[1030] Evans’s Coins of the Ancient Britons. I have not yet read the work.
[1031] Cæsar (iv. 33): ‘Genus hoc est eis essedis pugnæ;’ and he speaks again (v. 15) of essedarii. The scythe-car was known to Assyria, Jewry (the Faldat of Nahum ii. 3), and Persia, where Xenophon and Plutarch attribute to it the highest importance; even the pole ended in a lance. It became a favourite with all Keltic peoples. At Sentinum (b.c. 296) the Gauls almost defeated the Romans by suddenly throwing on a force of one thousand ‘esseda currusque.’ The Tectosages, when engaged with Antiochus Soter in Phrygia (b.c.), ranged in front of their attack 240 scythe-cars, some with two and others with four horses. Antiochus the Great armed his chariots not only with two scythe blades, but also with lances ten cubits long (?), laterally projecting (Livy, xxxvii. 41). The historian also notices the Arab dromedary-riders, ‘archers who carried their swords four cubits (= 6 feet) long, that they might be able to reach the enemy from so great a height.’ When the Gæsatæ crossed the Alps (b.c. 228) they were accompanied by a vast number of war-cars (Polybius, ii. 4, 5 says 20,000 ἁρμαμάξας καὶ συνωρίδας) which did good service at the battle of Telamon. Ossian’s Fingal offers a long description of the war-car and its uses. Many remains of these two-wheeled vehicles have been found in Keltic Europe (Jähns, pp. 394–96).
[1032] Geog. iii. 6.
[1033] I cannot but attribute to Italian blood the high and aquiline features which distinguish the Briton from the Northern German; the latter has been intimately mixed with the Slav race, as a glance at the Berlinese suffices to show. Portraits of the Cavalier period explain my meaning. In the Hanoverian times the ‘Roundhead’ again came to the fore, and hence the popular ‘John Bull’ portrayed in the pages of Mr. Punch. He is a good working type, but he has not the face to command or to impose.
[1034] Bronze, &c., pp. 286–87. It was found in the river Cherwell and it is now in the Museum at Oxford. The first notice was in the Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vol. iii. 204.
[1035] Ibid. p. 287. The author suggests that it may be foreign.
[1036] Ibid. p. 288.
[1037] I have already referred to the bronze dagger from Thebes, now in the British Museum, with its narrow rapier-like blade and broad flat hilt of ivory.
[1038] Dr. Thurnam considered the tanged dagger more modern than that which was attached by rivets in the base of the blade, and his classification is followed by Dr. Evans, Bronze, &c., p. 222.
[1039] The most perfect form of the bronze rapier is found in Ireland; of this and of the moulds I shall treat in Part II.