Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/37

12 two thousand years. The pike, the bow, the mace, the axe, are abandoned. The only ancient weapon that has not been thrown aside is the sword; and that has been doubled in length, and used in quite other ways than the Greek and Roman use.

There is a close relationship between the history of the sword and that of boxing.

Both Greek and Roman used the short sword (average of about twenty inches) undoubtedly as a stabbing weapon—as distinct from a cutting weapon. The only weapon obviously used for cutting among the ancients was the curved sword of the Lacedæmonians and the Irish, specimens of which can be seen in the Royal Irish Academy Museum, and which almost exactly resembled the present scimetar of the Persians.

All the gladiatorial sword fights of the Romans were with the short, straight sword, like a Scottish claymore; and when the hapless loser threw up his hands and the people shouted "Hoc Habet!" (" He has got it!") they knew that the victor had driven his straight weapon between his opponent's ribs.

But with the northern conquest of Rome the use of the straight sword, or rather the use of the point as the principal means of attack, practically disappeared for over a thousand years, and when