Chapter VII

. We are unable to specify the shape of the Athenian Κνήστεις (_Knesteis_) or the Lacedæmonian ξυίναι (_Xyinæ_), which Xenophon calls ξυήλαι (_Xuelæ_). They may have been, to judge from their use, thick cut-and-thrust daggers, in fact _Coupe-Choux._ Nor do we know what kind of blade was carried by the Xystophori (ξυστοφόροι) in addition to the _Xyston_: the latter was either the footman’s spear (δόρυ) or the horseman’s lance; in the ‘Iliad,’ as has been seen, it is a long pole studded with iron nails.

[Illustration: FIG. 262.—GREEK XIPHOS (Jähns).]

According to history, the Greek infantry Sword was a straight two-edged blade, rather broad, and of equal width from hilt to point, which was of bevelled shape. For cavalry they preferred the sabre or cutting weapon.[829] Iphicrates (B.C. 400), when improving arms and armour, must have found spear and Sword too short, for he ‘doubled the length of the spear and made the Swords also longer’ (Diod. Sic. xv. 144; Corn. Nepos, xi.). Plutarch (in ‘Lycurg.’) tells us that a man in the presence of Agesilaus jeered at the Spartan blade, which measured only fourteen to fifteen inches long, saying that ‘a juggler would think nothing of swallowing it’;[830] whereto the great commander replied, ‘Yet our short Swords can pierce our foes.’ And when a bad workman complained of his tool, the Spartan suggested with dry heroism, ‘You have only to advance a pace.’

Dodwell[831] relates that an iron blade found in a tomb at Athens was two feet five inches long, including its handle of the same metal. Most of our museum specimens, both of bronze and iron, are of fair average dimensions. That of Mayence measures nineteen and a half inches (_a_ fig. 265), and that of the Museum of Artillery thirty-two. The Pella blade in the K. Antiquarium, Berlin, is only twenty-one centimètres, including four for the heft.

[Illustration: FIG. 263.—GALLO-GREEK (60 cents. long).]

[Illustration: FIG. 264.—GALLO-GREEK.]

[Illustration: FIG. 265.—MAYENCE BLADE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 266.—GALLO-GREEK BLADE AND SHEATH.]

The Swords called Gallo-Greek,[832] with bronze blades and sheaths (figs. 263, etc.), are of moderate length—twenty-five inches. Pausanias[833] alludes to perhaps a shorter weapon (ταῖς μαχαίραις τῶν Γαλατῶν). And we are told that when Manlius invaded Galatia he found the Swords were _prælongi gladii_.[834]

The Greek fashion of carrying the Sword apparently varied with the times, and, perhaps, with the length of the weapon: it is easy to draw a dagger from the right, but awkward to unsheathe a full-sized blade. Some writers make the Greeks carry the weapon on the right, and others on the left: Homer seems purposely to leave his description vague, e.g.:—

Ἢ ὅγε φάσγανον ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος (or σπασσάμενος) παρὰ μηροῦ.

Drawing the grided dirk fro’ the sheath which hung by his thigh-side.[835]

The words _parà merou_ are similarly used elsewhere,[836] but which thigh is not specified. Hector’s sharp Sword hangs below his loins both huge and strong, and brandishing it he rushes to his death by Achilles’ spear.[837] The Trojan, too, strikes Ajax,[838] who carried his weapon after Assyrian fashion, ‘where the two belts cross upon his breast, both that of the shield and that of the silver-studded Sword.’ The ‘Parazonium’ dagger, with its metal scabbard, was usually attached to the Sword-belt[839] on the other side. Shaped like an ox-tongue (‘Anelace,’ or _Langue-de-bœuf_), and measuring twelve to sixteen inches long, it was common to Greece and Rome; I have shown its origin in Egypt.

[Illustration: FIG. 267.—BRONZE PARAZONIUM (16⅘ inches long).]

The part played by the Hellenes upon the great stage of the world’s history was their development of civil life—of citizenship. As a nation, they wanted the life-long practice of arms and training for warfare, brought to absolute perfection by the Romans. Their annual games, as shown by the Pindaric Odes, were mostly trials of speed and agility. They had the Bibasis or gymnastic dance, and, to mention no other, the Pyrrhic or Sword-dance, like all ancient and many modern peoples; but these mimicries soon became in the cities mere women’s work. They wore side-arms at home only during the Panathenaic fêtes, where orchestral actions and attitudes were displayed; and they had not those military colonies like the Romans, where every man was a soldier and every soldier was a veteran. Their _gymnasia_ and _palæstræ_ were schools for calisthenics, which the sturdier Italians held in contempt. They were, like the gymnastic-grounds of the Spartan girls, mere hot-beds for growing beauty and good breeders; for attaining the perfection of form duly to be transmitted. This process, indeed, began with the bride, who furnished her nuptial chamber with the finest possible models in painting and statuary. Hence every well-bred citizen at Athens, every ‘gentleman,’ was expected to be handsome. The Beautiful, the Good, and the Holy grew to be almost synonymous. Physical man was raised to his highest expression, till he became the mythological, ideal god-man. This anthropomorphism found its final stage in Phidias; the Parthenon was its expression, and Olympus its culmination.[840] Since the ancient man-breeding and man-shaping system was abandoned, and the race became intimately mixed with foreign blood, chiefly Slav and Hebrew, the reverse has become noticeable: a Greek of the classical type is now rarely seen.

[Illustration: FIG. 268.—‘HOPLITES’ (HEAVY ARMED).[841]]

[Illustration: FIG. 269.—GREEK COMBATANTS WITH SWORD AND LANCE.]

Then came the intellectual age of Greece. Already in B.C. 450 Protagoras the Sophist, of the Cyrenaic school, had made ‘man the measure of all things.’ The individual becomes a duality; as Aristotle expresses it, the animal life is one of sensation, the divine life of intelligence. And this change of view gradually extinguished the holy fire of art.

The Hellenes, even in their best times, did not pay that attention to the use of arms which was a daily practice with the more practical Romans. They had no gladiatorial shows, the finest _salles d’armes_ in the world. The ὁπλοδιδακταὶ (ὁπλοδιδασκολοὶ) or army _maîtres d’armes_, and professors of the noble arts of offence and defence, were not required by law in Lacedæmon. They practised the Sword, as we learn from Demosthenes; he compared the Athenians ‘with rustics in a fencing school, who after a blow always guard the hit part and not before.’[842] Yet they preferred the pentathlum, the pancration, and military dancing; the fencing-room was a secondary consideration. Indeed, Plato objected to the useless art of Sword-exercise, because neither masters nor disciples ever became great soldiers—a stupendous Platonic fallacy![843]

Nor did Hellas greatly prize herself upon mere arms. The soldier at Athens and amongst all the Ionian and kindred races occupied, it is true, an honourable position; in the four castes[844] he followed the priestly, and he preceded the peasants and the mechanics. But the Hellene was essentially a citizen—a politician. He chose his magistrates and pontiffs, and he could aspire to become one himself. He spent his life in the Agora, canvassing laws and constitutions, treaties and alliances. His minor delight was gossip, euphuistically expressed by ‘hearing new things.’ Hellas soon learned that her _forte_ lay in literature, poetry, oratory, and philosophy, in engineering, and in the fine arts. She excelled the world in the exquisite rules of proportion; in the breadth of idea, and in the clearness and perfection of the literary form: these arts she bequeathed as a heritage to mankind, who have nowhere and never surpassed her. While the grand old Kemites built for eternity, and subjected even size[845] to solidity, Hellas elaborated the principle of Beauty and carried it to its very acme. Her spoilt children were avid of novelty: they constructed every possible system of cosmogony, of astronomy, of geology (except the right one); and they ‘paraded their knowledge,’ as Bacon says, ‘with fifes and drums.’ Hence their teachers of the Nile Valley told them ‘they were ever children’; and hence they excelled their teachers.

This is not the place to discuss Greek tactics, nor is there anything new to say about them: authors are contented with borrowing from the treatises of Ælian and Arrian, who lived in the days of Hadrian. I will only remind the reader that even during the ‘Iliad’-ages the Greek army had its scheme of battle. Nestor advises his warriors to keep their ranks in action after the wont of their forbears; and in two places[846] we have allusions to a rude phalanx or oblong rectangle of civilised Egypt and Khita-land. Xenophon[847] tells us that the army of Agesilaus appeared all bronze (χαλκὸν) and red (φοίνικα); the latter survives in our most inappropriate British scarlet. For the heavy-armed Hoplite-swordsmen and the light Peltasts, who had apparently no Swords, the student will consult any ‘Dictionary of Antiquities.’

Another unpleasant feature in Greek warfare was its indifference to human life, so much regarded by the Romans. The former preserved their old barbarous practice of putting to death their war-prisoners; whilst even during the first Punic War the latter had a system of exchange combined with a money-payment for any number in excess on either side.

Greece rarely appears in arms except in defensive warfare (as against the Persians), in civil wars between citizens and citizens, and in semi-civil wars, as between the Athenians and the Spartans, the Dorians, Ionians, and Æolians. A glance at any of their campaigns—the ‘Anabasis,’ for instance—gives us their measure as soldiers; and what else can we expect from a race whose typical men were Themistocles and Alcibiades? They were too clever by half; too vain, too restless, too impulsive (ever ‘shedding tears’), too self-assertive to become disciplined men-machines. They were always ready for a revolt, for a change of officers; and it must have been a serious thing to command them. In this point, perhaps, they are rivalled by the Frenchman, one of the best soldiers in Europe, and also one of the most difficult to manage. Great captains—Turenne and Napoleon Buonaparte, for instance—shot their recalcitrants by the dozen till the survivors learned to ‘tremble and obey.’[848] Like the French, too, and the Irish, the Greeks had more dash than firmness. They gained victories by the vigour and gallantry of their attack, but they did not distinguish themselves in a losing game. Here England excels, and hence Marshal Bugeaud said, ‘She has the best infantry in the world; happily they are not many.’ We must make them so.

Hellas owed her successes in foreign wars mainly to the barbarous condition of her neighbours. The Romans and all the peoples of Asia Minor, save her own colonies,[849] were far behind her when, after the fashion of the equestrian races of Northern Asia, she had exchanged the chariot for the charger;[850] and when she borrowed from Egypt the arts of warfare by land and sea, the paraphernalia of the siege, the best of arms and armour, and even the redoubtable phalanx. But she lost pre-eminence, physical and moral, when the rival races rose to be her equals, and even her superiors, in weapons, organisation, and discipline. She began with beating, and she ended with being thoroughly beaten by, the Romans.

Greek literature does not abound, like Roman and Hebrew, in perpetual allusions to the Sword: it refers more frequently to the spear and bow. Yet Athenæus ennobles the end of his curious _olla podrida_ (the ‘Deipnosophists’) with some charming lines alluding to the Queen of Weapons. The first passage begins with:—

I’ll wreathe my sword in myrtle bough, The sword that laid the tyrant low, When Patriots burning to be free To Athens gave equality.[851]

The second is the song of Hybrias the Cretan:—

My wealth is here, the sword, the spear, the breast-defending shield, With this I plough, with this I sow, with this I reap the field; With this I rape the luscious grape and drink the blood-red wine, And slaves at hand in order stand, and all are counted mine![852]

And here arises a curious question. Do races, as is generally assumed, decline and fall like nations and empires? Does the body politic obey the law of the body corporal? Do peoples grow old and feeble and barren after their most brilliant periods of gestation? Or rather do they not cease to be great, and to bear great men, because their neighbours have grown to be greater, and because genius is repressed by unfavourable media? I cannot see that Time has greatly changed the peasant of the Romagna, the mountaineer of the Peloponnesus, the Persian become a Parsi in Bombay, or the modern soldier of the Nile Valley, who, under Ibrahim Pasha, defeated the Turks in every pitched battle. But the conditions of Italy, Greece, Persia, and Egypt, are now fundamentally altered: they are no longer superior to their surroundings; they are environed by races stronger than themselves. Hence, perhaps, what is popularly called their degeneracy.

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