Leaving Syria, we proceed to Cyprus, which may be considered an outlying part of Palestine. Its size, its position between the east and the west, and its wealth in gold, silver, copper, and iron, made it an important station for the early Pelasgo-Hellenic or Græco-Italic race which passed westwards, using the Hellespont and the Bosphorus for ferry-places, and the Ægean Islands for stepping-stones. Thus Cyprus became the ‘cradle of Greek culture, the cauldron in which Asiatic, Egyptian, and Greek ingredients were brewed together.’ General Palma (di Cesnola)[600] has proved, by his invaluable finds, which have ‘added a new and very important chapter to the history of art and archæology,’ that early Cypriote art was essentially Egyptian, modified by Phœnician and Assyrian influences, and eventually becoming Greek. Hence, too, with the dawn of Hellenic civilisation, migrated westwards some of the fairest classical myths. Cyprus was the very birthplace of Venus,[601] an anthropomorphism which rendered infinite service to poetry, painting, and sculpture. Idalium (Dali) was the capital of Cinyras, Kinnári the harper,[602] the Crœsus of his day; it was the site of Myrrha’s sin and the death-place of her son Adonis. The latter, who corresponds with the Tammuz of Palestine and the Assyrian Du-zi (Son of Life), is made by Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii. 14) an ‘emblem of the fruits of the earth cut down in their prime.’ Here was the atelier of Pygmalion, Fa’am Aliyun (Malleus Deorum), the hammer of the gods;[603] and here upon his breathing statue of ivory he begat Paphos, the king. Finally, here flourished the poets who preceded the Homerid chief; and here was born Zeno, the Stoic, the ‘Phœnician.’

The history of Cyprus begins soon after the beginning. An inscription of Thut-mes III. speaks of the ‘false breed of the Kittim’; and the island is everywhere on the monuments called Asibi. In the cuneiforms the word is ‘Kittie’: we also find ‘Atnán’: hence, possibly, the Hellenic ‘Akamantis.’ It is the ‘Chittim’ of the Hebrews (Joseph. ‘A. J.’ i. 7), and perhaps their ‘Caphtor’; the latter word, however, appears to be the Egyptian ‘Kefa’ or ‘Keft’ (a palm or Phœnicia), converted into the son of Javan and grandson of Japhet. ‘Kittim’ and its congeners survive in the Greek Citium, now Larnaca, from ‘larnax,’ a mummy-case, a coffin. I have already noticed (chap. iv.) the disputed origin of ‘Kypros’ and ‘Cyprus.’

The Autochthones of Cyprus are supposed upon very slight grounds to have been ‘Aryans’ from Asia Minor, Phrygians,[604] Lycians,[605] Lydians, or Cilicians. There must have been an early ‘Semitic’ innervation, as we see by such names as Amathus; this is the Greek form of Hamath, the ‘high town,’ typically explained by the Hebrew ‘Amath,’ grandson of Canaan. The Phœnicians settled chiefly in the south of the island and made it an outpost of Tyre and Sidon. Herodotus tells us that there were also, according to their own account, Ethiopians (vii. 90), by which he means Cushito-Asiatic tribes from the head of the Persian Gulf.

The staple of Cyprus, from the heroic ages to the Roman days, was the copper-trade and the manufacture of arms and armour. To the legendary Tyrio-Cyprian king Cinyras was attributed the invention of the hammer, anvil, tongs, and other metallurgic tools. This favourite of Venus was only the hero eponymus of the Phœnician Cinyradæ, who ruled the isle till subdued by Ptolemy Lagi (b.c. 312). They were opposed to a Semitico-Cilician family of priests and prophets, the Tamyridæ. Homer (‘Il.’ xi. 19) describes the breast-plate of worked and damascened steel (? κύανος) adorned with gold and tin, which King Cinyras sent to Agamemnon. Alexander the Great highly prized, for its lightness and temper, the blade given to him by the King of Citium; and we know that he used it in battle, slaying ‘with his Cyprian Sword’ Rhæsales the Persian. Demetrius Poliorcetes wore a suit of armour from Cyprus, which had been tested by darts shot from an engine distant only twenty paces. In Herodotus (vii. 90) the Cyprian contingent of Xerxes’ army was weaponed after the manner of the Greeks.

Cyprus would derive her art from the Phœnicians, whose bronze dishes were found in the Palace-cellars at Nineveh. Gem-engraving, and working in pietra dura, were highly cultivated, as is proved by General Palma’s works, and by the Lawrence-Cesnola collection, ‘Album of Cyprus Antiquities.’[606] Glass- and crystal-cutting were well known at a time when Herodotus (ii. 69) could describe the former only as ‘fusible stone’—perhaps, however, alluding to paste gems. But Theophrastus, a century and a half after the historian, mentions glass as reported to be made by melting a certain stone. I have already alluded to the peculiar decency and decorum of the glyptic remains in the Isle of Venus, where the festivals were described as being ultra-Canopic in character.[607]

The ‘finds’ of Cyprian weapons have little importance; perhaps due care was not devoted to the subject. Dali (Idalium) produced a fine dagger with an open ring for ornament between handle and blade, together with a hatchet and spear-head in copper. Here also was found the bronze tablet of the Duc de Luynes, the discoverer of the Cypriote syllabary,[608] which has caused, and still causes, so much discussion. Alambra yielded a number of copper tools, needles, bowls, mirrors, hatchets, spear-heads, and daggers (Cesnola, Pl. V.). Among them is a sickle-shaped implement (a), of the shape called a ‘razor’ by writers on Etruscanism; it may be anything between a razor, a sickle, and a pruning-hook.[609] A tomb at Amathus supplied copper axes and iron arrow-heads (p. 280), and another an iron dagger (p. 276). There is a charming dagger from the Curium treasure (Pl. XXI. p. 312); and we are told (p. 335) of ‘an iron dagger with part of its ivory handle.’ The straight blade, the flesh-chopper, and the leaf-shaped Egyptian Swords are found on a patera[610] (p. 329), and the broken statue of a warrior from Golgoi carries a falchion or flesh-chopper slung under the quiver to the left side (p. 155). The tombs containing horsemen in terra-cotta invariably yielded one or two spear-heads seven to ten inches long, whilst the figures of foot-soldiers were accompanied by a battle-axe, knife, or dagger. The decapitation of the Gorgon by Perseus adorns a sarcophagus also found at Golgoi (Pl. X.); and the head of Medusa (Pl. XXII.) apparently suggested that of the Hindú Kali, with the tongue lolling out as if gorged with gore. The mediæval finds of arms seem to have been more important than the ancient. There is a tempting notice, but only a notice, of the Venetian weapons taken from the two casements of Famagosta, of old Amta-Khadasta,[611] the Ammochostos of Ptolemy (v. 14, § 3): especially interesting are the rapiers, whose handles bore the Jerusalem Cross and the owners’ crests inlaid with gold.

On the mainland north of Cyprus lies a most remarkable land which, forming a point of junction, a connecting-link between the East and the West, was one of the tracks of primitive emigration from Asia to Europe, and vice versâ. This tête de pont, commanding the island-bridge and the various stepping-stones of rock, is the famous Troas, occupied of old by a branch of the great Phrygian race. Hence the interest attaching to the excavations of Dr. Henry Schliemann. His works are too well known to require any detailed notice of the five (seven?) cities ‘whose successive layers of ruins, still marked by the fires that passed over them, are piled to the height of fifty (two and a half) feet above the old summit of the Hisárlik hill.’[612] The explorer’s labours, according to his editor, have passed through the ‘several stages of uncritical acceptance, hypercritical rejection, and discriminating belief’: I can only remark that the question of Troy appears farther from being settled (if possible) than it ever was; we now know only where it was not. The excavator began by placing his city of Priam in the second stratum from below, at a depth of twenty-three to thirty-three feet under the surface; and afterwards raised it to the third layer. It is regretable that the learned author did not submit his lively volume ‘Troy’ to a professed archæologist. We should not have heard so much about the Svasti, a Hittite ornament, nor should we have been told that the Trojans used ‘salt-cellars or pepper-boxes’ (p. 79); that the Ramayana Epic was ‘composed at the latest eight hundred years before Christ’ (p. 103), and that the ‘ivory, peacocks, and apes are Sanskrit words with scarcely any alteration.’[613] When, therefore, I speak of ‘Troy proper,’ and ‘Trojan stratum,’ I mean only Dr. Schliemann’s Troy.

The townlet had preserved, at the time of its destruction, the technological use of stone, which, indeed, was found in the four lower strata, and even in the Acropolis of Athens. It occurs, however, in conjunction with gold and silver, copper, bronze, and traces of iron, but no tin.[614] The people were, like most barbarians, very expert metallurgists; and if Dr. Schliemann’s diorite be true diorite,[615] they must have worked with highly-tempered tools. Copper, either pure or slightly alloyed, was the most common metal: we read of a key, a large double-edged axe, a vase-foot, nails, clothes-pins (ἔμβολα), a curious instrument like a horse’s bit (p. 261); a bar, a big ring, a chauldron (λέβης), a ridge (φάλος) for the helmet-crest (λόφος), two whole helmets, three crooked knives, and a lance with a mid-rib (p. 279). Upon the so-called ‘great Tower of Ilios’[616] was found a large mould of mica-schist for casting twelve different articles, axes and daggers. Thus we learn something about the long copper knives which the Homeric heroes carry besides their Swords and use in sacrifice: also we may now reasonably conclude that the Iliad-poets could not, as has often been asserted, have ignored the fusion and the casting of metals.[617] Near this important mould appeared a fine lance (p. 279), and long thin bars, either with heads or with the ends bent round, determined to be hair- or breast-pins. Iron showed only in a sling-bullet, although Dr. Schliemann often mentions ‘loadstone.’[618]

The ‘upper Trojan stratum’ yielded other moulds for bar-casting and a four-footed crucible, in which some copper was still visible. The gates supposed to be the Scæan or left-handed[619] had two copper bolts (p. 302). The so-called ‘Palace of Priam’[620] produced a dozen long thin pins for hair or dress; and one of a bundle of five, fused together by fire, had two separate heads, the upper lentil-shaped, and the lower perfectly round (p. 312). Thick nails, fitted for driving into wood, were rare; the labour of two years produced only two. Finally, there were fragments of a Sword, a lance, and other instruments.

The first article found in the so-called ‘Treasury of Priam’ was a copper shield (ἀσπὶς ὀμφαλόεσσα), an oval salver measuring in diameter less than twenty inches. The flat field is surrounded by a rim (ἄντυξ) an inch and a half high; the umbo (ὀμφαλός)[621] measured two and one-third by four and one-third across, and this boss was bounded by a furrow (αὖλαξ) two-fifths of an inch across (p. 324). Thus Antyx and Aulax, suited for mounting a guard of hide, recall Ajax’s seven-fold shield, made by Tychius[622] (‘Il.’ vii. 219–223); and Sarpedon’s targe, with its round plate of hammered ‘Chalcos,’ and its hide-covering attached to the inner edge of the rim by gold wires or rivets (‘Il.’ xii. 294–97). Near the left hand of a Lebes-chauldron, two fragments of a lance and a battle-axe were firmly attached by fusion. There were thirteen copper lances, from nearly seven inches to upwards of a foot long, with one and a half to two and one-third inches of maximum breadth; the shafts had pin-holes for attachment to the handle; the Greeks and Romans inserted the wood into the neck of the metal-head of the lance. There was a common one-edged knife six inches long; and of seven two-edged daggers, the largest measured ten and two-thirds by two inches. The grips averaged two to two and three-quarter inches, and the tang-ends, where the pommels should be, were bent round at a right angle. Doubtless the tang had been encased in a wooden haft; had it been of bone some trace would have remained, and the point, which projected about half an inch, was simply turned to keep the handle in place. This antiquated contrivance is not yet wholly obsolete, especially when the metal is left naked. The only sign of a Sword (p. 332) was a fragmentary blade five inches and two-thirds long by nearly two inches broad, and with a sharp edge at the chisel-like end. Many golden buttons, not unlike our modern shirt-studs, were found in the ‘Treasury’; they had probably served to ornament the belts or straps (τελαμῶνες) of knives, shields, and Swords.[623]

We gather from Dr. Schliemann’s labours that his ‘Troy,’ at the time of its destruction, was a townlet still in the local Stone-age; at the height of the Copper-Bronze Period; and, perhaps, in the earliest dawn of the Iron-epoch. Apparently it had an alphabet, of which the Grecian enemy could not boast;[624] and, comparing its remains with those of Mycenæ, its culture fully equalled, if not excelled, that of contemporary Hellas. It is curious to observe that the deeper the diggings, from twenty-four feet downwards, the greater were the indications of technological skill. According to Herodotus (ii. 118), the Egyptians bore witness to the power of Troy,[625] yet there is an utter absence of Nilotic influence in the remains, and Brugsch denies that there is any allusion to it on the monuments of Egypt. A similar disconnection with Phœnicia and Assyria appears. The resemblance of the terra cottas to those found in Cyprus and in some of the Ægean islands suggests that there was an early relationship between the Phrygian Trojans and the Phrygian Greeks, both being ‘Indo-Europeans’;[626] and that the eternal Trojan war was, like the later contest between Russia and Poland, Federals and Confederates, nothing but a family feud, a venomous quarrel of rival cousins.

To conclude the ever-interesting subject of Troy. Homer, or the Homerid so called, describes the city according to current legends, as an untravelled Englishman of to-day would describe the Calais of Queen Mary. There is no reason to believe that he saw it, much less that he painted like the photographing of Balzac. Hence it is a daring more than sublime, to find the Scæan Gate and the Palace of Priam. Even the number of superimposed settlements differs. Dr. Schliemann (‘Ilios,’ &c.) proposes seven, while Dr. Wilhelm Dörpfeld[627] reduces the number to six. These, according to Professor Jebb, are as follows: (1) The Greek Ilium of the latest or Roman age, extending to about six feet below the surface. (2) The Greek Ilium of Macedonian age taken by Fimbria in b.c. 85; it extends over the plateau adjoining Hisárlik. (3) A Greek Ilium of earlier age, taken by Charidemus (b.c. 359); it appears confined to the little mound. (4) Another unimportant village; possibly No. 3 in its earliest form, when the Æolic settlers occupied Hisárlik: the evidence of the pottery[628] suggests these to have been the oldest Hellenic remains. (5) Prehistoric city; and (6) a distinct stratum of ruins also prehistoric. To these Dr. Schliemann adds (7) the earliest prehistoric buildings founded on the floor-rock fifty-two feet below the surface and fifty-nine above the present level of the plain.

Finally, Mr. W. W. Goodwin[629] comes to the ‘ultimate conclusion’ about Hisárlik, that it shows only two important settlements. The first is the large prehistoric city extending over the hill and plateau. The second is the historic Ilium in its three phases of primitive Æolic occupation of the Acropolis, the Macedonian city, and the Roman Ilium.

The immediate neighbours of Troy were the Lydians, whom history makes the forefathers of the ancient Etruscans.[630] Herodotus (i. 94) tells the tale of Tyrrhenus and his emigration, which, however, differs from the account of Xanthus Lydius preserved by Nicolaus of Damascus. In the ‘Iliad’ (ii. 864), the Lydians appear only as Mæonians. They were a people of Iranian speech, to judge from such words as καν (canis, kyon, svan, &c., a dog), and ‘Sardis’ from ‘Sarat’ or ‘Sard,’ in old Persian Thrade and in modern Persian Sál = a year. Apparently their language had affinities with the Etruscan and Latin; for instance, Myrsilus, son of Myrsus, the Græco-Lydian name of Candaules (Herod. i. 7), has been compared with Larthial-i-sa; and Servilius from Servius, the l denoting son (filius), shows the same peculiarity. The Lydians were a civilised people who first coined gold (Herod. i. 94) and stamped silver (ibid.);[631] their name will ever be connected with music. With them twelve was a sacred number; it formed the perfect Amphictyony of the Ionians, and it survived in the Confederacy of Etruscan cities (Livy, v. 33). Finally, the tomb of Alyattes[632] is apparently a prototype of the Etruscan sepulchres; and the peculiarity of these ‘homes of the dead’ suggests direct derivation from Egypt rather than coincidental resemblance.

Until late years it has been accepted as an historic fact that the old colonisers of Tyrrhenia dwelt for years as conquerors in Lower Egypt. The Tuisa, Tursha, Toersha, and Turisa of the monuments wear a close-fitting calotte with a tall point, whence a long thin tassel falls to the back of the neck, like one of the Cyprus caps and the older style of Moslem Fez.[633] But Brugsch[634] converts the monumental Tursha into Taurians: he wholly discredits the existence of a Pelasgo-Italic confederacy in the days of Mene-Ptah I. and of Ramses III.; and he positively asserts that the Egyptians of the Fourteenth Dynasty knew nothing of Ilium and the Dardanians, Mysians and Lycians, Lydians and Etruscans, Sardinians, Greek Achæans,[635] Siculians, Teucinians, and Oscans.

However that may be, the Etruscans, the acerrimi Tusci of Virgil, were a people of high culture, to whose inventive and progressive genius Rome owed her early steps in arts and arms.[636] A flood of light has been thrown upon this page of proto-historic lore by the extensive excavations of late years in the Emilian country about Bologna, the Felsina or Velsina of Tyrrhenia. My late friend, the learned and lamented Prof. G. G. Bianconi, forwarded to me the accompanying sketch (fig. 202) of an exceptional iron blade found in the ruins of Marzabotto.[637] It is described as follows (p. 3) in a work, printed but not published, by the learned archæologist Count Gozzadini of Bologna, ‘Di ulteriori scoperte nell’ antica necropoli di Marzabotto nel Bolognese’[638]:—

‘Within a cell only thirty centimètres deep, and disposed two mètres distant from one another, lay three skeletons whose heads fronted eastwards. On each was an iron Sword-blade, sixty-two centimètres long by four and a half broad near the tang (spina), and fining off to an olive-leaf point; all have the mid-rib or longitudinal spine. Partly attached by oxidation to one blade is a remnant of the iron scabbard, slightly convex posteriorly and showing in the upper part a rectangular projection, perhaps to carry the hook attached to the balteus. The sheath-front has a mid-rib like the blade, and the wavy mouth is adapted to the Sword-shoulders. On this face only are two buttons (borchie) in high relief, connected by a band (listello). The tang, twelve centimètres long, shows the length of the hilt, which, being made of more perishable material, has altogether disappeared.’

The long narrow rapier-blade with the mid-rib is first seen in the Egyptian bronzes;[639] the step was easy to the harder metal. That the iron form was common in Etruria as its bronze congener at Mycenæ, is proved by the discovery of three in a single tomb; moreover, as has been said, a fourth has been preserved for years in the Marzabotto collection. All are similar in form, which is highly civilised. The number of the blades also suggests that they are of native make, not left by the Boians and the Ligaunians, who, according to the late Prof. Conestabile, may have buried in the Marzabotto cemetery. The date of the latter is somewhat uncertain; but it cannot be much more recent than the burial-ground of Villanova, where Count Gozzadini found an æs rude, and which he dates from the days of Numa, b.c. 700. He is followed by Dr. Schliemann (‘Troy,’ p. 40), and opposed by that learned and practical anthropologist M. Gabrielle de Mortillet (‘Le Signe de la Croix,’ &c. pp. 88–89), who would assign a far earlier epoch.

Count Gozzadini[640] gives a valuable description of a fifth Etruscan Sword lately discovered at the ‘Palazzino’ farm, parish of Ceretolo and commune of Casalecchio, some ten kilomètres south-west of ‘Etruscan Bologna.’ In an isolated tomb, carefully excavated by the proprietor (Marchese Tommaso Boschi), was found a skeleton, the feet fronting southwards. On its left, extending higher than the head, was an iron lance-point,[641] and on the corresponding shoulder a thick armilla of bronze; other objects, including an Etruscan Œnochoe, two knives wholly iron, and a chisel of the same metal, lay scattered about the grave which was not stone-revetted. Close to the right side was an iron Sword in a sheath of the same metal and wanting the heft: the general belief was that the weapon had been buried with the wielder.

Count Gozzadini (pp. 19, 20) describes the Sword as follows: ‘Slightly bi-convex and two-edged, it measures 0·625 mètre from the tang (codolo) to the end of the scabbard; the tang, not including the part forming the grip, was 0·11 mètre. The breadth is 0·47 mètre at the shoulders, narrowing to a point, as is proved by the scabbard diminishing to 0·27 mètre at the end. The handle showed no sign of cross-bars or guard, which would also have been of iron; and it is evident that the haft was of some destructible substance which has wholly disappeared. The probability is that the grip was shaped like those of the preceding Bronze Age—that is, bulging out behind the blade for easier hold. The sheath was somewhat more bi-convex than the Sword; an iron-plate about one millimètre thick, had been turned over horizontally to unite the edges, which, near one of the sides, formed a narrow and gradual line of superposition. This scabbard ended in an ovoid crampet or ferule; and a fragment of plate iron with a short broad hook, like that generally used for attachment to the belt, probably belonged to it.’

Here, then, we have again a perfect rapier. The only question is whether it was Etruscan, or, as supposed by M. G. de Mortillet, Gaulish.[642] Count Gozzadini argues ably to prove the former case.[643] He acknowledges that the invading Boii held the city and country for two centuries (b.c. 358–566), until the Romans expelled them for ever. But he shows that these peoples did not use such fine Swords. When treating of the Kelts (chapter xiii.), I shall show that the long unmanageable slashing Claidab or Spatha of these peoples had nothing in common with the strong, bi-convex, and thoroughly-civilised rapier of Ceretolo.

Other blades like that of Ceretolo—long, narrow, and pointed—have been found in tombs notably Etruscan. Such, for instance, was that of Cære, now in the Gregorian Museum, Rome. In December 1879 two other blades were produced by a necropolis in Valdichiana, between Chiusi and Arezzo, where a long Etruscan inscription was engraved upon the foot of a tazza. Two similar blades are also portrayed in relief and colour upon the stuccoed wall of a Cære tomb. Des Vergers[644] describes them as follows: ‘La frise supérieure est ornée d’Épées longues à deux tranchants, à la lame large et droite avec garde à la poignée, se rapprochant de celle que les Romains désignaient par le nom de spatha. Les unes sont nues, les autres dans le fourreau.’ Four such Swords were also produced at Pietrabbondante in the district of far-famed Isernia, and are preserved in the National Museum of Naples. Signor Campanari discovered in an Etruscan tomb a Sword-hilt in bronze attached to a blade of iron.[645] Finally, the Benacci property near the Certosa of Bologna also yielded an iron blade and iron chisels like those of Ceretolo.

The late learned Prof. Conestabile truly asserts, ‘Des Épées de même forme et de même dimension ont été trouvées dans d’autres localités étrusques, situées dehors la sphère des invasions Gauloises, notamment en Toscane.’ It is certain that such blades have been discovered on both sides of the Alps. As the Romans adopted the Iberic or Spanish blade; so the Gauls may have substituted for their own imperfect arms the weapons taken from the Italians; in fact, we know from history that they did so. Moreover, the Etruscans extended their commerce, not only over Transalpine regions, but to that vast region extending from Switzerland to Denmark, and from Wallachia to England and Ireland.[646] This has been proved by the investigations of many scholars: in Germany by Lindenschmidt, Von Sacken, Virchow, Kenner, Weihold, Von Conhausen, and Genthe; by the Swiss Morlot, De Rougemont, Desor, and De Bonstetten; by the Dane Worsäae; by Gray, Dennis, Hamilton, and Wyllie in England; by the Belgian Schuermans; and by the Italians Gozzadini, Conestabile, Garrucci, and Gamurrini. Desor, when receiving the drawing of an iron Sword with bronze handle discovered at Sion, and declared by Thioly to resemble exactly those of Hallstadt, declared: ‘De pareilles Épées sont évidemment fabriquées à l’étranger et non dans le pays: elles nous conduisent donc vers ce grand commerce Étrusque qui se faisait pendant la première époque de fer, époque sur laquelle on s’est trompé si souvent.’ Livy,[647] in fact, proves the extent of arms-manufactory in Etruria, when he relates that in b.c. 205, at which time the Boiian occupation of Felsina ended, Arezzo alone could furnish Scipio’s fleet in forty-five days with three thousand helmets, as many Scuta and lances of three different kinds.

But the rapier was not the only form of Etruscan Sword. In Hamilton’s ‘Etruscan Antiquities,’[648] a human figure carries a cutting Sword like a ‘hanger,’ wearing the belt at the bottom of the thorax. The Céramique of Etruria supplies copious illustrations of Swords and other weapons; but the art is somewhat mixed, and our safest information must be derived from actual finds.

We are justified by these finds in concluding that the Etruscans of Italy had from their earliest times a rapier which, for a cut-and-thrust weapon, is well-nigh perfect. The blade is long, but not too long; broad enough to be efficient without overweight, and strengthened to the utmost by the mid-rib which forms a shallow arch. In chapter xi. I shall compare the Etrurian Sword with that of Mycenæ; the latter is a marvel of its kind, but it is made of a far inferior metal—bronze.