LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. xlix 



the use of iron belonged rather to the introduction of steel, as 

 the old hunters and warriors had little motive to give up their 

 bronze weapons for soft iron ones not practically superior to 

 them. Both from this point of view, and in looking to Central 

 Asia rather than to Britain or the Far East as the earliest source 

 of bronze, this paper is of mark. Some interesting points as to 

 the succession of iron, bronze, and stone weapons are raised by 

 Dr. Rolleston in unpublished letters to his friend Mr. John Evans. 

 In one he remarks on Professor Schaaffhausen's assertion that in 

 some of the Mithra sculptures on the Rhine the bull is being slain, 

 not with the ordinary ornamented metal sword, but with what ap- 

 pears to be a stone hatchet. This clearly proved (which however 

 it does not seem to have been) would be an interesting case of 

 keeping up an ancient weapon for ceremonial purposes, as in the 

 parallel case of the flint (silex saxum) with which the Roman ponti- 

 fex slew the sacrificial ox. The same line is followed in another 

 letter commenting on a heavy sword of one piece of bronze, with 

 a bull-dog's head for the pommel of the hilt, in the Museum of 

 Nismes. This, if a war- sword taken from a foe, would interfere 

 with his opinion that ' there is no evidence to show that the Romans 

 ever crossed their own Iron swords in anger with Bronze ones in 

 the hands of any enemy.' But if it was a sacrificial sword, then 

 * during the Bronze period, Bronze must be supposed to have 

 displaced the Silex Saxum in Ritual, and to have retained its 

 place there, when superseded by iron in other activities/ 



To turn from Rolleston's scientific work to the part he took in 

 University affairs, his colleagues on Delegacies and on the Heb- 

 domadal Council remember the brilliant oratory with which he 

 often enlivened their debates. His friend the President of Corpus 

 Christi College, who had sat with him at many meetings, thus 

 sketches him in this public capacity : ' The qualities which struck 

 one in Rolleston were the directness of his language, his fearless- 

 ness, and his withering contempt for anything he regarded as 

 mean, or cowardly, or finessing. He had a genuine hatred for 

 compromises, which sometimes perhaps made him unnecessarily 

 hard on the proposals of others; but the presence of such an 



d 



