[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.’

[935] This is materialism pure and simple; but all the teaching of modern science points to the material. The mysterious ‘life’ is no longer ‘vital power’; it simply represents the sum total of the energies and protoplasm. ‘Life is a property of protoplasm or bioplasm, and is the latest product of thought and research.’ And I may add that Consciousness, like Will, is a property of life in certain of its forms; a state and condition of cerebral and other atoms; the mere consequence of hitherto unappreciated antecedents.
[936] Florus, ii. 3.
[937] Bronze, &c. p. 297. From Aarbög. f. Nord. Oldk. 1879, pl. i.
[938] Bronze, &c., p. 298. From Bastian and A. Voss, Die Bronze-Schwerter des K. Mus. zu Berlin, 1878, p. 56.
[939] Bronze, &c., p. 299, from Von Sacken and Lindeschmit’s Alterthümer. The first finds by Herr Namsauer in 1846–64 were 6,000 articles from 993 graves.
[940] I have already noticed the copper Ensis and coppered shield attributed by Virgil (Æn. viii. 74) to the people of Abella, an Italian district under Turnus.
[941] Bronze, &c., p. 277. The author also notices the small handles of bronze Swords, ‘a fact which seems to prove that the men who used these swords were but of moderate stature’ (Prehistoric Times, p. 22). He denies their being very small, and he justly believes that the expanding part of the hilt was intended to be within the grasp of the hand. I have already explained that the hand was purposely confined in order to give more momentum to the cut.
[942] Bronze, &c., p. 297; taken from Gastaldi, Pellegrini and Gozzadini. The author remarks (p. 287) that some of the bronze daggers from Italy seem also to have had their hilts cast upon the blades in which the rivets were already fixed. This is not unfrequent with the Sword, and the object seems mere imitation; like the Hauranic stone-doors, panelled as if to pass for wood.
[943] Bronze, &c., p. 283, we find that the British Museum contains a specimen. Catalog. Italy, p. 28.
[944] Bronze, &c., ibid., quoting from Numm. Vet. Ital. Descript., pl. xii.
[945] See chap. vi.
[946] De Garrul.
[947] De Ferro, i. 195.
[948] Lib. xliv. 3. Martial also alludes (i. 49; iii. 12, &c.) to the metallic wealth of his native province.
[949] Pliny (xxxi. 4, 41) also notices the Salo or River Bilbilis (Xalon); and the Celtiberian town of the same name, now Bombola, the birthplace of the poet Martial, is near Calatayud (Kala’at el-Yahúd = Jew’s Fort), or Job’s Castle. Of the Chalybes I have already spoken.
[950] Roman Archæology, by Angelo Maio.
[951] The words Κέλται, Γαλάται, Γάλλο (meaning Armati, pugnaces, Kämpfer, fighters), evidently derive not from Coille, a word, but from the old word Gal (battle), Gala (arms). The name suited their natures; they were never at peace, and their bravery was proverbial: the Greeks called it Κελτικὸν θράσος = Keltic daring.
[952] Cladibas or Cladias = gladius. I have noticed the shape when speaking of the Hallstadt finds.
[953] Polyænus, Strategemata; Dion. Halicar. xiv. chap. 13.
[954] Plutarch (De Cam. cap. xxvii.) also arms the Gauls, when attacking the Capitol, with the Kopis. ‘The first to oppose them was Manlius.... Meeting two enemies together, he parried the cut of one who raised a Kopis (κοπίδα) by hacking off his right hand with a Gladius’ (ξίφος). I presume that ‘Kopis’ is here used for the pugio, dirk, or shorter sword. Borghesi Œuvres Complètes, vol. ii. pp. 337–387, says: ‘In use and form, in grip and in breadth of blade, the Kopis much resembles our Sciabla, (Sabre).’ But its comparison with the falx and pruning hook and a medal of Pub. Carisius suggest a substantial difference: while the broadsword is edged on the convex side, the Kopis had a sharpened concave. Count Gozzadini, like General A. Pitt-Rivers, compares the Kopis with the Khanjar or Yataghan, and quotes Xenophon (Cyrop. ii. 1, 9; vi. 2, 10) to prove that it was peculiar to Orientals. I have traced the word to the Egyptian Khopsh or Khepsh, and repeat my belief that it is the old Nilotic sickle-blade with a flattened curve. But, as might be expected in the case of so old a word, the weapon to which it was applied may have greatly varied in size and shape.
[955] Brennus is evidently a congener of the Welsh brenhin (the king). The Senones have left their name in Illyrian Segna, once a nest of pirates and corsairs, south of Fiume the Beautiful. I shall notice them in a future page.
[956] Livy, xxii. 46.
[957] Bell. Gall. iii. 13; vii. 22.
[958] Lib. x. cap. 32.
[959] Lib. v. cap. 30.
[960] See chapters viii. and xii. Here the word is evidently applied generically to a straight two-edged broadsword, about 1 mètre long. In the Middle Ages the weapon gave rise to many curious varieties, as the Spatha pennata and the Spatha in fuste.
[961] According to Vegetius (ii. 15) the Saunion was the light javelin of the Samnites, with a shaft 3½ feet long, and an iron head measuring 5 inches. Thus it would resemble the Roman pilum. But Diodorus evidently means another and a heavier weapon which could hardly be thrown. Meyrick and Jähns (p. 390) do not solve the difficulty.
[962] Lib. iv. 4, § 3.
[963] De Bell. Pers.
[964] The Northumberland Stone in Montfaucon (vol. iv. part 1, p. 37) shows a Gaul wearing sword and dagger on either side.
[965] In Athenæus, lib. xiv., the celebrated philosopher called the Apamæan or the Rhodian, a contemporary of Pompey and Cicero, left, amongst other works, one called Τέχνη τακτικὴ (de Acie instruenda).
[966] Lib. vii. cap. 10. It is evident that the Duello did not, as many authors suppose, arise with the Kelts. All we can say is that they may have originated in Europe the sentiment called pundonor and the practice of defending it with the armed hand. The idea was unknown to the classics; and, with the exception, perhaps, of the Arabs, it is still ignored by the civilised Orientals of our day, especially by the Moslems.
[967] Lib. ii. caps. 28, 30, and 33.
[968] Simply meaning Spearmen. Gaisate = hastatus from Gaisa (gæsum), the Irish gai, any spear. Isidore (Gloss.) translates ‘Gessum’ by ‘hasta vel jaculum Gallicè, βολίς.’ The word survives in the French guisarme, gisarme, &c. The Gæsum probably had a kind of handle and a defence for the hand.
[969] Lib. xxii. cap. 46.
[970] Lib. xxxviii. 21.
[971] The naked bodies and narrow shields are well shown in the battle-scene on the Triumphal Arch of Orange (Jähns, Plate 29).
[972] Borghesi (Tonini’s Rimini, &c., p. 28 and Tables A 3 and B 6) makes one of these gladii a ‘Kopis.’
[973] Lib. v. cap. 30.
[974] The cavalry was organised in the Trimarkisia (three marka, or horses) composed of the ‘honestior’ (afterwards the knight), and the clients (squires). The host that attacked Hellas, under Brennus, had 20,400 horsemen to 752,000 foot.
[975] The pattern is almost universal. Moorcroft found it in the Himalayas, and I bought ‘shepherd’s plaid’ in Unyamwezi, Central Africa.
[976] The first use of tattooing was to harden the skin, a defence against weather. The second (and this we still find throughout Africa) was to distinguish nations, tribes, and families.
[977] ‘Galli bracchas deposuerunt et latum clavum sumpserunt.’ Diodorus Sic. (v. 30) has βράκας; in Romaic βράχι; in Italian braghe, Germ. Brüche. Our word ‘breech-es’ or ‘Breek-s’ is a double plural; ‘breek’ being the plur. of the A. S. broc, a brogue. Aldus and other old writers mistranslate the bracchæ by plaid, or upper garment. Jähns more justly renders sagum by plaid (p. 431).
[978] Livy, xxxviii. 24.
[979] Italy has declared herself Una. But without considering a multitude of origins, one for almost every province, she is peopled in our modern day by two races, contrasting greatly with each other. The Po is the frontier, dividing the Græco-Latin Italians to the south from the Gallic and Frankish Italians (Milanese, Piedmontese, &c.) to the north. The latter, originally Barbari, are the backbone of the modern kingdom: the Southerners are the weak point.
[980] Bell. Gall. vi. 24.
[981] Jähns (in his Plates 27–30) unites ‘Kelten und Germanien, Germanien und Kelten.’
[982] De Mor. Germ., cap. 6.
[983] So we find the god Tyr or Tuisco (regent of Tuesday), the Monthu or Mars of the North, figured in the Runes as a barbed spear ᛏ (resembling the planetary emblem of Mars). He afterwards became the Sword-god. From the Tyr-rune is derived ᛠ Er (= hêru, the sword), or Aer, which resembles the Greek ἄορ, and which Jacob Grimm connects with Ἄρης, æs and Eisen (Jähns, p. 14).