380 Mr. FredericJc Poiloclc [June 1, 



variety, and indicate to some extent the natural colouring of the 

 objects. Whether imported or produced by a naturalised school of 

 craftsmen, arms so richly adorned cannot have been at any time other- 

 wise than a luxury confined to chiefs of tlie highest rank. These are 

 of an antiquity far greater than tliat of the Homeric poems ; and in 

 Homer there is nothing that would lead us to expect such work, though 

 decorated scabbards and mountings are mentioned. Swords occur now 

 and then as presents, but there is no trace of their being peculiarly 

 valuable possessions, and still less of any peculiar feeling of honour 

 being associated with them. The spear is the favourite wea2)on of 

 Homer's mighty men, as witness the spear of Achilles which none but 

 himself can cast. The sword is used only when the spear lias failed, 

 and seems to do little execution then. In historical Greece, and to 

 some extent among the Romans, the military i)oint of honour was 

 bound up with the shield, probably because the abandonment of it 

 was naturally the first action of defeated troops anxious to lighten 

 themselves in retreat. 



So far as anything can be inferred from the allusions of the 

 Greek tragedians, and from a few historical details like the improve- 

 ments in equipment introduced by Iphicrates, the sword had a better 

 relative j)osition among the arms of Greek warriors in post-Homeric 

 times. Probably this was due to the supplanting of bronze by iron — 

 a process which was complete so long before Thucydides wrote, that 

 iron was in his language the natural and obvious material of weapons. 

 To wear arms is for him to wear iron : in old times, he says, every 

 man in Greece " wore iron " in every-day life, like the barbarians 

 nowadays. But it is in tlie Roman armies that we find the first distinct 

 evidence of the use of the sword being studied with anything like 

 system. We learn from Vegetius — a writer of the late fourth century 

 A.D., and of no great authority for his own sake, but likely enough to 

 have preserved genuine traditions of the service — that the Roman 

 soldier was assiduously practised in sword exercise. What is more 

 important, the Romans had discovered the advantage of using the 

 point, and regarded enemies who could only strike with the edge as 

 contemptible. Vegetius assigns as reasons for this both the greater 

 effectiveness of a thrust and the less exposure of the body and arm in 

 delivering it ; reasons which though not conclusive are plausible, and 

 show that the matter had been thought out. Further, the Roman 

 practice, notwithstanding the temptation to keep the shielded side fore- 

 most, was to advance the right side in attacking, as modern swords- 

 men do. The weapon was a thoroughly practical one : the straight 

 and short blade was mounted in a hilt not unlike that of a Scottish 

 dirk, scored with well-marked grooves for the fingers, and balanced 

 with a substantial pommel : this last point, by the way, is too much 

 neglected in our present military swords. A shorter and broader 

 pattern was worn by superior officers, sometimes in a highly orna- 

 mented scabbard, of which there is a very fine specimen in the British 

 Museum. Longer swords were used by the cavalry and by the foreign 



