The highly-developed Teutonic brain also invented a form of attack which suited them thoroughly. It was theirs, as the Phalanx, borrowed from the Egyptians, became Greek, and its legitimate outcome, the Legion, was Roman; and, subsequently, the Crescent, adopted by the Kafirs, was Moslem. ‘Acies,’ says Tacitus,[1001] ‘per cuneos componitur.’ The Keil or Wedge was not unknown to the Greeks and Romans;[1002] but they used it subordinately, whilst with the Germans the ‘Schweinskopf,’ the ‘Svinfylking’ of the Scandinavians, was national: they attributed its invention to Odin, the country god. The apex was composed of a single file,[1003] and the numbers doubled in each line to the base; while families and tribesmen, ranged side by side, added moral cohesion to the tactical formation.[1004] It lasted a thousand years; and it played a conspicuous part in the Battle of Hastings, where the Normans attacked in wedge, and finally at Swiss Sempach. During its long life it underwent sundry modifications, especially the furnishing of the flanks with skirmishers; evidently the Wedge was admirable for the general advance against line or even column; but it was equally ill-calculated for a retreat.
Most writers now consider the Cimbri a Keltic people, and possibly congeners of the Cymry or Welsh. Yet in the second century b.c. we find them uniting, as Pliny tells us,[1005] with the German Teutones or Teutoni (Thiudiskô, Teutsh, Deutsch). The ‘Kimpers’ of Italian Recoaro, the supposed descendants of the invaders who escaped the Sword of Marius (b.c. 102), undoubtedly spoke German.
Fig. 292.—Danish Sword.
(Bronze; 85 centimètres long. Copenhagen.)
Plutarch[1006] describes the Cimbrian Sword as a large heavy knife-blade (μεγάλαις ἐχρώντο καὶ βαρείαις μαχαίραις), They had also battle-axes, and sharp, bright degans or daggers: the latter were highly prized, and their cuneiform shape caused them to be considered symbols of the deity,[1007] As usual amongst barbarians, the weapons of the chiefs had terrible names, so as to strike even the hearer with fear.[1008] Their defensive weapons were iron helmets, mail coats, and white glittering shields. Eccart holds that these arms and armour must have been taken from the foe: their barrows, in Holstein and elsewhere, having produced only stone-celts and spear-heads with a few copper Sword-blades, but no iron.
The Scandinavian Goths (Getæ) and Vandals were held by the ancients to have been originally one and the same people.[1009] Their Bronze Age is supposed to have begun about b.c. 1000, and to have ended in Sweden at the opening of the Christian era. They used short Sword-blades, which made them, unlike the Kelts, formidable in close combat, and the Goths claimed to have introduced the spear[1010] to cavalrymen. Identical weapons were used by the Lemovii of Pomerania and their kinsmen the Rugii. The latter lived on the southern shores of the Baltic about Rugenwald, and this place, one of the focuses of the Stone Age,[1011] preserves, like the Isle of Rugen, the old barbaric name. The Danes mostly affected the long-handed securis Danica (hasche Danoise). The Fenni (Finns) of Tacitus had neither Swords nor iron: they used only bows and stone-tipped arrows.[1012] The bronze Sword from Finland ‘with flanged hilt-plate and eight rivet-holes,’[1013] must have found its way there.[1014]
THE OLD BRITISH SWORD.
We now proceed to the Keltic population of the ‘Home Islands of Great Britain,’ and find there evident offshoots of the Gauls. We have no metal remains of the pre-Keltic ‘aborigines’ (Iberians? Basques? Finns?) except their palæoliths; and the history of our finds commences with the two distinct Keltic immigrations advocated by Professor Rhys, the Goidels (Gauls) who named Calyddon or Caledonia (Gael doine or Gael dun = forest district) and the Brythons.
The authentic annals of England, says Mr. Elton[1015] begin with the days of Alexander the Great, that is, in the fourth century b.c.; the next historical station being the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons[1016] in the middle of the fifth century a.d. He does not trace any continuity of race in Kelt or Saxon with the palæolithic men of the Quaternary Age, or with the short dark-skinned neolithics who succeeded them. The two were followed by a big-boned, round-headed, fair-haired family which brought with them a knowledge of bronze and with it the Sword.