Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/540

 370 ON THE USE OF BRONZE CELTS Some of the manuscripts of Hesiod's Works and Days contain drawings of the agricultural implements, which were in use among the ancient Greeks and Romans. Thej have their Greek names placed by the side of each, and the figure represented in the annexed woodcut, has the word o-/xiAa by its side.^ The Koman writers on agriculture expressly mention several of the uses to which these instruments were applied. A small sharp chisel was used to cut out the dead wood from the trunk of the vine ; an instrument of the same form, though of course much more blunt and rough, and yet called by the same name {dolahcUa), was employed to stir up the ground about its roots (Colum., De Re Rust. iv. 24, 26 ; De Arbor. 10). This tool was likewise used to refresh the soil in rose-l3eds (Pallad. iii. 21) ; and the same term, dolahra, is applied to the spud, or small spade, w^hich the ploughman carried with him to destroy weeds. Hence the ancient glossaries translate dolabra, a tool for digging {opv^) ; and Columella [De Re Rust. ii. 2) says, with a view to this object, " Nee minus dolabra, quam vomere, bubulcus utatur." See also Pallad. ii. 3, " Gleba? dolabris dissipandce." The subject receives additional light from a remark of Mr. Sorterup in his " Descriptive Catalogue of the Northern Anti(piities in the Copenhagen Museum" (Copenhagen, 1846). When he is speaking of those bronze celts, which he calls " Palstaves," and which belong to the fourth group in Mr. Du Noyer's classification, he mentions some which are broader and flatter than the rest, and says that they strongly resemble a tool which the Icelanders still use in the cultivation of their fields and gardens (p. 24).^ In other ' See Montfiuifon, Pal. Grmca, p. 10; used their celts in digging, they fixed a Hesiodi 0pp. ed. Trineavelli, Venet. 1537, transverse bar of wood or metal ,into the p. cxii. vers, and ed. Loesner, Lips. 177(5, base of tiie shaft, resembling the vangilc, p. 342. which the modern Italians use with their ' See also the " Guide to Northern Ar- long spade, {vanifja,) and on which the chaeoliKjy^^ edited by the Karl of Elles- labourer places liis foot in oi-der to thrust mere, London, Ui48, p. 60. It is there the blade into the ground, stated that the so-called " palstaves," which In cases where the Latins spoke of were "shaped like a large chisel widened hreuhiny through a wall, using the verbs at the edge, and made to be inserted into perfrinfjere, 2>crrumj)ere, as in the above a cleft handle which was made fast with extracts from Curtius and Tacitus, the a leathern band," "are still used under Greeks and the Hebrews spoke of (//(/^w^ the same appellation in Iceland as a sort through it. See Thucyd. ii. 3 ; .(Eneas of pick or crow." Tact. c. 32 ; Job, xxiv., 16; Ezek. viii. 8, It is probable that when the Romans xii. 5, 7, 12; Matt. vi. 19, 20, xxiv. 43 ;