Toast cheese or bacon, though it were
To bait a mousetrap ’twould not care.
There was a very elegant sort of knives among the Athenians, adorned with ivory handles, delicately carved with the figures of animals, among which was that of a crouching lioness.[[890]] For this purpose the ivory was frequently stained of different colours, as pink, or crimson, or purple, according to the fancy of the workman. Knife-handles were sometimes also made of the roots of the lotos,[[891]] which, no doubt, took a fine polish and were beautifully clouded. Their scissors, bodkins, sailmakers’ needles, common needles, pins,[[892]] and other articles of this description, would seem to have been manufactured with much neatness.
But the most flourishing trade in Greece was probably that of the armourer,[[893]] which, at almost every period of her history, was in constant request. Many, probably, of the useful arts owed much of the progress they made to the passion of the Greeks for arms, which led them industriously to study and invent whatever could add to their splendour or efficiency. We need not now go back to the times when sticks and stones and pointed reeds formed the national weapons.[[894]] Among the very first steps in civilisation were improvements in the art of self-defence; for, wherever men have found it necessary to create property, they have felt it to be equally so to invent weapons for protecting themselves in the enjoyment of it. Accordingly the Greeks, long before the birth of history, had surrounded themselves by numerous instruments of destruction, and learned to cover their bodies with armour infinitely varied in materials and workmanship.
Upon none of their weapons, however, did they bestow greater attention than on the sword, which if it did not, as among certain barbarians, constitute one of the objects of their worship,[[895]] was in most cases their inseparable companion through life, and descended with them even to the grave. Thus we find, that, when Cimon opened, at Scyros, the grave of Theseus, the national hero of Attica, he found beside the skeleton a spearhead and sword of brass.[[896]] Their blades were of many different shapes and dimensions: they had the long, sharp, double-edged rapier; the short cut and thrust; the crooked scimitar, the sabre, and the broad-sword.[[897]] These were generally of the finest steel, highly polished, and sometimes damaskened exactly like those blades afterwards manufactured at Damascus. The sheath was sometimes of ivory, sometimes of gold or silver or tin or other inferior metal.[[898]] To the first-mentioned substance we have an allusion in a saying of Diogenes, who on hearing a handsome young man make use of low language, exclaimed: “How shameless! to draw forth a sword of lead from a sheath of ivory.”[[899]] The hilts were often extremely superb, of costly materials, and wrought in the most fanciful shapes. We read, for example, of sword-handles studded or inlaid with gold, or even composed entirely of that metal, or of silver.[[900]] Ivory too, and amber,[[901]] and terebinth,[[902]] polished and black as ebony, and a variety of other woods and substances, stained black with nut-gall,[[903]] were employed for this purpose. The father of Demosthenes, who kept a large manufactory of arms, left behind him a considerable quantity of ivory and gall-nuts[[904]] which he had purchased as well for his own use as to supply other armourers in a smaller way. Of daggers there were various kinds, some of a larger size, worn suspended on the thigh with the sword, as the hunting knife was by the Persian youth; others much smaller, which seem to have been carried about concealed under the armpit, as is still the fashion in the East. To this practice Socrates alludes in his conversation with Polos of Agrigentum,[[905]] on the power possessed in states by tyrants, whom he compares to one who should go forth into the marketplace with an enchiridion concealed about him, and for that reason fancy it in his power to take away every man’s life, because he could undoubtedly kill any one he pleased.
Next in importance perhaps was the manufacture of javelins and spears.[[906]] Of the former, the heads,[[907]] light though sometimes broad, were mounted on slender ashen shafts shod with iron, or on the long Cretan reed[[908]] which abounded in the marshes about Haliartos in Bœotia. These javelins, in more modern times, were furnished with a looped thong, by which when the darter had missed his aim, they could be drawn back.[[909]] The best kind were supposed to be manufactured in Bœotia. Spear-shafts were likewise sometimes of ash,[[910]] but more frequently of cornel wood,[[911]] and occasionally, as in the case of the Macedonian sarissa, eighteen feet long. Like the javelin, the spear also was shod sharp with iron, in order the more easily to be fixed upright in the earth, when soldiers slept abroad in the fields.[[912]] This part of the iron-work, which was hollow and received the shaft into it, is said to have been shaped like a lizard, doubtless represented as holding the point of the handle in its mouth. Projections resembling legs extended on both sides, designed to prevent the spear from sinking too deep into the ground. In the lances of the cavalry there was, as some suppose, a small notch to receive the point of the horseman’s foot when mounting his steed. The spear-head, generally of iron or steel, was among the Arab allies of Xerxes formed of goat’s horn, fashioned like the iron of a lance.[[913]]
The bows[[914]] of the ancients were most commonly composed of horn, tipped with gold or other metal at either end. Among the barbarous nations there were those who manufactured them of cane or palm-branches, or even of the long stem of the date.[[915]] The bowstring was of thong or horse-hair. Reeds generally constituted the shafts of their arrows,[[916]] which were headed with iron or copper, or hard pointed stones, as those of the Arabs in the army of Xerxes, who employed for this purpose the same stones wherewith they engraved their seals.[[917]] Arrows were frequently winged with eagles’ feathers, and tinged at the point with poison.[[918]] In sieges they were often armed with fire.[[919]]
Besides the above, there were several other implements of destruction. The Greeks made use of the club, the battle-axe, and the sling.[[920]] And a tribe of barbarians, once mentioned in history, depended entirely on their daggers, and a noosed rope of twisted thongs,[[921]] which they used for entangling and overthrowing man or horse, much in the same manner as the lasso is now employed in the Pampas of South America.
If we turn now to their armour, we shall find that they displayed in its manufacture the greatest possible skill, taste, and ingenuity. Their helmets, cuirasses, shields, cuisses, and greaves, were made of polished steel, or brass, or tin, sometimes curiously figured, and inlaid with metals of many different colours, and polished to an exceeding brightness,[[922]] sometimes adorned with representations in relief. Frequently they went cased in shirts of mail, composed of innumerable small metallic plates, lapping over each other so as to resemble the scales of fishes. Occasionally the opulent appeared on the field of battle in golden armour,[[923]] though this piece of ostentation was chiefly confined to the barbarians.[[924]] The armourers’ craft, however, seems to have gone on improving in proportion as the courage of the nation deteriorated, until at length, in Macedonian times, armour of enormous weight, and, literally, impenetrable, came into use. Thus Zoilos manufactured for Demetrios Poliorcetes two coats-of-mail,[[925]] of a steel so hard, that the surface could scarcely be grazed by an arrow discharged from a catapult. The whole suit weighed no less than one hundred and thirty pounds, exactly twice as much as an ordinary suit of armour.
Helmets[[926]] were manufactured of numerous materials. First, in the ruder ages, they were in reality nothing more than so many close skull-caps made of the skins[[927]] of otters or water-dogs, with the hair on,[[928]] or foxes, or weasels, or goats, or bulls, or lions. But as the arts of civilisation improved, metal casques were soon substituted for these primitive defences, some of which, of wrought steel, were highly polished, and shone like burnished silver. That of Alexander was manufactured by Theophilos.[[929]] The helmet consisted of a variety of parts: as, first, the casque itself, inlaid with brass and iron,[[930]] which enclosed and defended the head, the front brim projecting over the forehead; the vizor, which dropped over the whole face; the strap, often richly embroidered or studded with jewels,[[931]] passing under the chin; and the ridge, or cone, on the summit, from which rose the plumes, or crest.[[932]] This crest, double, treble, or even quadruple, according to the taste or fancy of the wearer, sometimes consisted of long drooping ostrich feathers,[[933]] sometimes of horse-hair, either black or dyed of different colours, which, trembling and floating over the warrior’s head, appeared to augment his stature while it added to the terror of his aspect. King Pyrrhos, we are told, wore upon his helmet the horns of a goat, symbolical of the power of Macedon;[[934]] and the Asiatic Thracians flanked their crests with the horns and ears of an ox in brass.[[935]] To break the force of blows from clubs or heavy battle-axes, the crown of the helmet was thickly lined with sponge or soft wool.[[936]] Mention is likewise made of helmets of plaited cord of wood and leather,[[937]] and the skins of horses’ heads, retaining the ears and the mane.[[938]]