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.
Fig. 263.—Gallo-Greek (60 cents. long).
Fig. 264.—Gallo-Greek.
Fig. 265.—Mayence Blade.
