154 BULLETIN OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 



Friederichs has stated that sotne have conceived it to be a 

 caltrop, and rightly says it could not be of service in this 

 way on account of the bluntness of the spines. 



A comparison with the ancient Tribulus (Fig. 8) shows 

 an entirely different device. The Tribulus was a ball of 

 metal from which sprang four sharp spikes so that in what- 

 ever manner it was flung upon the ground 

 one spike always pointed upward. In 

 this connectiou it may be remarked that 

 Furtwängler in his Oli/?npia, figures a 

 single flat ring from which spring three 

 sharp spines (Fig 9), and he queries 

 FlG " S- whether this was allied to the bow-puller. 



It is barely possible, though hardly probable, that this 

 might have been a form of caltrop. We can hardly im- 

 agine what Friederichs' technical friend had in mind when 

 he suggested that the bow-puller was a kind of screw- 

 driver, for it seems impossible that any implement for 

 drawing or pulling out any fixed object 

 could remotely resemble the bow-puller. 

 Pellegrino Strobel under the title Anelli 

 gemini Problematica (Bulletin di Palet- 

 nologia Italiana xvi, 1888), presents the 

 results of his study of a number of speci- 

 mens preserved in the Museum at Parma. FlG - 9 - 



His material consisted of fourteen bronze ones and two of 

 iron. The larger number of these were three pointed but 

 as the double spines were in some cases united nearly to 

 their tips he regarded them as bicuspid. These, as I have 

 already shown, should be regarded as tricuspid, and in a 

 later paper Strobel so regards them. Of the fifteen speci- 

 mens described, twelve had three spines, and three had four 

 spines. In two of the implements the front spine was bent 

 inward and was also slightly longer than the paired ones. 



