chapter viii

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The fourth Sepulchre also yielded three shoulder-belts of gold. No. 354 measures four feet one and a half inch long by one and seven-eighths inch in width (fig. 241). On either side of the band is a narrow edging made by turning down the gold plate: the field is occupied by a row of rosettes, six oval petals surrounding a central disk and the whole encircled by dots or points. At one end are two apertures in the shape of hour-glasses; these served to attach the clasp to the other extremity, as is shown by the small hole and two cuts (p. 308). The second ‘Telamon,’ a plain band four feet six inches long by two to two and one-third inches broad, was, the discoverer suggests, possibly made for the funeral: it is too thin and fragile for general wear. To some blades were still attached particles of well-woven linen, which the discoverer considers to have been sheaths (p. 283). The natives of India and of other hot-damp regions retain, I have said, the custom of bandaging their blades with greased rags. We are also shown (p. 304) a gold tassel probably suspended to a belt of embroidered work.

[Illustration: FIG. 250.—RAPIER-BLADES OF MYCENÆ.]

[Illustration: FIG. 251.—WARRIOR WITH SWORD.]

The first of the tomb-stones found in the Acropolis above the sepulchres (p. 52) shows (very imperfectly) a hunter standing in a one-horse chariot: he grips in his right a long broadsword. The second tomb-stone (p. 81) has a naked warrior, who holds the horse’s head with his right, and raises in his left a double-edged blade (fig. 251): Dr. Schliemann finds the figure ‘full of anguish’ (p. 84); the head is in profile, and the body almost fronts the spectator. The huntsman-charioteer holds in his left a sheathed Sword of the long dagger type, ending in a large globular pommel. Many such articles were found in the tombs, and the author (p. 225) draws attention to the size of the ‘knob’ upon the signet ring. Mostly they were of wood or alabaster (p. 281) with golden nails, and frequently plated with precious metal. I would suggest that the perforated ball of polished rock-crystal (No. 307) found in Sepulchre III., and the large-mouthed article (No. 308) coloured red and white inside, were also Sword-pommels.

The Treasury supplied ‘five unornamental blades of copper or bronze,’ with rings of the same metal. The large Cyclopean house, which the energetic discoverer would identify with the Palace of the Atreidæ, yielded a straight, two-edged, thrusting-blade of bronze: the shoulders were pierced with four holes, and there are as many in the tang for attaching the handle (fig. 252). The heft was of various substances, wood, bone, and ivory, amber, rock-crystal, and alabaster, and it was often plated with metals, especially the most precious. Of the latter, six specimens are given (pp. 270–71), all highly decorated with intaglio work of circles and spirals, rope-bands, and shell-like quaquaversal flutings.

The general opinion that Homer ignored soldering[817] gives unusual interest to a large bronze dagger found in No. III. Sepulchre, six mètres and a half below the surface (p. 164). Two blades are well soldered together in the middle (fig. 253). The same art appears (p. 280) in the attachment of two long narrow plates of thick bronze. Crickets (_cicadæ_) and other ornaments were also found of gold worked in _repoussé_ and composed of two halves soldered together.

[Illustration: FIG. 252.—BRONZE SWORD FOUND IN THE PALACE (p. 144).]

[Illustration: FIG. 253.—BRONZE DAGGER. TWO BLADES SOLDERED.]

The goldsmiths of Mycenæ were true artists. They had work in plenty; Dr. Schliemann estimates the metallic value of his finds at five thousand pounds. An admirable bit of work (p. 251) is the goat standing, like that of Assyria and Istria, with gathered legs upon the top of a pin.[818] Another (No. 365) is the lion-cub, apparently cut and tooled. As in modern India, the circles, spirals, and wave-lines are excellently executed, and so is the gold-plating upon buttons of wood (pp. 258–59). The old Greek city, too, had a peculiar treatment of the whorl, which, combining two and even three—either _dextrorsum_ or _sinistrorsum_—about a common centre, and making the lines of at least two continuous, deserves to be called the ‘Mycenæ spiral.’ This ornament passes from the gold trinkets and the tomb-stones of the Acropolis to the ‘Treasuries’ of much later date.

An intaglio of gold is especially interesting, because it represents a Monomachía or duel. He to the proper right, a tall beardless or shaven warrior, without helmet, and clad only in ‘tights’ and ‘shorts,’ bears the whole weight of his body upon his left leg, extending the right, as in a lunge, and is about to plunge his straight and pointed dagger-blade into the throat of his bearded foe (p. 174). A signet-ring displays a gigantic warrior who has felled one opponent, put to flight a second, and is stabbing a third with a short broad straight blade. The vanquished man attempts to defend himself with a long Xiphos (p. 225). Perhaps the subject may be Theseus clearing out the thieves. A gold button shows a square formed by four sacrificial chopper-knives of Egyptian shape (p. 263, No. 397).

The characteristics of the Sepulchres are the orientation of the remains, the heads lying to the East, and their imperfect cremation. The latter is familiar in Hindú-land, although the people hold the fire-funeral to be a fire-birth, when the vital principle called ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ has been purged of its earthly dross. The regular layers of pebbles, which by ventilating the floor would give draught to the flames, have also been noticed in ancient Etruria.[819] The only _viaticum_ or provisions for the dead were unopened oysters: the rest was probably burnt. The utensils are jugs and vases of terra cotta (plain and painted), copper tripods and cauldrons, urns and kettles, and cups and goblets, the latter one- and two-handed. The ornaments, of gold and electrum, are foil-work and plates upon wood, beads of glass and agate, studs and buttons, crosses and breast-covers, lentoid gems and masks, crowns and diadems. The weapons, all of bronze,[820] are axes and arrows, lances, knives, daggers, and Sword-blades; while gold and alloys are abundant. We may fairly say that iron is absent from the Acropolis of Mycenæ as well as from the Burnt City of the Troad. And there is a remarkable similarity in the pattern and construction of sundry articles, especially the gold tubes with attached spirals.

Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries have been subjected to much adverse criticism.[821] As far as they go, they prove that the warriors of Mycenæ used three varieties of Swords—the Xiphos, the Phásganon, and the Kopis.

[Heading: _THE SWORD IN GREECE._]

The ξίφος of Mycenæ is the long, straight, rapier-shaped, cut-and-thrust (_cæsim et punctim_) blade; its only guard is a cross-bar, which, like the scabbard, is beautifully ornamented. The word Xiphos is still applied in Romaic to a straight Sword opposed to Spati (Σπάτι),[822] the sabre, the broadsword.

The φάσγανον or dirk which Meyrick (Pl. IV. fig. 16), and sometimes perhaps the Ancients, confound with the Xiphos, is a straight blade, mostly leaf-shaped and showing its descent from the spear. It is rarely longer than twenty inches. In Romaic poetry the word is still applied to knives and Sword-daggers like the Yataghan. My idea that the Phásganon was used for throwing does not derive from the classics, but from the similarity of the blade to the Seax and the Scramasax.

[Illustration: FIG. 254.—PHÁSGANON.]

[Illustration: FIG. 255.—GREEK PHÁSGANA.]

[Illustration: FIG. 256.—SHORT SWORD (PHÁSGANON) OF BRONZE, FOUND IN A CRANNOG AT PESCHIARA, AND PROBABLY GREEK.]

The Κοπίς, which Meyrick makes an Argive weapon, and which English translators render simply by ‘Sword,’ has been derived by me from the Egyptian Khopsh, whose ‘inside cutting curve’ it imitates, merely flattening the bend. Writers on hoplology have mostly ignored its origin. They follow Xenophon, who speaks of it as being used by the Persians and Barbarians; and Polybius, who assigns its use to the Persians before the Greeks—apparently an anachronism. They remark that on vases it is the weapon of the Giants, not of the Gods, and that the Amazons wield it against Hercules. Hence Señor Soromenho[823] would assign its origin to the Arabs, and Colonel A. Lane-Fox to the Roman legionaries. The latter authority, indeed, contends that its form is ‘obviously derived from the straight, leaf-shaped, bronze sword, of which it is simply a curved variety.’ Here, I think, he reverses the process. Specimens of the Kopis are rare; one was found in a tomb, said to be Roman, between Madrid and Toledo, and another of the same find is in the British Museum.

[Illustration: FIG. 257.]

[Illustration: FIG. 258.—KOPIS WITH POMMEL.]

[Illustration: FIG. 259.—KOPIS WITH HOOK.]

[Illustration: FIG. 260.—KUKKRI BLADE OF GURKHAS.]

The peculiarity of the Kopis is, I have said, its cutting with the inner, not the outer curve, and thus suggesting the use of the point and the ‘drawing cut’ instead of the sheer cut. This peculiarity was inherited from Egypt, and long appeared in Greek blades. It is well shown in the fragment of a bronze Kopis-like broadsword from the collection of Don Giovanni Bolmarcich, the Arciprete of Cherso: the relic was found in the Island of Ossero with an immense variety of bronzes, Greek,[824] Roman, and prehistoric or proto-historic. General Pitt-Rivers has a bronze Sword-blade from Corinth—a very fine specimen. The handle has an =H= section, the pommel measuring two and a quarter inches across, and the grip three and a half inches in length. There is no tang; the blade springs from the shoulders, which are prominent; the length is twenty-seven inches, and the section that of the Toledo rapier. It is, however, slightly leaf-shaped. In the Armeria Real of Turin (section Beaumont to north-west), two Greek blades are shown in a glass case. One is especially interesting. The total length, all being in one piece, is three feet and a half; the blade has a mid-rib; there is a straight simple cross-bar at the shoulders, and the hilt ends in a crutch, like the Hindú antelope-horns and the scroll-hilt of the Danish Swords.

The inside edge has been preserved from days immemorial by the Abyssinian Sword;[825] an exaggerated sickle or diminutive scythe. It reappears in various parts of Africa, as shown by Barth’s Travels (chap. ii. 37 &c.). His ‘Danísko,’ which he translates ‘hand-bill,’ is used by the people of a highly interesting province—‘Adamáwa.’ The general weapon in the neighbourhood is the ‘goliyo’ or bill-hook of the Marghi, and the Njiga of the Baghirmi. It is a heavy and clumsy ‘Khopsh’ of the boomerang type.[826]

[Illustration: FIG. 961.—THE DANÍSKO.]

The inside edge characterises, to a certain extent, the Albanian yataghan, and the Flissa of the Kabáil (Kabyles); and it is thoroughly well developed in the formidable Korá or Kukkri of the Gurkha or Nepaulese mountaineers, whose edge swells out to a half-moon.

The Mycenæ finds do not enlighten us upon the subject of the Ἄορ and other forms of the Greek Sword. We know nothing of the Thracian Ῥομφαία, the Rumpia of Gellius (x. 25), which the A. V.[827] translates ‘Sword.’ Most writers hold it to be a Thracian lance, like the European ‘partisan;’ and Smith’s ‘Dictionary of Antiquities’ describes it as a long spear resembling the Sarissa, with a Sword-like blade. This comes from Livy (xxxi. 39), who tells us that in woodlands the Macedonian phalanx was ineffectual on account of its _prælongæ hastæ_, and that the Rhomphæa of the Thracians was a hindrance for the same reason. But in modern Romaic usage it denotes the flammberg (_flamberge_), or that form of the wavy blade which the Church places in the hands of the angelic host. It is always carried by ‘Monseigneur Saint Michel, the Archangel, the first knight who in the quarrel of God battled with the Dragon, the old enemy of mankind, and drove him out of heaven.’[828] Mycenæ supplied no specimen of the χελιδὼν (_gladius Chelidonius_), the broad blade with a bifurcated swallow-tailed point. It is mentioned by Isidore (xviii.) and by Origen (chap. vi.); and I have alluded to it in