Homer’s fifth is the Μάχαιρα, hung by a single belt close to the Sword-sheath, and used for sacrifices and similar uses. It afterwards became a favourite with the Lacedæmonians; it was then a curved blade, as opposed to the Xiphos or uncurved. Again, in Plutarch and other writers, the Machæra seems to mean—like Spatha—a long straight blade. Homer does not mention the κοπὶς, but Euripides uses it[777] in conjunction with Machæra.
THE SWORD IN HOMER.
We must not expect to see the Sword so frequently drawn in the ‘Odyssey,’ which, pace Mr. Sayce, appears later than the ‘Iliad.’ We note in it more character and less movement; more unity and less digression, and, finally, less fighting and more amenity and civilisation. But ‘Othyssefs,’ the ‘man with whom many were wroth,’ has been a soldier, and he does not forget his old trade. Besides, commerce was still armed barter, and voyaging was enlivened by piracy. Copper, or base metal, continues to be the basis of metallurgy, and the hero owns it in quantities, besides gold, silver, and electrum. Euryalus tells Alcinous that he will appease the guest (Ulysses) with an all-copper brand (ἄορ παγχάλκεον), whose hilt (κώπη) is silver, and whose scabbard is of newly sawn ivory.[778] The suitors would slay Telemachus with the sharp copper.[779] In the final struggle, the catastrophe of the poem, Eurymachus, drawing his sharp Sword of copper, calls upon his friends to do the same, and to shield themselves with the tables against the fast-flying shafts. In the ‘Frogs and Mice,’ the spear is a good long needle; the ‘all-copper work of Mars.’[780]
Wrought iron is prominent in the ‘Odyssey’ as in the ‘Iliad.’ Athene-Mentes[781] sails over the dark sea to Temesa (Temessus) for copper, and also brings back shining iron (αἴθωνα σίδηρον). Menelaus does the same.[782] The ‘cruel iron’ balances the ‘cruel copper.’[783] The ‘long-pointed iron,’ so fatal to the Trojans, is apparently the spear, which began the duels. Prudent Penelope places the bow and the grey iron (πολιόν τε σίδηρον) ready for the suitors;[784] and the Palace contains store of wrought iron (πολύκμητος σίδηρος).[785] The axe (πέλεκυς), sharpened on both sides,[786] is of copper; but the hatchets, through whose rings or handle-holes (στειλειὴ) the copper-tipped arrows must be shot, are of iron.[787] ‘Iron,’ we are told, ‘of itself draws on a man’[788] (Tacit. ‘Hist.’ i. 80), a sentiment repeated elsewhere in the same words.[789] And the Sword is alluded to in more than one place without the material being specified.[790]
In the ‘Hymn to Hermes,’[791] Mercury the god ‘vivisects’ the mountain tortoise with a scalpel of grey iron (γλυφάνῳ πολιοῖο σίδηρου). The Glyphanus was a carving-tool, a chisel, or a knife for reed-pens.
The dispute whether the so-called Homeric poems were written or were orally preserved still awaits sentence. We twice find the word γράφειν, but its primary meaning is ‘to mark,’ ‘to cut,’ and, lastly, ‘to write.’ Thus Ajax,[792] when inscribing (ἐπιγράψας) the lot, might simply have scraped upon it ‘Ajax his mark.’ Yet there is nothing against writing, and there is much in its favour. For instance—
Γράψας ἐν πίνακι πτυκτῷ θυμοφθόρα πολλά (σήματα).[793]
‘Having on tablet writ’ can mean nothing else. Pliny[794] accepts this writing given to Bellerophon on codicilli or tablets.[795] Horace, who was not only a great poet, but a masterful genius, mentions writing in Homer’s day, and makes the early inscriptions laws cut into wood (leges incidere ligno). Herodotus[796] tells us that he himself saw Cadmeian (that is, old Phœnician) characters; and the tradition is that Danaus introduced letters from Egypt, which, I repeat, produced the one alphabet the world knows. Dr. Schliemann (‘Troy,’ Appendix by the Editor) found at seven and a half mètres (twenty-five feet) below the surface of the so-called Homeric Troy, many short inscriptions in ‘ancient Cypriote characters,’ and as many Greek epigraphs were discovered at Mycenæ. Evidently the ‘Iliad’ and the ‘Odyssey’ might have been cut in rude Phœnician characters upon wooden tablets or scratched on plates of lead. Professor Paley would date the literary Homer from b.c. 400; but that is a different phase of the subject.
Herodotus is the outcome of Homer, or, if you please, of the Homerids and of Æschylus. The work of this prose rhapsodist, besides being a history, a logography, a record of travel, and a study of ethnology and antiquity, is at once an Epic and a Drama. It is epic in the heroic and romantic tone; in the unity of action, a mighty invasion-campaign; and in the frequent digressions which aid, if they retard, the one primary object. It is a tragedy in the scenic displays (the review of Xerxes, for instance), in the action of Destiny, the circle of Necessity, the Nemesiac hypothesis, and the jealousy of the gods (Deus ultor); while the catastrophe is represented in ‘Calliope’ by the destruction of the Persian host, the home-return of the victors, and the lurid scenes at the close. It ends with an epigram, a kind of Vos plaudite: ‘The Persians ... chose rather to dwell in a churlish land and exercise lordship, than to plough the plains and be slaves of other men’—a sentiment which would ‘bring down the house’ in the Highlands. All is written with a distinct purpose, and the sensible chronology is derived from Egypt. There is something poetical, too, in the enormous numbers. The magnificent-impossible host of five millions two hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred and twenty men,[797] and the one thousand three hundred and twenty-seven triremes to be defeated and destroyed by a handful of nine thousand Greeks and three hundred and seventy-eight ships, is highly imaginative. The philosophic and sceptical modern mind will hardly be satisfied till the details are confirmed by the contemporary evidence of inscriptions, for instance, the Behistun, which is a running commentary upon ‘Thalia.’ Hellas ever was, and is, and will be, by virtue of her mighty intellect and her preponderating imagination, ‘Græcia mendax.’ Eastern history tells us nothing about the marvellous Persian invasion. We may fairly believe that there was a great movement headed by some powerful Satrap,[798] who determined to crush the wasp’s nest to the West; but we can go no farther. It is simply incredible that the Great King, who at the time was Lord Paramount of the civilised world, should lead to so little purpose millions of warriors—men, the flower of Asia, whose portraiture is the most favourable of any we possess, and whom the Father owns to have been not a whit inferior in prowess to the Greeks.[799] And for this view I duly apologise to ‘Herodotus and his shade.’
The poet-historian gives an interesting description of the Sword amongst the Scythians whom the Greeks and Persians call Sacæ (Shakas) or Nomades.[800] To judge from Hindú legend—for instance, that of Shak-ari, ‘foe to the Shakas,’ a title of the historical Vikramáditya (a.d. 79)—the Sacæ were ‘Turanians’—Mongols or Tartars. When he makes them worship Ares-Mars, he probably derives the idea from their adoring the emblem of war, an iron dirk (ἀκινάκης σιδήρεος).[801] ‘A blade of antique iron,’ he tells us, ‘is placed on the summit of every such mound (a flat-topped pile of brushwood three furlongs square), and serves as the image of Mars; yearly sacrifices are made to it.’ The victims were cattle, horses, and one per cent. of war-prisoners. ‘Libations of wine are first poured upon their heads, after which they are slaughtered over a vase, and the vessel is then carried up to the top of the pile and the blood poured upon the Akinákes.[802] In the Scythian graves of Russian Cimmeria (the Crimea) and of Tartary, the Swords are mostly bronze. Dr. M‘Pherson, however, found one of iron (1839) in the great tomb of Kertch, the old Milesian Panticapæum, so called from its river, Anticapes;[803] it was a short dagger-like thrusting blade, resembling the old Persian, with mid-rib and curved handle. In the days of Attila, a Sword, supposed to be one of the ancient Scythian weapons alluded to by the Greek, was accidentally found, and was made an object of worship.[804] Janghíz (Genghis) Khan when raised to the throne repeated this sacrificial observance, which, however, can scarcely be called a ‘Mongolic custom.’[805] It seems common to the Sauromatæ (northern Medes and Slavs), the Alans, the Huns, and the tribes that wandered over the Steppes.