CHAPTER XVIII.
TORQUES, BRACELETS, RINGS, EAR-RINGS, AND PERSONAL ORNAMENTS.
Although some of the pins described in the last chapter were destined for ornament rather than for use, they cannot as a class be regarded as purely ornamental. The collars and armlets, to which the present chapter is to be devoted, must, I think, be considered as essentially ornaments, though possibly in some cases affording protection to the neck and arms. The modern epaulette was originally intended for the protection of the shoulder, though now, as a rule, little better than an ornament.
The torque, or torc, takes its name from the Latin torques, which again is derived à torquendo. This word torques was applied to a twisted collar of gold or other metal worn around the neck. Among the ancient Gauls gold torques appear to have been abundant, and to have formed an important part of the spoils acquired from them by their Roman conquerors. About 223 b.c.,[1446] when Flaminius Nepos gained his victory over the Gauls on the Addua, it is related that instead of the Gauls dedicating, as they had intended, a torque made from the spoils of the Roman soldiers to their god of war, Flaminius erected to Jupiter a golden trophy made from the Gaulish torques. The name of the Torquati, a family of the Manlia Gens, was derived from their ancestor, T. Manlius,[1447] having in b.c. 361 slain a gigantic Gaul in single combat, whose torque he took from the dead body after cutting off the head, and placed it around his own neck.
On some of the denarii of the Manlia family[1448] the torque forms a circle round the head of Rome on the obverse. Two interesting papers “On the Torc of the Celts,” by Dr. Samuel Birch, will be found in the Archæological Journal.[1449]
Although these gold torques in many instances undoubtedly belong to the Bronze Period, they are sufficiently well known to antiquaries to render it needless for me here to enter into any minute description of them. The commonest form presents a cruciform section, so that the twist is that of a four-threaded screw, and at either end there is a plain, nearly cylindrical bar, turned back so as to form a kind of hook. I have a fine example of this kind of torque, found with a bronze anvil (Fig. 217) and other bronze instruments and weapons at Fresné la Mère, Calvados. A similar but smaller gold torque was found near Boyton, Suffolk,[1450] which is said to have had the extremities secured together by two small penannular rings of gold, embracing the two terminal hooks.
Fig. 466.—Wedmore. ½
One 42 inches long was found on Cader Idris;[1451] others in Glamorganshire;[1452] at Pattingham, Staffordshire;[1453] and in several other parts of Britain. Some fine examples of these funicular torques of gold, as well as of other varieties of the same kind of ornament, are in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy at Dublin.[1454]