[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.’
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.).
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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).
[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.
[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).
[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.
[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).
[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.
[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.