‘Homer and Hesiod,’ says Herodotus,[715] ‘lived, as I hold, not more than four hundred years before my time.’ This would date them between b.c. 880–830. The contemporaneity of the bards, their cousinship, and even their existence, has been copiously doubted: some place Hesiod before, others two hundred or three hundred years after—

and we have come to look upon Homer as one of the Homeridæ, the heros eponymus of the bards who produced the ‘Iliad’ and the ‘Odyssey.’

Assuming, with Dr. Schliemann, the date of the Trojan war at about b.c. 1200,[716] Homer, according to the ‘Father of History,’ would flourish about four centuries and a half after the wars he sang.

‘I wish I could have proved Homer to have been an eye-witness of the Trojan war. Alas, I cannot do it! At his time swords were of universal use, and iron was known, whereas they were totally unknown at Troy.[717] Besides, the civilisation he describes is later by centuries than that which I have brought to light in the excavations. Homer gives us the legend of Ilium’s tragic fate as it was handed down to him by preceding bards, clothing the traditional facts of the war and destruction of Troy in the garb of his own day.’[718]

Metallurgically speaking, the sacred Bards and Heroes of Hellas, whose works formed the Holy Writ of Greece,[719] lived at the height of the Copper and in the beginning of the Iron Ages. Metal, not yet cast (χωνευτόν), would be worked in primitive fashion with the hammer (σφῦρα = σφυρήλατον),[720] and there were two manners of hammer-work, the Holosphyraton, in solid mass, and the Sphyraton or plate-work. Casting and soldering were invented (for the Greeks), according to Pausanias[721] and Pliny,[722] shortly after Homer’s day by the Samians Rhœcus and Theodorus. The latter, who lived between b.c. 800 and 700, may have introduced core-casting, so well known to Egypt and Assyria. The joints would be united by the normal mechanical means,[723] and the ornamental house-plates would be attached to the walls and floors with nails and studs. The idea of the firmament being a copper dome vault is known to Pindar as well as to the ‘Iliad’ and the ‘Odyssey.’[724] Tartarus, below Hades,[725] had a similar threshold, and Atlas in Euripides had copper shoulders.[726]

Ornamentation (δαιδάλλειν) was applied with gravers, burins, and similar instruments; to domestic implements (cups and goblets, craters or bowls, cauldrons and tripods); to sacred vases for the temple; and to trumpets,[727] arms, and armour. Besides the brazier (χαλκεὺς) we find the gold caster (χρυσοχοός) who gilds the bull’s horns.[728]

The Homeric bards[729] and Hesiod are well acquainted with iron (σίδηρος),[730] and with steel in its various forms—Cyanus, Adámas, and Chalyps. The former mentions seven metals, the Haft-Júsh (‘seven boilings’), which he, like the Persians, had learned from Egypt. Quenching in water, or tempering, was well known to the ‘Odyssey,’ as we learn from the sputtering of Polyphemus’ eye[731]:—

And he would, doubtless, know that steel is softened by simple exposure to gradual heating. Síderos is common wrought iron; so we find σιδήρεον for the Iron Age[733] and σίδηρος πολιός,[734] which should be translated, not ‘hoary,’ but ‘iron-grey.’ The ‘black’ (dark-blue) ‘Cyanus’ (κύανος) mentioned by the ‘Iliad,’[735] would be a fusible or artificial steel made to imitate the true blue-stone or lazulite (Theophrastus, 55).[736] The adamas (ἀδάμας) of Hesiod,[737] who specifies the iron of the Cretan Idæi Dactyli, would be a white and tempered metal; while χάλυψ (steel in general) either named or was named by the well-known Chalybes. That the harder substance was not rare, we see by the injunction,[738] ‘Do not, at a festive banquet of the gods, pare from the five-pointed branch (hand) with bright steel, the dry from the fresh’: i.e. don’t cut your nails at dinner. So at the Battle of the Ships,[739] Homer studs a great sea-fighting Xyston (pole), twenty-two cubits long, with spikes of iron; and elsewhere speaks of a ‘cyanus-footed table.’[740]

Yet copper was the metal for arms and armour. While the shield of Hercules was made of alabaster (not ‘gypsum’), ivory, elektron (the mixed metal) and (pure) gold, the hero is armed with a ‘short spear tipped with gleaming copper’;[741] and he fastens around his shoulders a ‘Sword, the averter of destruction,’ which the context suggests to be of the same material. The ‘fair-haired Danaë’s son, equestrian Perseus,’[742] bears a Sword of copper with iron sheath hanging by a felt-thong (μελάνδετον ἄορ).[743] The seven-hide shield of Ajax[744] was χάλκεος, of copper—not ‘brass-bound’ as Lord Derby has it. The lambs’ throats are cut with the ‘cruel copper’ (χαλκός),[745] and Diomede pursues Venus with the same weapon.[746] Hephaistos makes for Achilles a shield of gold and silver, copper and tin;[747] and canny Diomede’s armour[748] is of copper, which he changes for gold, ‘the value of a hundred beeves for the value of nine.’

In the ‘Iliad’ close-handed combat succeeds to missile-using. As Strabo remarks,[749] Homer makes his warriors begin their duellos by weapon-throwing and then take to their Swords. But the latter is the weapon, rivalled only by the hand-spear. Hence the Egyptian-taught Argives are insulted as arrow-throwers;[750] and Diomede reviles his foe as ‘an archer and woman’s man.’[751] The taunts are still known to savage tribes of modern day.

The Homeric Sword has five names. The first is Chalcos (copper, and perhaps base metal), used like the Latin ferrum. The second is Xiphos, a word still generic in Romaic poetry and prose; the diminutive being Xiphidion. The third is Phásganon, pronounced Phásghanon,[752] and the fourth is Aor. Thrace,[753] a famous manufactory of art-works even in early ages, produced the best and largest of these blades; we find a Thracian Xiphos, possibly of steel, ‘beautiful and long,’ in the hands of the Trojan prince Helenos;[754] and Achilles at the funeral games offers as a prize a Thracian Phásganon, fair and silver-studded.[755] This hero[756] was drawing his mighty Xiphos[757] from the sheath (κολεός, culeus, vagina, scabbard) to assault Agamemnon, when at Athene’s instance, ‘still holding his heavy hand upon the silver hilt, he thrust back the great Sword into the scabbard.’ The Xiphos with silver studs or bosses occurs in sundry places,[758] and one, with a gold hilt and a silver scabbard fitted with golden rings, belongs to Agamemnon. Dr. Schliemann explains the epithet Πάμφαινον[759] by the line of gold bosses lying near one of the Swords; they were broader than the blade and covered the whole available space along the sheath. Thus the Homerid’s Helos (ἥλος), usually rendered ‘stud’ or ‘nail,’ was applied to the bosses, or buttons, that break the mid-rib or that stud the blade near the handle.[760] Paris slings on a copper silver-studded Xiphos.[761] Menelaus, with the same weapon, strikes off his enemy’s Phalos—the helmet-ridge bearing the Lóphos-tube which confines the Hippouris or horse-tail crest. Patroclus, when arming himself,[762] hangs from his shoulders the silver-studded Xiphos of copper (ξίφον ἀργυρόηλον, χάλκεον); and Achilles has a large-hilted Xiphos.[763] Peneleos and Lycon,[764] having missed each other with the spear, ran on with the Xiphos, which is here again called Phásganon; but Lycon’s weapon broke at the hilt (καυλός = caulis), and the Xiphos of Peneleos ‘entered, and only the skin retained it; the head hung down and the limbs were relaxed.’ On the shield of Achilles[765] Hephaistos[766] figures youths wearing the golden Xiphos slung from silver belts.

Opposed to the Xiphos, a straight ‘rapier blade,’ as we shall presently see, was the φάσγανον or dirk, probably a throwing-weapon like the Scax and Scramasax. The two are often confounded in the dictionaries. Phásganon is supposed to be quasi Σφάγανον, a euphonic transposition, like the verb φασγάνειν (to slay with the Sword). The root is evidently Σφαγ, which appears in σφάγη (slaughter) and in σφάγειν (to slay): there is also a form φάσλανον for σφάλανον. This is a two-edged leaf-shaped blade (φάσγανον ἄμφηκες):[767] Thrasymedes gives one to Diomede, and with it Rhesus is slaughtered in his sleep. The word frequently occurs: black-hilted Phásgana, with massive handles, are mentioned,[768] and the common Phásganon is found in ‘Odys.’ xi. 48; in Pindar (N, 1. 80), and in the Tragedians. In another passage,[769] however, it becomes a large (μέγα) Phásganon.

The fourth term is ἄορ,[770] usually set down, like the English ‘brand,’ as poetical; it is not used in Romaic and the Neo-Greek dictionaries ignore it. The Aor seems to mean a broad, stout, strong blade. With the sharp Aor (ἄορ ὀξὺ) drawn from his thigh, Ulysses digs the furrow one cubit wide,[771] and Hector cuts in two the ashen spear of Ajax.[772] Automedon draws a long Aor.[773] This, too, is the weapon of earth-shaking Neptune, the ‘dreadful tapering Sword’ (τανύηκες ἄορ),[774] ‘thunder-bolt-like, wherewith it is not possible to engage in fatal fight, for the fear of it restrains mankind.’[775] Phœbus Apollo has a golden Aor (χρυσάωρ).[776] Here we see the vague meaning of the poetic word, like our ‘hanger,’ for it now means the god’s golden bow and quiver carried on the shoulder.

Homer’s fifth is the Μάχαιρα, hung by a single belt close to the Sword-sheath, and used for sacrifices and similar uses. It afterwards became a favourite with the Lacedæmonians; it was then a curved blade, as opposed to the Xiphos or uncurved. Again, in Plutarch and other writers, the Machæra seems to mean—like Spatha—a long straight blade. Homer does not mention the κοπὶς, but Euripides uses it[777] in conjunction with Machæra.

We must not expect to see the Sword so frequently drawn in the ‘Odyssey,’ which, pace Mr. Sayce, appears later than the ‘Iliad.’ We note in it more character and less movement; more unity and less digression, and, finally, less fighting and more amenity and civilisation. But ‘Othyssefs,’ the ‘man with whom many were wroth,’ has been a soldier, and he does not forget his old trade. Besides, commerce was still armed barter, and voyaging was enlivened by piracy. Copper, or base metal, continues to be the basis of metallurgy, and the hero owns it in quantities, besides gold, silver, and electrum. Euryalus tells Alcinous that he will appease the guest (Ulysses) with an all-copper brand (ἄορ παγχάλκεον), whose hilt (κώπη) is silver, and whose scabbard is of newly sawn ivory.[778] The suitors would slay Telemachus with the sharp copper.[779] In the final struggle, the catastrophe of the poem, Eurymachus, drawing his sharp Sword of copper, calls upon his friends to do the same, and to shield themselves with the tables against the fast-flying shafts. In the ‘Frogs and Mice,’ the spear is a good long needle; the ‘all-copper work of Mars.’[780]

Wrought iron is prominent in the ‘Odyssey’ as in the ‘Iliad.’ Athene-Mentes[781] sails over the dark sea to Temesa (Temessus) for copper, and also brings back shining iron (αἴθωνα σίδηρον). Menelaus does the same.[782] The ‘cruel iron’ balances the ‘cruel copper.’[783] The ‘long-pointed iron,’ so fatal to the Trojans, is apparently the spear, which began the duels. Prudent Penelope places the bow and the grey iron (πολιόν τε σίδηρον) ready for the suitors;[784] and the Palace contains store of wrought iron (πολύκμητος σίδηρος).[785] The axe (πέλεκυς), sharpened on both sides,[786] is of copper; but the hatchets, through whose rings or handle-holes (στειλειὴ) the copper-tipped arrows must be shot, are of iron.[787] ‘Iron,’ we are told, ‘of itself draws on a man’[788] (Tacit. ‘Hist.’ i. 80), a sentiment repeated elsewhere in the same words.[789] And the Sword is alluded to in more than one place without the material being specified.[790]

In the ‘Hymn to Hermes,’[791] Mercury the god ‘vivisects’ the mountain tortoise with a scalpel of grey iron (γλυφάνῳ πολιοῖο σίδηρου). The Glyphanus was a carving-tool, a chisel, or a knife for reed-pens.

The dispute whether the so-called Homeric poems were written or were orally preserved still awaits sentence. We twice find the word γράφειν, but its primary meaning is ‘to mark,’ ‘to cut,’ and, lastly, ‘to write.’ Thus Ajax,[792] when inscribing (ἐπιγράψας) the lot, might simply have scraped upon it ‘Ajax his mark.’ Yet there is nothing against writing, and there is much in its favour. For instance—

‘Having on tablet writ’ can mean nothing else. Pliny[794] accepts this writing given to Bellerophon on codicilli or tablets.[795] Horace, who was not only a great poet, but a masterful genius, mentions writing in Homer’s day, and makes the early inscriptions laws cut into wood (leges incidere ligno). Herodotus[796] tells us that he himself saw Cadmeian (that is, old Phœnician) characters; and the tradition is that Danaus introduced letters from Egypt, which, I repeat, produced the one alphabet the world knows. Dr. Schliemann (‘Troy,’ Appendix by the Editor) found at seven and a half mètres (twenty-five feet) below the surface of the so-called Homeric Troy, many short inscriptions in ‘ancient Cypriote characters,’ and as many Greek epigraphs were discovered at Mycenæ. Evidently the ‘Iliad’ and the ‘Odyssey’ might have been cut in rude Phœnician characters upon wooden tablets or scratched on plates of lead. Professor Paley would date the literary Homer from b.c. 400; but that is a different phase of the subject.

Herodotus is the outcome of Homer, or, if you please, of the Homerids and of Æschylus. The work of this prose rhapsodist, besides being a history, a logography, a record of travel, and a study of ethnology and antiquity, is at once an Epic and a Drama. It is epic in the heroic and romantic tone; in the unity of action, a mighty invasion-campaign; and in the frequent digressions which aid, if they retard, the one primary object. It is a tragedy in the scenic displays (the review of Xerxes, for instance), in the action of Destiny, the circle of Necessity, the Nemesiac hypothesis, and the jealousy of the gods (Deus ultor); while the catastrophe is represented in ‘Calliope’ by the destruction of the Persian host, the home-return of the victors, and the lurid scenes at the close. It ends with an epigram, a kind of Vos plaudite: ‘The Persians ... chose rather to dwell in a churlish land and exercise lordship, than to plough the plains and be slaves of other men’—a sentiment which would ‘bring down the house’ in the Highlands. All is written with a distinct purpose, and the sensible chronology is derived from Egypt. There is something poetical, too, in the enormous numbers. The magnificent-impossible host of five millions two hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred and twenty men,[797] and the one thousand three hundred and twenty-seven triremes to be defeated and destroyed by a handful of nine thousand Greeks and three hundred and seventy-eight ships, is highly imaginative. The philosophic and sceptical modern mind will hardly be satisfied till the details are confirmed by the contemporary evidence of inscriptions, for instance, the Behistun, which is a running commentary upon ‘Thalia.’ Hellas ever was, and is, and will be, by virtue of her mighty intellect and her preponderating imagination, ‘Græcia mendax.’ Eastern history tells us nothing about the marvellous Persian invasion. We may fairly believe that there was a great movement headed by some powerful Satrap,[798] who determined to crush the wasp’s nest to the West; but we can go no farther. It is simply incredible that the Great King, who at the time was Lord Paramount of the civilised world, should lead to so little purpose millions of warriors—men, the flower of Asia, whose portraiture is the most favourable of any we possess, and whom the Father owns to have been not a whit inferior in prowess to the Greeks.[799] And for this view I duly apologise to ‘Herodotus and his shade.’

The poet-historian gives an interesting description of the Sword amongst the Scythians whom the Greeks and Persians call Sacæ (Shakas) or Nomades.[800] To judge from Hindú legend—for instance, that of Shak-ari, ‘foe to the Shakas,’ a title of the historical Vikramáditya (a.d. 79)—the Sacæ were ‘Turanians’—Mongols or Tartars. When he makes them worship Ares-Mars, he probably derives the idea from their adoring the emblem of war, an iron dirk (ἀκινάκης σιδήρεος).[801] ‘A blade of antique iron,’ he tells us, ‘is placed on the summit of every such mound (a flat-topped pile of brushwood three furlongs square), and serves as the image of Mars; yearly sacrifices are made to it.’ The victims were cattle, horses, and one per cent. of war-prisoners. ‘Libations of wine are first poured upon their heads, after which they are slaughtered over a vase, and the vessel is then carried up to the top of the pile and the blood poured upon the Akinákes.[802] In the Scythian graves of Russian Cimmeria (the Crimea) and of Tartary, the Swords are mostly bronze. Dr. M‘Pherson, however, found one of iron (1839) in the great tomb of Kertch, the old Milesian Panticapæum, so called from its river, Anticapes;[803] it was a short dagger-like thrusting blade, resembling the old Persian, with mid-rib and curved handle. In the days of Attila, a Sword, supposed to be one of the ancient Scythian weapons alluded to by the Greek, was accidentally found, and was made an object of worship.[804] Janghíz (Genghis) Khan when raised to the throne repeated this sacrificial observance, which, however, can scarcely be called a ‘Mongolic custom.’[805] It seems common to the Sauromatæ (northern Medes and Slavs), the Alans, the Huns, and the tribes that wandered over the Steppes.

The Scythians also swore by the emblem of Mars. ‘Their oaths,’ says Herodotus,[806] ‘are accompanied by the following ceremonies. Into a large earthen bowl (κύλιξ) pouring wine, they mingle with it blood of the parties to the oath, who wound themselves superficially with a knife or an awl; then they dip into the bowl an Akinákes, and arrows, and a battle-axe (sagaris), and a javelin (akontion), all the while repeating manifold prayers. Lastly, the two contracting parties drink each a draught from the bowl, as do also the most worthy of their followers.’[807] In the ‘Anabasis,’[808] the Greeks swear by dipping a Sword, and the barbarians a lance, into the victim’s blood.

So far these ancient authors: we must now see how they are confirmed by modern authorities. Dr. Schliemann’s investigations at Mycenæ[809] are the more interesting, as the finds are supposed by him to be synchronous with those of Burnt Troy; and they enable us to compare the former in her prosperity with the latter in her exhaustion. The energetic explorer doughtily supports the use of copper for arms and utensils; and, with whole truth, makes it the staple metal of the heroic ages. As he found no tin at Mycenæ or in the great layer of copper scoriæ at Hisárlik (Troy), while ‘Kassiteros’ is repeatedly mentioned by Homer, he contends that the bronze of the Greek city was imported, and therefore rare and expensive. Unfortunately he did not analyse the thin copper wire which carried the necklace-beads.

It is a new sensation to descend with Dr. Schliemann into the old Mycenian tombs where sixteen or seventeen corpses had been simultaneously interred (?). Sepulchre No. I, attributed to Agamemnon and his two heralds,[810] produced a variety of interesting articles, especially the golden shoulder-belt (τελαμών) that decorated the mummy.[811] My photograph shows it attached to a fragmentary two-edged Sword. Between the middle and the southern body lay a heap of broken bronze blades, which may have represented sixty whole Swords: some bore traces of gilding, and several had gold pins at the handle. Two blades lay to the right of the body, and their ornamentation strikingly resembled the description in the ‘Iliad.’[812] The handle of the larger Sword (No. 460) is of bronze, thickly plated with intaglio’d gold; and a broad plate of the same metal, similarly worked, passes round the shoulders of the Sword. The wooden scabbard must have been adorned with golden studs and a long broad plate (fig. 244), shaped somewhat like a man, with a ring issuing from the neck. The other Sword in a similar style of art seems to have been even richer. Dr. Schliemann[813] considers No. 463 (fig. 245) a remarkable battle-axe, of which fourteen were found in the ‘Trojan treasure.’[814] It is evidently a Sword-blade, and the same may be said of Nos. 464, 465 (fig. 244).

At the distance of hardly more than one foot to the right of the mummy-body were found eleven bronze Swords; two were tolerably preserved, and both were of unusual size—two feet ten inches and three feet two inches. The golden plate of the wooden Sword-handle is given in p. 305. These weapons, also, had gold plates attached to the pommels by twelve pins of the same metal with large globular heads. The body at the south end of Sepulchre I. was provided with fifteen bronze Swords, of which ten had been placed at its feet. As a rule, the wooden sheaths had mouldered away, but the gold studs or bosses, which adorned them like the binding of a book, lay along the remains of the warriors who had wielded them. The whetstone (Sepulchre I.) was of very fine sandstone.

The fourth Sepulchre was almost as interesting in its supply of Swords. Excavating from east to west, the explorer came upon a heap of more than twenty bronze blades, most of them with remnants of wooden scabbards and handles. The flat, round pieces of wood, and the small shield-like or button-like disks of gold with intaglio-work, seemed to have been glued in unbroken series along both sides of the sheath; and, the largest being at the broad end with a gradual diminishing in size, they determined the width. The wooden hilts bore similar plates of intaglio’d gold; the remaining space had been studded with gold pins, and gold nails were fixed in the large pommels of wood or alabaster. The quantity of fine gold-dust left no doubt that the handles and scabbards had been gilt. The smith evidently did not possess the knowledge of gilding silver: he first plated the metal with copper and then the copper with gold. The golden cylinder (No. 366), adorned at both ends with a broad border of wave-lines, and the field filled with interwoven spirals, all intaglio-work, probably belonged to a heft of wood. Along the middle runs a row of pin-holes; there are four flat pin-heads, and in the centre is the head of a larger stud by which it is attached.

Sepulchre IV. also yielded forty-six bronze Swords, more or less fragmentary. Of these ten were short and single-edged: their solid metal measured when entire from two to two feet three inches in length. The handles are too thick for mounting in wood, and the tangs end in rings for suspension to the ‘Telamon’ or to the girdle (ζώνη, ζωστήρ). The chopper-shaped blade (fig. 246), evidently of Egyptian derivation, is broken at the point, which may incline either way, probably inwards. The other (fig. 246) is the normal leaf-shape. Dr. Schliemann believes[815] that they explain the Homeric φάσγανον, which he makes ‘perfectly synonymous with Xiphos and Aor.’ Here I venture to differ with him, holding the Phásganon probably to have been the short Egyptian Sword, used like the boomerang-blade for throwing as well as cutting.

The double-edged weapon with the long narrow tube (αὐλός) was judged to be a dagger-knife, the hollow being intended to save weight; to me it appears a lance-head, and the attached ring seems to prove its use (fig. 247). The fragmentary two-edged blade of bronze (a fig. 249) shows a mid-rib broken by serrations intended either for ornament or for jagging the wound: the same toothings appear in another weapon (b fig. 249), which is supposed to be a dagger. No. 446 is a short two-edged blade showing at the shoulders, on either side, four large flat head-pins of gold. A gold plate extends all along the middle part of the blade on both sides, and fragments of the wooden sheath are visible in the middle as well as at the end.

We now come to the most startling part of the collection. It proves indubitably, if Dr. Schliemann’s conclusions be correct, and if the blades[816] do not belong, as they may do, to a later date, that the highest form of Sword, which became the fashion during our sixteenth century, was known in b.c. 1200. It is a curious comment upon the fact, how soon perfection was reached in the ‘White Arm,’ compared with the slow progress of firearms, which had to await the invention of the self-igniting cartridge. Plate No. 445 (p. 281) gives a two-edged blade with a mid-rib, in fact the rapier, which can be used only for the point. It measures two feet seven inches (a fig. 250), and at the top are attached remnants of its wooden scabbard. The lower end of its neighbour (b fig. 250) is adorned with three flat golden pin-heads on either face. No. 448, measuring two feet ten inches long, is very well preserved; by its side lies its alabaster pommel (fig. 249). No. 449 has retained part of its heft, which is gold-plated and attached by gold pins. Vertical lines of intaglio work run along the blade and give it a truly beautiful aspect.

Dr. Schliemann (p. 283) notices the length, in some cases exceeding three feet, compared with the narrowness of these grand blades. He adds, ‘So far as I know, Swords of this shape have never been found before.’ I would refer him to the Villanova (Etruscan) blade described in chapter viii.

The fourth Sepulchre also yielded three shoulder-belts of gold. No. 354 measures four feet one and a half inch long by one and seven-eighths inch in width (fig. 241). On either side of the band is a narrow edging made by turning down the gold plate: the field is occupied by a row of rosettes, six oval petals surrounding a central disk and the whole encircled by dots or points. At one end are two apertures in the shape of hour-glasses; these served to attach the clasp to the other extremity, as is shown by the small hole and two cuts (p. 308). The second ‘Telamon,’ a plain band four feet six inches long by two to two and one-third inches broad, was, the discoverer suggests, possibly made for the funeral: it is too thin and fragile for general wear. To some blades were still attached particles of well-woven linen, which the discoverer considers to have been sheaths (p. 283). The natives of India and of other hot-damp regions retain, I have said, the custom of bandaging their blades with greased rags. We are also shown (p. 304) a gold tassel probably suspended to a belt of embroidered work.