The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

THE EVOLUTION OF THE LEAF-SHAPED SWORD 85
and the Nordic inhabitants, both of the plain and of the mountains, were good
customers. But being big men, with large hands and accustomed to meet their foes
face to face, they demanded larger and larger daggers, and this demand was met, as
such a demand always is, by an adequate supply. Thus we find these weapons, closely
resembhng those in use in the Mediterranean basin, especially in its western half,
becoming increasingly common in Hungary, and growing to greater and greater
dimensions. Plate IV. shows five daggers found in Hungary: the two first can be
matched both in Greece and Italy and elsewhere in the Mediterranean
region, the third in Italy only, the fourth in the northern part of that
peninsula, while the fifth is rare outside Hungary, and I have only
been able to find one parallel, from Bondo in the Grisons.^
The increased size of the daggers, which in some cases had
grown to enormous proportions, as may be seen in Plate V., made
the weakness at the riveted joint more apparent. The Nordics, fighters
above all else, paid much attention to their weapons, and they set
themselves to discover some way to overcome this difficulty. This led,
as we shall see, to the evolution of the leaf-shaped sword.
During the bronze age there were several types of sword in
use in various parts of the Old World. We have seen how the typical
Mediterranean sword or long dirk developed by slow degrees in the
west from the triangular copper daggers of Crete. In the ^gean and
in Greek lands we find other types, which seem to be derived from
swords of Asiatic origin, and which had an independent development
in Mesopotamia or Egypt ; some, too, may have been derived from the copper daggers
of Cyprus.
FIG. ir.
BRONZE HILT OF
LEAF-SHAPED
SWORD.
But there is one type or group which stands apart from the others. In many
examples the blade narrows rapidly near the butt, then expands slowly till it reaches
its greatest breadth about two-thirds of the way down the blade ; then it narrows
more rapidly, then very quickly to the point. This gives a shape not unlike the leaf
of the lanceolate plantain, a form not uncommon in other leaves ; hence the name
8 B.P. PI. Vll.a. fig. 13 in Trento Museum.
6a