CHAPTER XI.

THE SWORD IN ANCIENT GREECE: HOMER; HESIOD AND HERODOTUS: MYCENÆ.

‘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—

Blind Milesigenes thence Homer called;

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 as when armourers temper in the ford The keen-edg’d poleaxe, or the shining sword, The red-hot metal hisses in the lake, &c.[732]

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 Phásg_h_anon,[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.

[Heading: _THE SWORD IN HOMER._]

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—

Γράψας ἐν πίνακι πτυκτῷ θυμοφθόρα πολλά (σήματα).[793]

‘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.

[Heading: _THE SWORD IN HERODOTUS._]

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.

[Heading: _THE SWORDS OF MYCENÆ._]

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.

The first of the tomb-stones found in the Acropolis above the sepulchres (p. 52) shows (very imperfectly) a hunter standing in a one-horse chariot: he grips in his right a long broadsword. The second tomb-stone (p. 81) has a naked warrior, who holds the horse’s head with his right, and raises in his left a double-edged blade (fig. 251): Dr. Schliemann finds the figure ‘full of anguish’ (p. 84); the head is in profile, and the body almost fronts the spectator. The huntsman-charioteer holds in his left a sheathed Sword of the long dagger type, ending in a large globular pommel. Many such articles were found in the tombs, and the author (p. 225) draws attention to the size of the ‘knob’ upon the signet ring. Mostly they were of wood or alabaster (p. 281) with golden nails, and frequently plated with precious metal. I would suggest that the perforated ball of polished rock-crystal (No. 307) found in Sepulchre III., and the large-mouthed article (No. 308) coloured red and white inside, were also Sword-pommels.

The Treasury supplied ‘five unornamental blades of copper or bronze,’ with rings of the same metal. The large Cyclopean house, which the energetic discoverer would identify with the Palace of the Atreidæ, yielded a straight, two-edged, thrusting-blade of bronze: the shoulders were pierced with four holes, and there are as many in the tang for attaching the handle (fig. 252). The heft was of various substances, wood, bone, and ivory, amber, rock-crystal, and alabaster, and it was often plated with metals, especially the most precious. Of the latter, six specimens are given (pp. 270–71), all highly decorated with intaglio work of circles and spirals, rope-bands, and shell-like quaquaversal flutings.

The general opinion that Homer ignored soldering[817] gives unusual interest to a large bronze dagger found in No. III. Sepulchre, six mètres and a half below the surface (p. 164). Two blades are well soldered together in the middle (fig. 253). The same art appears (p. 280) in the attachment of two long narrow plates of thick bronze. Crickets (_cicadæ_) and other ornaments were also found of gold worked in _repoussé_ and composed of two halves soldered together.

The goldsmiths of Mycenæ were true artists. They had work in plenty; Dr. Schliemann estimates the metallic value of his finds at five thousand pounds. An admirable bit of work (p. 251) is the goat standing, like that of Assyria and Istria, with gathered legs upon the top of a pin.[818] Another (No. 365) is the lion-cub, apparently cut and tooled. As in modern India, the circles, spirals, and wave-lines are excellently executed, and so is the gold-plating upon buttons of wood (pp. 258–59). The old Greek city, too, had a peculiar treatment of the whorl, which, combining two and even three—either _dextrorsum_ or _sinistrorsum_—about a common centre, and making the lines of at least two continuous, deserves to be called the ‘Mycenæ spiral.’ This ornament passes from the gold trinkets and the tomb-stones of the Acropolis to the ‘Treasuries’ of much later date.

An intaglio of gold is especially interesting, because it represents a Monomachía or duel. He to the proper right, a tall beardless or shaven warrior, without helmet, and clad only in ‘tights’ and ‘shorts,’ bears the whole weight of his body upon his left leg, extending the right, as in a lunge, and is about to plunge his straight and pointed dagger-blade into the throat of his bearded foe (p. 174). A signet-ring displays a gigantic warrior who has felled one opponent, put to flight a second, and is stabbing a third with a short broad straight blade. The vanquished man attempts to defend himself with a long Xiphos (p. 225). Perhaps the subject may be Theseus clearing out the thieves. A gold button shows a square formed by four sacrificial chopper-knives of Egyptian shape (p. 263, No. 397).

The characteristics of the Sepulchres are the orientation of the remains, the heads lying to the East, and their imperfect cremation. The latter is familiar in Hindú-land, although the people hold the fire-funeral to be a fire-birth, when the vital principle called ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ has been purged of its earthly dross. The regular layers of pebbles, which by ventilating the floor would give draught to the flames, have also been noticed in ancient Etruria.[819] The only _viaticum_ or provisions for the dead were unopened oysters: the rest was probably burnt. The utensils are jugs and vases of terra cotta (plain and painted), copper tripods and cauldrons, urns and kettles, and cups and goblets, the latter one- and two-handed. The ornaments, of gold and electrum, are foil-work and plates upon wood, beads of glass and agate, studs and buttons, crosses and breast-covers, lentoid gems and masks, crowns and diadems. The weapons, all of bronze,[820] are axes and arrows, lances, knives, daggers, and Sword-blades; while gold and alloys are abundant. We may fairly say that iron is absent from the Acropolis of Mycenæ as well as from the Burnt City of the Troad. And there is a remarkable similarity in the pattern and construction of sundry articles, especially the gold tubes with attached spirals.

Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries have been subjected to much adverse criticism.[821] As far as they go, they prove that the warriors of Mycenæ used three varieties of Swords—the Xiphos, the Phásganon, and the Kopis.

[Heading: _THE SWORD IN GREECE._]

The ξίφος of Mycenæ is the long, straight, rapier-shaped, cut-and-thrust (_cæsim et punctim_) blade; its only guard is a cross-bar, which, like the scabbard, is beautifully ornamented. The word Xiphos is still applied in Romaic to a straight Sword opposed to Spati (Σπάτι),[822] the sabre, the broadsword.

The φάσγανον or dirk which Meyrick (Pl. IV. fig. 16), and sometimes perhaps the Ancients, confound with the Xiphos, is a straight blade, mostly leaf-shaped and showing its descent from the spear. It is rarely longer than twenty inches. In Romaic poetry the word is still applied to knives and Sword-daggers like the Yataghan. My idea that the Phásganon was used for throwing does not derive from the classics, but from the similarity of the blade to the Seax and the Scramasax.

The Κοπίς, which Meyrick makes an Argive weapon, and which English translators render simply by ‘Sword,’ has been derived by me from the Egyptian Khopsh, whose ‘inside cutting curve’ it imitates, merely flattening the bend. Writers on hoplology have mostly ignored its origin. They follow Xenophon, who speaks of it as being used by the Persians and Barbarians; and Polybius, who assigns its use to the Persians before the Greeks—apparently an anachronism. They remark that on vases it is the weapon of the Giants, not of the Gods, and that the Amazons wield it against Hercules. Hence Señor Soromenho[823] would assign its origin to the Arabs, and Colonel A. Lane-Fox to the Roman legionaries. The latter authority, indeed, contends that its form is ‘obviously derived from the straight, leaf-shaped, bronze sword, of which it is simply a curved variety.’ Here, I think, he reverses the process. Specimens of the Kopis are rare; one was found in a tomb, said to be Roman, between Madrid and Toledo, and another of the same find is in the British Museum.

The peculiarity of the Kopis is, I have said, its cutting with the inner, not the outer curve, and thus suggesting the use of the point and the ‘drawing cut’ instead of the sheer cut. This peculiarity was inherited from Egypt, and long appeared in Greek blades. It is well shown in the fragment of a bronze Kopis-like broadsword from the collection of Don Giovanni Bolmarcich, the Arciprete of Cherso: the relic was found in the Island of Ossero with an immense variety of bronzes, Greek,[824] Roman, and prehistoric or proto-historic. General Pitt-Rivers has a bronze Sword-blade from Corinth—a very fine specimen. The handle has an =H= section, the pommel measuring two and a quarter inches across, and the grip three and a half inches in length. There is no tang; the blade springs from the shoulders, which are prominent; the length is twenty-seven inches, and the section that of the Toledo rapier. It is, however, slightly leaf-shaped. In the Armeria Real of Turin (section Beaumont to north-west), two Greek blades are shown in a glass case. One is especially interesting. The total length, all being in one piece, is three feet and a half; the blade has a mid-rib; there is a straight simple cross-bar at the shoulders, and the hilt ends in a crutch, like the Hindú antelope-horns and the scroll-hilt of the Danish Swords.

The inside edge has been preserved from days immemorial by the Abyssinian Sword;[825] an exaggerated sickle or diminutive scythe. It reappears in various parts of Africa, as shown by Barth’s Travels (chap. ii. 37 &c.). His ‘Danísko,’ which he translates ‘hand-bill,’ is used by the people of a highly interesting province—‘Adamáwa.’ The general weapon in the neighbourhood is the ‘goliyo’ or bill-hook of the Marghi, and the Njiga of the Baghirmi. It is a heavy and clumsy ‘Khopsh’ of the boomerang type.[826]

The inside edge characterises, to a certain extent, the Albanian yataghan, and the Flissa of the Kabáil (Kabyles); and it is thoroughly well developed in the formidable Korá or Kukkri of the Gurkha or Nepaulese mountaineers, whose edge swells out to a half-moon.

The Mycenæ finds do not enlighten us upon the subject of the Ἄορ and other forms of the Greek Sword. We know nothing of the Thracian Ῥομφαία, the Rumpia of Gellius (x. 25), which the A. V.[827] translates ‘Sword.’ Most writers hold it to be a Thracian lance, like the European ‘partisan;’ and Smith’s ‘Dictionary of Antiquities’ describes it as a long spear resembling the Sarissa, with a Sword-like blade. This comes from Livy (xxxi. 39), who tells us that in woodlands the Macedonian phalanx was ineffectual on account of its _prælongæ hastæ_, and that the Rhomphæa of the Thracians was a hindrance for the same reason. But in modern Romaic usage it denotes the flammberg (_flamberge_), or that form of the wavy blade which the Church places in the hands of the angelic host. It is always carried by ‘Monseigneur Saint Michel, the Archangel, the first knight who in the quarrel of God battled with the Dragon, the old enemy of mankind, and drove him out of heaven.’[828] Mycenæ supplied no specimen of the χελιδὼν (_gladius Chelidonius_), the broad blade with a bifurcated swallow-tailed point. It is mentioned by Isidore (xviii.) and by Origen (chap. vi.); and I have alluded to it in Chapter VII. We are unable to specify the shape of the Athenian Κνήστεις (_Knesteis_) or the Lacedæmonian ξυίναι (_Xyinæ_), which Xenophon calls ξυήλαι (_Xuelæ_). They may have been, to judge from their use, thick cut-and-thrust daggers, in fact _Coupe-Choux._ Nor do we know what kind of blade was carried by the Xystophori (ξυστοφόροι) in addition to the _Xyston_: the latter was either the footman’s spear (δόρυ) or the horseman’s lance; in the ‘Iliad,’ as has been seen, it is a long pole studded with iron nails.

According to history, the Greek infantry Sword was a straight two-edged blade, rather broad, and of equal width from hilt to point, which was of bevelled shape. For cavalry they preferred the sabre or cutting weapon.[829] Iphicrates (B.C. 400), when improving arms and armour, must have found spear and Sword too short, for he ‘doubled the length of the spear and made the Swords also longer’ (Diod. Sic. xv. 144; Corn. Nepos, xi.). Plutarch (in ‘Lycurg.’) tells us that a man in the presence of Agesilaus jeered at the Spartan blade, which measured only fourteen to fifteen inches long, saying that ‘a juggler would think nothing of swallowing it’;[830] whereto the great commander replied, ‘Yet our short Swords can pierce our foes.’ And when a bad workman complained of his tool, the Spartan suggested with dry heroism, ‘You have only to advance a pace.’

Dodwell[831] relates that an iron blade found in a tomb at Athens was two feet five inches long, including its handle of the same metal. Most of our museum specimens, both of bronze and iron, are of fair average dimensions. That of Mayence measures nineteen and a half inches (_a_ fig. 265), and that of the Museum of Artillery thirty-two. The Pella blade in the K. Antiquarium, Berlin, is only twenty-one centimètres, including four for the heft.

The Swords called Gallo-Greek,[832] with bronze blades and sheaths (figs. 263, etc.), are of moderate length—twenty-five inches. Pausanias[833] alludes to perhaps a shorter weapon (ταῖς μαχαίραις τῶν Γαλατῶν). And we are told that when Manlius invaded Galatia he found the Swords were _prælongi gladii_.[834]

The Greek fashion of carrying the Sword apparently varied with the times, and, perhaps, with the length of the weapon: it is easy to draw a dagger from the right, but awkward to unsheathe a full-sized blade. Some writers make the Greeks carry the weapon on the right, and others on the left: Homer seems purposely to leave his description vague, e.g.:—

Ἢ ὅγε φάσγανον ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος (or σπασσάμενος) παρὰ μηροῦ.

Drawing the grided dirk fro’ the sheath which hung by his thigh-side.[835]

The words _parà merou_ are similarly used elsewhere,[836] but which thigh is not specified. Hector’s sharp Sword hangs below his loins both huge and strong, and brandishing it he rushes to his death by Achilles’ spear.[837] The Trojan, too, strikes Ajax,[838] who carried his weapon after Assyrian fashion, ‘where the two belts cross upon his breast, both that of the shield and that of the silver-studded Sword.’ The ‘Parazonium’ dagger, with its metal scabbard, was usually attached to the Sword-belt[839] on the other side. Shaped like an ox-tongue (‘Anelace,’ or _Langue-de-bœuf_), and measuring twelve to sixteen inches long, it was common to Greece and Rome; I have shown its origin in Egypt.

The part played by the Hellenes upon the great stage of the world’s history was their development of civil life—of citizenship. As a nation, they wanted the life-long practice of arms and training for warfare, brought to absolute perfection by the Romans. Their annual games, as shown by the Pindaric Odes, were mostly trials of speed and agility. They had the Bibasis or gymnastic dance, and, to mention no other, the Pyrrhic or Sword-dance, like all ancient and many modern peoples; but these mimicries soon became in the cities mere women’s work. They wore side-arms at home only during the Panathenaic fêtes, where orchestral actions and attitudes were displayed; and they had not those military colonies like the Romans, where every man was a soldier and every soldier was a veteran. Their _gymnasia_ and _palæstræ_ were schools for calisthenics, which the sturdier Italians held in contempt. They were, like the gymnastic-grounds of the Spartan girls, mere hot-beds for growing beauty and good breeders; for attaining the perfection of form duly to be transmitted. This process, indeed, began with the bride, who furnished her nuptial chamber with the finest possible models in painting and statuary. Hence every well-bred citizen at Athens, every ‘gentleman,’ was expected to be handsome. The Beautiful, the Good, and the Holy grew to be almost synonymous. Physical man was raised to his highest expression, till he became the mythological, ideal god-man. This anthropomorphism found its final stage in Phidias; the Parthenon was its expression, and Olympus its culmination.[840] Since the ancient man-breeding and man-shaping system was abandoned, and the race became intimately mixed with foreign blood, chiefly Slav and Hebrew, the reverse has become noticeable: a Greek of the classical type is now rarely seen.

Then came the intellectual age of Greece. Already in B.C. 450 Protagoras the Sophist, of the Cyrenaic school, had made ‘man the measure of all things.’ The individual becomes a duality; as Aristotle expresses it, the animal life is one of sensation, the divine life of intelligence. And this change of view gradually extinguished the holy fire of art.

The Hellenes, even in their best times, did not pay that attention to the use of arms which was a daily practice with the more practical Romans. They had no gladiatorial shows, the finest _salles d’armes_ in the world. The ὁπλοδιδακταὶ (ὁπλοδιδασκολοὶ) or army _maîtres d’armes_, and professors of the noble arts of offence and defence, were not required by law in Lacedæmon. They practised the Sword, as we learn from Demosthenes; he compared the Athenians ‘with rustics in a fencing school, who after a blow always guard the hit part and not before.’[842] Yet they preferred the pentathlum, the pancration, and military dancing; the fencing-room was a secondary consideration. Indeed, Plato objected to the useless art of Sword-exercise, because neither masters nor disciples ever became great soldiers—a stupendous Platonic fallacy![843]

Nor did Hellas greatly prize herself upon mere arms. The soldier at Athens and amongst all the Ionian and kindred races occupied, it is true, an honourable position; in the four castes[844] he followed the priestly, and he preceded the peasants and the mechanics. But the Hellene was essentially a citizen—a politician. He chose his magistrates and pontiffs, and he could aspire to become one himself. He spent his life in the Agora, canvassing laws and constitutions, treaties and alliances. His minor delight was gossip, euphuistically expressed by ‘hearing new things.’ Hellas soon learned that her _forte_ lay in literature, poetry, oratory, and philosophy, in engineering, and in the fine arts. She excelled the world in the exquisite rules of proportion; in the breadth of idea, and in the clearness and perfection of the literary form: these arts she bequeathed as a heritage to mankind, who have nowhere and never surpassed her. While the grand old Kemites built for eternity, and subjected even size[845] to solidity, Hellas elaborated the principle of Beauty and carried it to its very acme. Her spoilt children were avid of novelty: they constructed every possible system of cosmogony, of astronomy, of geology (except the right one); and they ‘paraded their knowledge,’ as Bacon says, ‘with fifes and drums.’ Hence their teachers of the Nile Valley told them ‘they were ever children’; and hence they excelled their teachers.

This is not the place to discuss Greek tactics, nor is there anything new to say about them: authors are contented with borrowing from the treatises of Ælian and Arrian, who lived in the days of Hadrian. I will only remind the reader that even during the ‘Iliad’-ages the Greek army had its scheme of battle. Nestor advises his warriors to keep their ranks in action after the wont of their forbears; and in two places[846] we have allusions to a rude phalanx or oblong rectangle of civilised Egypt and Khita-land. Xenophon[847] tells us that the army of Agesilaus appeared all bronze (χαλκὸν) and red (φοίνικα); the latter survives in our most inappropriate British scarlet. For the heavy-armed Hoplite-swordsmen and the light Peltasts, who had apparently no Swords, the student will consult any ‘Dictionary of Antiquities.’

Another unpleasant feature in Greek warfare was its indifference to human life, so much regarded by the Romans. The former preserved their old barbarous practice of putting to death their war-prisoners; whilst even during the first Punic War the latter had a system of exchange combined with a money-payment for any number in excess on either side.

Greece rarely appears in arms except in defensive warfare (as against the Persians), in civil wars between citizens and citizens, and in semi-civil wars, as between the Athenians and the Spartans, the Dorians, Ionians, and Æolians. A glance at any of their campaigns—the ‘Anabasis,’ for instance—gives us their measure as soldiers; and what else can we expect from a race whose typical men were Themistocles and Alcibiades? They were too clever by half; too vain, too restless, too impulsive (ever ‘shedding tears’), too self-assertive to become disciplined men-machines. They were always ready for a revolt, for a change of officers; and it must have been a serious thing to command them. In this point, perhaps, they are rivalled by the Frenchman, one of the best soldiers in Europe, and also one of the most difficult to manage. Great captains—Turenne and Napoleon Buonaparte, for instance—shot their recalcitrants by the dozen till the survivors learned to ‘tremble and obey.’[848] Like the French, too, and the Irish, the Greeks had more dash than firmness. They gained victories by the vigour and gallantry of their attack, but they did not distinguish themselves in a losing game. Here England excels, and hence Marshal Bugeaud said, ‘She has the best infantry in the world; happily they are not many.’ We must make them so.

Hellas owed her successes in foreign wars mainly to the barbarous condition of her neighbours. The Romans and all the peoples of Asia Minor, save her own colonies,[849] were far behind her when, after the fashion of the equestrian races of Northern Asia, she had exchanged the chariot for the charger;[850] and when she borrowed from Egypt the arts of warfare by land and sea, the paraphernalia of the siege, the best of arms and armour, and even the redoubtable phalanx. But she lost pre-eminence, physical and moral, when the rival races rose to be her equals, and even her superiors, in weapons, organisation, and discipline. She began with beating, and she ended with being thoroughly beaten by, the Romans.

Greek literature does not abound, like Roman and Hebrew, in perpetual allusions to the Sword: it refers more frequently to the spear and bow. Yet Athenæus ennobles the end of his curious _olla podrida_ (the ‘Deipnosophists’) with some charming lines alluding to the Queen of Weapons. The first passage begins with:—

I’ll wreathe my sword in myrtle bough, The sword that laid the tyrant low, When Patriots burning to be free To Athens gave equality.[851]

The second is the song of Hybrias the Cretan:—

My wealth is here, the sword, the spear, the breast-defending shield, With this I plough, with this I sow, with this I reap the field; With this I rape the luscious grape and drink the blood-red wine, And slaves at hand in order stand, and all are counted mine![852]

And here arises a curious question. Do races, as is generally assumed, decline and fall like nations and empires? Does the body politic obey the law of the body corporal? Do peoples grow old and feeble and barren after their most brilliant periods of gestation? Or rather do they not cease to be great, and to bear great men, because their neighbours have grown to be greater, and because genius is repressed by unfavourable media? I cannot see that Time has greatly changed the peasant of the Romagna, the mountaineer of the Peloponnesus, the Persian become a Parsi in Bombay, or the modern soldier of the Nile Valley, who, under Ibrahim Pasha, defeated the Turks in every pitched battle. But the conditions of Italy, Greece, Persia, and Egypt, are now fundamentally altered: they are no longer superior to their surroundings; they are environed by races stronger than themselves. Hence, perhaps, what is popularly called their degeneracy.