[968] Simply meaning Spearmen. Gaisate = hastatus from Gaisa (gæsum), the Irish gai, any spear. Isidore (Gloss.) translates ‘Gessum’ by ‘hasta vel jaculum Gallicè, βολίς.’ The word survives in the French guisarme, gisarme, &c. The Gæsum probably had a kind of handle and a defence for the hand.
[969] Lib. xxii. cap. 46.
[970] Lib. xxxviii. 21.
[971] The naked bodies and narrow shields are well shown in the battle-scene on the Triumphal Arch of Orange (Jähns, Plate 29).
[972] Borghesi (Tonini’s Rimini, &c., p. 28 and Tables A 3 and B 6) makes one of these gladii a ‘Kopis.’
[973] Lib. v. cap. 30.
[974] The cavalry was organised in the Trimarkisia (three marka, or horses) composed of the ‘honestior’ (afterwards the knight), and the clients (squires). The host that attacked Hellas, under Brennus, had 20,400 horsemen to 752,000 foot.
[975] The pattern is almost universal. Moorcroft found it in the Himalayas, and I bought ‘shepherd’s plaid’ in Unyamwezi, Central Africa.
[976] The first use of tattooing was to harden the skin, a defence against weather. The second (and this we still find throughout Africa) was to distinguish nations, tribes, and families.
[977] ‘Galli bracchas deposuerunt et latum clavum sumpserunt.’ Diodorus Sic. (v. 30) has βράκας; in Romaic βράχι; in Italian braghe, Germ. Brüche. Our word ‘breech-es’ or ‘Breek-s’ is a double plural; ‘breek’ being the plur. of the A. S. broc, a brogue. Aldus and other old writers mistranslate the bracchæ by plaid, or upper garment. Jähns more justly renders sagum by plaid (p. 431).