The Book of the Sword

the ‘naki-ka-kausti’ (kushti). The nude combatants were armed with ‘tiger’s-claws’ of horn; formerly, when these were of steel, the death of one of the athletes was unavoidable....

Most works on Arms and Armour, when treating of Rome, describe the weapons of her European neighbours ‘upon whom she sharpened the sword of her valour as on a whetstone.’[936] T...

Semitisation of the Persian Sitáreh, a star (_i.e._ Venus); in Byblos, Dionæa and Dione; in other parts of Syria, Derceto, Atergatis (Ta-ur-t, Thoueris), and Nani, the latter st...

Centuries before the Hebrews had left the Delta, a great empire bounded Nile-land on the Asiatic side, reflecting Egypt as the New World reflects the Old; in fact what Kemi was...

‘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 t...

The present state of our history shows us nothing anterior to Egypt in the civilisation of Language, of Literature, of Science, Art and Arms. We must now modify and modernise th...

a bird’s-eye view is given by the List of Contents. The first seven are formally and chronologically arranged. Thus we have the Origin of Weapons (Chapter I.) showing that while...

I will begin by noticing that the present age has settled a question which caused much debate, and which puzzled Grote (ii. 142) and a host of others half a century ago, before...

We now come to the King of Metals that ‘breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things’; the only ore friendly as well as fatal to the human form; the most useful and the most deadl...

The use of copper, I have said, would be essentially transitional; and the discovery of smelting one kind of metal would lead immediately to that of others and to their commixtu...

The _rôle_ played by pagan Rome on the stage of history was twofold—that of conqueror and that of regulator. In obeying man’s acquisitive instinct she was compelled to perfect h...

The word—a word which, strange to say, has no equivalent in French—is the Scandinavian Svärd (Icel. Sverð); the Danish Sværd; the Anglo-Saxon Sweord and Suerd; the Old German Sv...

Although Professor Lepsius maintained and proved that the earliest Babylonian civilisation was imported from Egypt, Biblical leanings, and the fatal practice of reading myths an...

The ‘Age of Wood’ began early, lasted long, and ended late. As the practice of savages shows, the spear was originally a pointed stick hardened in the fire; and arrows, the dimi...

Man’s civilisation began with Fire—how to light it and how to keep it lit. Before he had taken this step, our primal ancestor (or ancestors) evidently led the life of the lower...

What, then, was Man’s first weapon? He was born speechless and helpless, inferior to the beasts of the field. He grew up armed, but badly armed. His muscles may have been strong...

The people of Madagascar worked iron,[403] but their name of the metal is Malayan; hence Mr. Crawford traced the art back to Malacca. Yet the Malay did not extend it far eastwar...

civilisation of the Northern Barbarians and with the decline of Rome under Constantine (A.D. 313–324), who combined Christianity with Mithraism; when the world-capital was trans...

declining, revives once more in our day. This portion embraces descriptions of the modern blade, notices of collections, public and private, notes on manufactures; and, lastly,...

It begins with the very beginning, in prehistoric times and amongst proto-historic peoples; and it ends with the full growth of the Sword at the epoch of the early Roman Empire.