Municipal Museum, Turin.

[921] Guard plates, accompanying cross-bars, have been found in Gaul.

[922] These rings appear on the scabbard of Tiberius.

[923] Here I rely upon Ammian. Marcell. (xxiv. 4; xxv. 3, 4, and _passim_). So great a reformer could not escape detraction in its most venomous form. His last words (attributed) _Vicisti, Nazarene_, must, I think, have been pronounced in Syriac-Arabic, _Nasart’ yá Nasráni_.

[924] Jähns, p. 198. He gives an illustration (Pl. xvii. 14) of the ‘Annæus’ monument at Bingen; there is a double balteus worn round the waist for the Spatha, or long Sword, to the right, and the Pugio to the left, both being carried perpendicularly. The Roman Parazonium is also rare in collections.

[925] In this matter we must be careful how we trust to engravings, especially from vases, &c. The careless artist often reverses the figure.

[926] _Military Antiq._, vol. ii.; Pl. xli.

[927] Quoting Lyson’s _Woodchester Antiquities_ (Pl. xxxv.).

[928] Pl. i. fig. 10. Quoted in _The British Army_, &c., by Sir Sibbald David Scott, a well-studied work containing a considerable amount of information.

[929] _Soc. of Antiq._, June 29, 1876.

[930] During the critical action at Thapsus, Cæsar, according to Plutarch, was _hors de combat_ with a fit of epilepsy, the _comitialis morbus_ (Afric. War, chap. 14). I have noticed in my Commentaries on Camoens (i. 40) the strange fact that some of the greatest men of antiquity were subject to this ‘falling sickness.’ The Egyptians held it to be a manifestation of the power of Typhon; hence the ‘divine disease’ of Apuleius (Defence), and the strange fancies of dæmoniac possession which prevailed in the earliest ages, and which have not yet died out. The learned Canon Farrar (_Life, &c. of Saint Paul_, Appendix, vol. i.) holds that this perhaps was the ‘thorn in the flesh’ (2 Cor. xii. 7) alluded to by the great Apostle. He quotes from Hausrath the ‘trances’ of Sokrates, the fits of Mohammed, and the faintings and ecstasies of Saints Bernard, Francis, and Catherine of Sienna; and to these he adds George Fox, Jacob Böhme, and Swedenborg.

[931] This is an illustration of genius taking pains and a lesson to the leader of troops; but how many of the moderns have practised it, or have been capable of practising it? Suvóroff (Suwarroff), it is true, taught his men bayonet-exercise, with his coat off and his sleeves tucked up: Mediocrity shudders at the idea. The Russian had, by the way, curious ideas concerning the use of the weapon. ‘Brothers! never gaze into the enemy’s eyes; fix your sight on his breast, and prod your bayonet there.’ The first rule for the General is to be ever looking after his men, to live, as it were, in the saddle, and to lead the attack when requisite. What were the habits of poor Lord Raglan and of his successor General (Jimmy) Simpson? No wonder that we had the mortification of the Redan affair.

[932] _Strategemata_, viii. 28. The ‘Macedonian’ flourished about the middle of the second century (Christian era).

[933] ix. 40.

[934] This word has a universal history of its own, and contains a lecture on anthropology.

Its form is onomatopoetic, the earliest form of expression, as the Egyptian _miao_, for a cat; and it admirably conveys the idea of muttering or stuttering. Again, it is a reduplication of sounds; another absolutely primitive construction, and the effect is emphasis.

‘Berber-ta’ (Berber-land) was applied by the ancient Egyptians (Catalogue of Thut-mes III.), whence our modern term Barbary.

The word in Hebr. ‘wild beast feeding in waste’ migrated to India, and was there corrupted to वर्वर (Varvara), a barbarous land, one who speaks unintelligibly.

‘Berber’ passed over to Greece from Egypt, and became βάρβαρος, meaning a foreigner whose language was not Hellenic, and who, therefore, was little better than a beast. (N.B. Shakespeare would have been a barbarian in Persia and Hafiz in England.)

‘Barbaros’ broadened its meaning in Rome, where it was applied to all peoples who could not speak or who mispronounced Greek and Latin. See Strabo, xiv. 2, on ‘Barbaros’ and to ‘barbarise’; thus unhappy Ovid could wail:

‘Barbarus hic ego sum quia non intelligor illis.’

Lastly, the ‘proto-Aryan’ term ‘Barbarian’ has now grown to full size, and is applied generally to the rude, the fierce, the uncivilised, and those who contumaciously ignore the ‘higher culture.’