The Dacians, especially of Dacia Trajana, Hungary, and Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia, are known to us chiefly by the bas-reliefs on the Trajan Column. It was built by that emperor, who, like Hadrian, followed in the footsteps of Divus Cæsar, to commemorate the conquests of a.d. 103–104; and it dates three years before his death in a.d. 114. The Dacian Sword was somewhat sickle-shaped, with an inner edge, like the oldest Greek and its model, the Egyptian Khopsh. A Dacian Sword on the trophy belonging to Dr. Gregorutti, of Papiriano, is a curved sabre without a cross-bar.
I have elsewhere noticed the Thracian Sword. Dr. Evans[937] mentions the fragment of a remarkable bronze blade from Grecian Thera; it has a series of small broad-edged axes of gold, in shape like conventional battle-axes, inlaid along the middle between two slightly projecting ribs. The same author, speaking of the beautiful bronze Sword in the Berlin Museum, reported to have been found at Pella in Macedonia, mentions the suspicion that it may belong to the Rhine Valley.[938]
Ancient Illyria has transmitted the Roman Gladius to comparatively modern ages. Bosnian tombs of Slavs, Moslem, and Christian, show the short straight thrusting Sword, with simple cross-bar and round pommel. It looks as if it had been copied from some classical coin.
THE OLD KELTIC SWORD.
The ancient cemetery at Hallstadt in the Salzkammergut, occupied by the Danubian-Keltic Alanni or Norican Taurisci, is especially interesting for two reasons. It shows the Bronze Sword synchronous with the Iron, and it proves that the change of metal involved little of alteration in the form and character of the weapon. This, however, was to be expected, as both were adapted for the same purpose—the thrust, not the cut. Of the twenty-eight long Swords, six were of bronze, nineteen of iron, and three with bronze hefts and iron blades; there were also forty-five short Swords, iron blades with bronze or ivory handles. The blade, about one mètre long, is leaf-shaped, two-edged, and bevel-pointed. The small and guardless grip of 2·5 centimètres, when made of bronze, meets the blade in a hollow crescent, like the British Sword in the Tower, and is fastened with metal rivets. The pommel is either a cone of metal or a crutch with a whorl ending either arm.
Fig. 285.—Danish Scramasax. (Ninth Century, Copenhagen.)
Fig. 284.—Scramasax from Hallstadt. (Jähns.)
