DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0262
ARMS AND WAR 211
The glimpses we catch of the primitive Homer accord
with the testimony of our monuments, and the monuments
agree with our knowledge of other races at a
primitive stage of culture. We are in particular other pi-imi-
reminded of the early Germans as Tacitus pic-
tures them.1 " But few use swords or long lances. They
carry a spear with a narrow and short head, but so sharp and
easy to wield that the same weapon serves, according to cir-
cumstances, for close or distant conflict. As for the horse-
soldier, he is content with a shield and spear; the foot-sol-
diers also scatter showers of missiles, each man having several
and hurling them to an immense distance — being naked
or lightly clad with a little cloak. There is no display
about their equipment; their shields alone are marked with
very choice colors. A few only have corselets, and just one
or two here and there a metal or leathern helmet."
The Roman historian, drawing from the life, has here
given us an ethnic portraiture in singular harmony with
that we draw from the monuments of the Mycenaean age.
The Germans, like the Celts and Slavs, have no defensive
armor but the shield — the great, broad, rectangular scutum
shaped like a door (Qvpeog, Plutarch calls it), which covered
the whole man. " Very slowly did the custom of protect-
ing the body from the missiles of the enemy by means of
close-fitting armor spread through the North, despised as it
was at first by barbaric courage."2 As the Germans go
the slaughter of the suitors gives abundant occasion] ; and none occurs in the
Doloneia, which revels in minute descriptions of every other sort of armor.
The panoply is repeatedly referred to as consisting of helmet, shield and spear,
with no allusion to tfie 6rf>pri£. Ares himself, who as war-god should wear the
typical armor, lias no breastplate in E 855 or O 125. Aias never wears one,
nor Idomeneus, nor Sarpedon, nor Glaukos. Thus the argument from silence
is exceedingly strong." — Walter Leaf, Class Rev., ix. 55.
1 Germania, c. vi. tr. Church and Brodribb.
2 Schrader-Jevons, Prehistoric Antiquities, p. 231.
The glimpses we catch of the primitive Homer accord
with the testimony of our monuments, and the monuments
agree with our knowledge of other races at a
primitive stage of culture. We are in particular other pi-imi-
reminded of the early Germans as Tacitus pic-
tures them.1 " But few use swords or long lances. They
carry a spear with a narrow and short head, but so sharp and
easy to wield that the same weapon serves, according to cir-
cumstances, for close or distant conflict. As for the horse-
soldier, he is content with a shield and spear; the foot-sol-
diers also scatter showers of missiles, each man having several
and hurling them to an immense distance — being naked
or lightly clad with a little cloak. There is no display
about their equipment; their shields alone are marked with
very choice colors. A few only have corselets, and just one
or two here and there a metal or leathern helmet."
The Roman historian, drawing from the life, has here
given us an ethnic portraiture in singular harmony with
that we draw from the monuments of the Mycenaean age.
The Germans, like the Celts and Slavs, have no defensive
armor but the shield — the great, broad, rectangular scutum
shaped like a door (Qvpeog, Plutarch calls it), which covered
the whole man. " Very slowly did the custom of protect-
ing the body from the missiles of the enemy by means of
close-fitting armor spread through the North, despised as it
was at first by barbaric courage."2 As the Germans go
the slaughter of the suitors gives abundant occasion] ; and none occurs in the
Doloneia, which revels in minute descriptions of every other sort of armor.
The panoply is repeatedly referred to as consisting of helmet, shield and spear,
with no allusion to tfie 6rf>pri£. Ares himself, who as war-god should wear the
typical armor, lias no breastplate in E 855 or O 125. Aias never wears one,
nor Idomeneus, nor Sarpedon, nor Glaukos. Thus the argument from silence
is exceedingly strong." — Walter Leaf, Class Rev., ix. 55.
1 Germania, c. vi. tr. Church and Brodribb.
2 Schrader-Jevons, Prehistoric Antiquities, p. 231.