[3398] Agricola, 35-6.

[3399] See W. Smith, Dict. of Greek and Rom. Ant., 3rd ed., i, 560.

[3400] Monumenta Germaniae Hist.—Iordanis Getica, ed. Th. Mommsen, 1882, ii, 15—bellum inter se ... saepius gerunt, non tantum equitatu vel pedite, verum etiam bigis curribusque falcatis, &c.

[3401] M. Théodore Reinach (Rev. celt., x, 1899, pp. 123-30) points out that the testimony of Frontinus (C. Caesar Gallorum falcatas quadrigas eadem ratione palis defixis excepit inhibuitque [Strat., ii, 3, § 18]), if it is genuine, is negatived by Caesar’s silence, and that it is probably an interpolation; that it may be inferred from a passage in Martial (O iucunda, covinne, solitudo, | Carruca magis essedoque gratum | Facundi mihi munus Aeliani, &c. [xii, 24]) that a covinnus was simply ‘un cabriolet attelant à deux’; that Arrian (Ars tactica, 19) expressly distinguished British war-chariots from scythed chariots; and that neither Polybius, nor Livy, nor Diodorus Siculus, nor Dion Cassius ever describe the war-chariots of the Celts as scythed, although they often mention them. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (La civilisation des Celtes, pp. 339-41) quaintly argues that the silence of Caesar can be explained by the assumption that scythed chariots, being as dangerous to friends as to foes, were only used exceptionally.

[3402] A. Nicaise, L’époque gaul. dans le dépt de la Marne, 1884, pp. 23-4. Cf. Rev. celt., x, 1889, pp. 233-6, and L’Anthr., xiii, 1902, p. 66.

[3403] Pitt-Rivers (Excavations in Cranborne Chase, iii, 109) is ‘almost tempted to suggest’ that a scythe blade, which he found at Woodyates, ‘may be one of the war scythes which were attached to the [British] chariots, as mentioned by Strabo.’ But Strabo (xvii, 3, § 7) does not say that the Britons had scythed chariots, but the Pharusii and Nigretes of Mauritania.

[3404] p. 342.

[3405] The diameters of the British chariot-wheels that have been found vary between 2 ft. 11 in., and 2 ft. 4 ½ in.

[3406] J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam, Crania Britannica, ii, pl. 6 and 7, pp. 2-3, 6; J. Evans, Anc. Bronze Implements, pp. 134-5.

[3407] This discovery proves that Arrian (Ars tactica, 19) and Dion Cassius (lxxvi, 12, § 3) were right in saying that British chariot-horses were small. Cf. p. 152, supra. For further details of the discoveries of British chariot-wheels, axles, &c. (by which various quaint conjectures in von Göler’s Gall. Krieg, 1880, p. 156, n. 3, are stultified), see Archaeologia, xxi, 1827, pp. 41-2; W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, pp. 454-7; and a valuable article by Canon Greenwell, a proof of which he has kindly sent to me, and which, I presume, will be published in vol. lx of Archaeologia.