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 broad-sword. 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 doubleedged 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 FIG. 251.-WARRIOR WITH SWORD. 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, twoedged, 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 shelllike quaquaversal flutings. The general opinion that Homer ignored soldering' 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 (cicada) and other ornaments were also found of gold worked in repoussé and composed of two halves soldered together. 252. BRONZE FIG. FIG. 253. BRONZE DAGGER. Two BLADES SOLDERED. The goldsmiths of Mycenae 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. 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 Yet soldering iron was known to Egypt in the Eighteen h Dynasty. 2 The position may be seen in life all over India, where the jugglers teach goats to stand and be hoisted in that position. least two continuous, deserves to be called the 'Mycena spiral.' This ornament passes from the gold trinkets and the tomb-stones of the Acropolis to the 'Treasuries' of much later date. A 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). 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. 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,2 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.3 As far as they go, they prove that the warriors of Mycena used three varieties of Swords-the Xiphos, the Phásganon, and the Kopis. 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 (quá 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 The gipos of Mycenae 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 (Σmáτı),' the sabre, the broadsword. The pάoyavov 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 Komis, which Meyrick makes an Argive weapon, and which English FIG. 254.-PHÁSGANON. FIG. 255.-GREEK PHÁSGANA. FIG. 256.--SHORT SWORD (PHASGANON) 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 1 Dictionaries derive this word from oráw (to draw). I find it in the Egyptian 'Sft.' It is evidently a congener of Σπάθη (dim. σπάθιον, also Romaic, and verb σratów 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 fruct fication. 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.' Gods, and that the Amazons wield it against Hercules. Hence Señor Soromenho1 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: FIG. 257. FIG. 258. KOPIS WITH POMMEL. FIG. 259. KOPIS FIG. 260.-KUKKRI BLADE 2 the relic was found in the Island of Ossero with an immense variety of bronzes, Greek, Roman, and prehistoric or protohistoric. 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. Quoted by Colonel A. Lane-Fox, Anthrop. Coll. p. 174. 2 I have described it in Scoperte Antropologiche in Ossero (Trieste, 1877). The point is evidently |