THE IRON, THE BEONZE, AND THE STONE AGES. 661 



and by the Anglo-Saxons, which were of iron. The Roman weapons 

 are, some of them, such as we see them to be on monuments and 

 some other works of art ; but in some instances they were drawings 

 of the actual weapons themselves as found on battle-fields and 

 elsewhere. The hastae and pila of the Saxon and Frank, for such 

 were in reality their spear and the angon, were, on the other hand, 

 found where I have never found the Roman weapons, viz., in the 

 graves of those warriors. This difference, as to the fitting out of 

 their deceased, depended, I would suggest, upon a difference of 

 views as to the future state of the dead ; and this difference did not 

 consist, I apprehend, in that the one race held that the future state 

 would be such a peaceful one that weapons of war would be super- 

 fluous in it, whilst the other believed that it would be more or less 

 a continuation of the life of assault and battery they had so richly 

 enjoyed here ; but in a very different opposition of beliefs. The 

 *sunt aliquid Manes' of Propertius was as beautiful a piece of 

 poetry to the Roman as any other of the beautiful poetry of that 

 sweet poet, but it was nothing more. The Teuton, on the other 

 hand, held firmly on to the belief in another world ; and this belief 

 accounts for the deposition of weapons in the graves of their dead. 



I am inclined to think that the Iron Age would be better spoken 

 of as the ' Steel Age."* For there is no reason why we should not 

 suppose that iron, as distinct from steel, may have been in the 

 hands of many tribes before they came into the possession of 

 Bronze; and if the iron was soft iron merely, bronze would be 

 much more useful and trustworthy for the purposes of war and the 

 chase, for which so many ancient and modern races have mainly 

 lived. A very striking instance from Roman history of the com- 

 parative uselessness of untempered iron tools for such purposes is 

 given us by Polybius, Hist. ii. c. '^'^, There we read, in a probably 

 somewhat unjustly unfavourable account of that somewhat rare 

 animal, a liberal military commander, that his colonels saved him, 

 as colonels have in later times saved other generals, from disasters, 

 by the following tactics. The Gauls came to the fight armed with 

 long pointless soft iron broadswords. These, the Roman tribunes 

 had observed, bent after each blow delivered on to a sufficiently 

 resistent body.. Such a body they sought and found in the pilum 

 — that best of pikes or bayonets, with which a man could parry or 

 thrust, but with which he could not strike or slash. The brave 



