rather to adorn a military monument with warlike gear than to give an actual representation of spoils captured from the enemy.

(158) Cat. of Bronzes, 251; (160) ibid., 317; (166) ibid., 250; (178) Cat. of Sculpt., III., 2620; (190) Cat. of Bronzes, 2704. See also Daremberg et Saglio, s.v. Clipeus, Galea, Ocreae.

Weapons. The weapons of offence, which are exhibited in Table-Case E, differ from the majority of the antiquities shown in this room, in that many of them were made at a remote period in the history of Greece and Italy, some even dating from the beginning of the Bronze Age, when the use of metal had not long supplanted that of stone. In a few examples from the island of Cyprus, the metal is almost pure copper. It is therefore not strictly accurate to call these weapons Greek and Roman, for they were made a thousand years before those nations arose; but they come from the lands which were afterwards inhabited by the Greeks and Romans, and are valuable as representing the development of armour in those parts of the world, and as being the work of the primitive races in whom the Greeks and Romans had their origin.

The first class consists of arms which belong to the Early Bronze Age, a period preceding the mature and extensive civilisation in Greece to which the name of Mycenaean is commonly applied. The general date of 3000 to 2000 B.C., which is assigned to the weapons of this period, serves rather to indicate their chronological position than to give their precise age. In any case they stand as a definite beginning of the history of arms in Europe. In these early times the sword had not been invented, and short daggers or spearheads only were produced by workmen with a still imperfect mastery of metallurgy. The most ancient form was a short thick blade, with rivets in the base, where it was fastened to the hilt or shaft. A more secure attachment was contrived by prolonging the broad base of the blade into a tang, which was let into the handle and held by a rivet through the end. But the greatest advance was the discovery that if a rib were left up the middle of the blade, the edges could be fined down and tapered to a sharp point without loss of strength. In the final development the stiffening rib and the tang were connected, so that the strongest part of the blade was continued down into the handle. Yet in spite of progress and improvements in design, the old patterns remained in use to the end of the Bronze Age,

and even later, so that a chronological classification based on the forms of early weapons is untrustworthy.

All the stages of development are shown in these examples. The most primitive types are represented by a series of blades.

C

d

α

from Cyprus (No. 196; fig. 78a), which, from material and technique, might be placed at a very early period; but they were excavated from Mycenaean tombs of the end of the Bronze Age. To the same island belong the narrow blades with long tangs, which are turned round at the end in a hook to hold the handle (No. 197; fig. 786). This type is said to have been found in graves of 3000 B.C. It is certainly a primitive shape, and peculiar to the pre-Mycenaean civilisation of Cyprus. Another local variety is shown in the leaf-shaped blade with a sharp tang and two slits, one on each side of the midrib, through which the shaft was lashed in position (No. 198; fig. 78c). The pattern is characteristic of the contemporary civilisation of the Cyclades. Two pointed blades with no tang belong to the same early period. The smaller of the two was found at Athens (No. 199; fig. 78d).

The next period was the close of the Bronze Age in Greece, occupying the second millennium before Christ. It has been called, from its bestknown centre at Mycenae, the Mycenaean Age. In this period, by improvement in metal-working, the short daggers were lengthened into swords, which, towards the end of the age, were made even a yard long, and very slender. Such weapons were used mainly for thrusting, as they would break with a direct blow; in Homer, whose work contains many reminiscences of this time, such accidents are common on the battlefield; but most of the swords are of stouter

FIG. 78.-PRIMITIVE BRONZE
SPEAR- AND DAGGER-
BLADES, FROM GREECE AND
CYPRUS (Nos. 196-9). 1:4.

make. At the same time the spearhead was differentiated from the dagger-blade, being provided with a socket for the reception of the shaft. Mycenaean weapons are represented here by swords and spearheads found mainly at Ialysos in

Rhodes, and belonging to the end of the period. The swords are short and heavy, and are made in one piece with the hilt. The guard is straight in the earlier specimens, and the pommel of the hilt was a

round knob, of which the tang remains (No. 200; fig. 79a). In others the raised flange on the edges of the hilt is continued to

form a crescent-shaped pommel (No. 201). The hollow space was filled with an ornamental material for the grip. The rivets are still in place, and on a small dagger from Karpathos a great part of the ivory mount is preserved (No. 202; fig. 796). The last form of this hilt appears in a heavy sword, which was formerly in the Woodhouse Collection (No. 203; fig. 79c). The projection of flanges and pommel is accentuated, and the ends of the guard are curled up like horns. This type survived into the Hellenic period. Another late Mycenaean form is seen in a long and slender sword with a broad base to the blade, which contracts again towards the hilt (No. 204; fig. 80a). At the other end of the hilt are two divergent tongues of metal, which are better preserved in another example, of heavier fabric, from Enkomi, in Cyprus (No. 205; fig. 806). The type is of especial interest as being that in which the

FIG. 81. BRONZE SPEARHEADS OF THE MYCENAEAN PERIOD (No. 207). 1:4.

earliest iron swords of Greece were made (No. 217; fig. 84b), and which was the prototype of the common bronze sword of the rest of Europe. The lighter specimen is from Scutari in Albania.

The spear was in Homeric times the soldier's most important arm, a long and heavy weapon which was thrown with great force or used for thrusting. Mycenaean spearheads are illustrated in a series from Ialysos (No. 207; fig. 81). They are skilfully made to secure the greatest strength with the least expenditure of material in most cases the shaft runs far up into the blade, which is narrow and springs gently from the socket, some being wider near the point than at the base. There is considerable variety of shape, but all are characterised by the thin blade with shallow curves. Mycenaean arrowheads from the same site are of more primitive design (No. 208). The best are large and heavy, and have long barbs, but there is only a tang and no socket to take the shaft. Others are curiously flat and weak, and can hardly have been of serious use.

The Bronze Age of Italy was distinct from that of Greece. It is represented here by daggers and spears which date from about the fifteenth to the tenth century B.C. Italian daggers are remarkable for the use of engraved decoration on the blades, which is composed in geometrical patterns. The first class resembles in the form of the hilt with edges raised for inlay and crescent-shaped pommel the Mycenaean weapons, and the round base of the blade

FIG. 82.-EARLY ITALIAN BRONZE SWORDS AND SHEATHS (Nos. 209-214). 1:6.

FIG. 83.-ITALIAN BRONZE SPEARHEADS (No. 215).

is also similar to an early Mycenaean type. The haft of one dagger is wound with bronze wire, and another has an ivory handle bound with gold (No. 209; fig. 82a). Some of the blades were made separately, and riveted to the hilt after the primitive fashion (No. 210; fig. b). In that case the hilt was split to receive the tang, and overlapped the base (No. 211). Some of these daggers diverge still further from the Mycenaean in having the blade with recurving elges which is characteristic of a cutting sword (No. 212; fig. c).

H