470 
quires to be carefully weighed. It has been very generally 
the habit of archzxologists to attribute these bronze weapons 
entirely to the Celtic race; and, although there are great eth- 
nological difficulties in the way of adopting this view, I am 
inclined to believe there is much to be said in its favour. The 
concurrent testimony of all ancient history proves to us, that 
at the time when the nations we call classical first came in 
contact with those of the North, both Celt and German had 
long been in the possession of iron, and formed all their im- 
plements of war of that metal. But this does not prevent the 
possibility of a still earlier race having introduced the sword 
of bronze of that graceful form with which we are all ac- 
quainted; and that these long continued in use, together with 
the iron weapons which were more particularly affected by the 
conquerors of Rome. The Roman sword itself, as we know 
from the undoubted testimony of Polybius, was only replaced 
by a short stabbing weapon, in the time of the second Punic 
War; and from the same authority, we know that its pattern 
was derived from the Iberians in Spain. Ifnow, as is highly 
probable, those Iberians were only one portion ofa vast race, 
spread over the whole Continent and the islands of Europe, 
who gradually yielded before the advancing wave of Celtic 
culture, and were driven into the extreme corners of the West 
and the North, there is no great improbability that the weapons 
which they had used, and introduced, continued to be found 
at a time when the other race was armed with a very different 
one; and, indeed, I am called upon here to remark, that written 
history is very sparing in its notice of nations armed with 
bronze; that nearly the only race of whom this is asserted are 
the Massagete, the progenitors of those Iberians of the Colches, 
whose connexion with the Iberians of Spain will now hardly 
be denied. They possessed neither iron nor silver, but had an 
abundance both of bronze and gold: and they formed their 
weapons of the former, and their ornaments of the latter metal. 
That the only other race of whom it is distinctly stated that 
