DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61301#0328
29O
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
Galatians ” to whom St. Paul wrote “ in so large letters ”
with his own trembling hand. But we have to seek them
now before civilization and Christianity have done their
work, now, when tempted by rumours of rich plunder they
pour down upon Greece and Asia Minor in savage,
ruthless hordes. Their wild, uncouth aspect seems to
have struck the Greeks with panic. Pausanias and
Diodorus devote whole chapters to the minute descrip-
tion of their extraordinary appearance (31). They fight
naked we are told, wild-beast fashion, with no science, no
strategy, trusting only in an untaught ferocity, and carry-
ing no defensive armour but their long narrow shields. In
stature they are taller and broader than other men; their
skin is tough and leathery from constant exposure ; their
hair, bristling by nature, they make still more horrid by
plastering it with sticky salves and brushing it off the
forehead like a lion’s mane, or like the unkempt hair of
Satyrs ; they shave the beard, and wear a long mous-
tache ; they have thick lips, high cheek bones, broad
skulls, pointed chins, shaggy overhanging eyebrows.
To the Greeks they must have seemed the very incar-
nation of barbarian savagery. Nor was their desperate
courage less alarming. Rather than fall into the captor’s
hands they would slay themselves, their wives, the weak
and wounded of their own band. Reckless of their own
and other’s lives some, dying themselves, would draw the
dagger from their wounds and hurl at the foe.
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
Galatians ” to whom St. Paul wrote “ in so large letters ”
with his own trembling hand. But we have to seek them
now before civilization and Christianity have done their
work, now, when tempted by rumours of rich plunder they
pour down upon Greece and Asia Minor in savage,
ruthless hordes. Their wild, uncouth aspect seems to
have struck the Greeks with panic. Pausanias and
Diodorus devote whole chapters to the minute descrip-
tion of their extraordinary appearance (31). They fight
naked we are told, wild-beast fashion, with no science, no
strategy, trusting only in an untaught ferocity, and carry-
ing no defensive armour but their long narrow shields. In
stature they are taller and broader than other men; their
skin is tough and leathery from constant exposure ; their
hair, bristling by nature, they make still more horrid by
plastering it with sticky salves and brushing it off the
forehead like a lion’s mane, or like the unkempt hair of
Satyrs ; they shave the beard, and wear a long mous-
tache ; they have thick lips, high cheek bones, broad
skulls, pointed chins, shaggy overhanging eyebrows.
To the Greeks they must have seemed the very incar-
nation of barbarian savagery. Nor was their desperate
courage less alarming. Rather than fall into the captor’s
hands they would slay themselves, their wives, the weak
and wounded of their own band. Reckless of their own
and other’s lives some, dying themselves, would draw the
dagger from their wounds and hurl at the foe.