1883.] on the Forms and History of the Sivord. 381 



troops in the Roman service.* There is no evidence, however, that 

 the Romans ever attained the point of cultivating swordsmanship) in 

 the proper sense, that is, making the sword a defensive as well as an 

 otfensive arm. 



After the fall of the Roman empire the sword in general use is a 

 longer and larger weapon, but handled, we may suspect; with less 

 skill and effect. It is straight, heavy, double-edged, and of varying 

 length apparently determined by no rule beyond the strength or the 

 fancy of the owner. A good historical specimen of this type is the 

 sword of Charles the Great, exhibited in the Louvre. As often as not 

 the earlier mediaeval swords are rounded off at the end ; and from 

 this, as well as from the fact that some centuries later the " foining 

 fence " of the Italian school was regarded as a wholly new thing, it 

 appears that the Roman tradition of preferring the point to the edge 

 had been lost or disregarded. There is every reason, indeed, to believe 

 that the mediaeval form is the continuance of a prehistoric one. 

 Swords dug up in various parts of Europe from several feet of gravel 

 show no essential difference of pattern from those which were common 

 down to the sixteenth century. The hilts of the prehistoric swords 

 do indeed affect (though not invariably) a shortness in the grip which 

 seems to modern Europeans absurd, though a parallel to it may be 

 found in modern Asiatic swords ; and very short handles occur in 

 EurojDcan weapons as late as the thirteenth century. From three to 

 three and a half inches, or sometimes even less, is all the room given 

 to the hand. The modern European swordsman's grij) is flexible ; he 

 requires free space and play for the fingers, and for the directing 

 action of the thumb which is all but indispensable in using the 

 point. The short grip is intended to give a tight-fitting and rigid 

 grasp, so that the whole motion of the cut comes from the arm and 

 shoulder ; and this is the manner in which Oriental swords are still 

 handled. Apart from this difference in the size of the grip, a 

 me liieval knight's sword, or one of the Scottish swords to which the 

 name of claymore (commonly usurped by the much later basket-hilted 

 pattern) properly belongs, has little to distinguish it from the arms 

 of unknown date which, for want of a more certain attribution, are 

 vaguely called British in our museums. But one thing of great 

 curiosity happened to the sword in the middle ages; it became a 

 symbol of honour, an object almost of worship, the chosen seat and 

 image of the sentiment of chivalry. This may be accounted for in 

 part by the accident of the cross-guard seeming to the newly con- 

 verted barbarians to invest it with a sacred character ; I say accident, 

 for the cross-guard is certainly prehistoric and therefore pre-Christian. 

 Still the religious associations of the cross must have given a quite 



* Liudenschmit, ' Tracht und Bewaffnung des romischen Heeres wahrend der 

 Kaiserzeit.' Braunschweig, 1882. Complete reconstructions of both Greek and 

 Roman equipments of various periods (among others) may be seen in the excellent 

 historical collection of Costumes de guerre in the Muse'e d'Artillerie of Paris. 



