Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/85

70 ‘They deliver their spoils to their servants, all besmeared with blood, to be carried before them in triumph, they themselves, in the meantime, singing a triumphant pæan. And as the chief of their spoils they fasten the heads of those they have killed over the doors of their houses, as if they were wild beasts taken in hunting. But the heads of the most important persons among the slain they carefully deposit in chests, embalming them with cedar oil, and showing them to strangers; they glory and boast that though large sums of money have been offered to themselves, their fathers or their ancestors, for the heads, yet they have refused to part with them (cf. Strabo, Bk. IV. ch. iv. § 5, quoting from Poseidonius).

‘Their garments are very strange; for they wear coats of mixed colours, interwoven here and there with flowers of divers sorts; and hose which they call Bracæ. Likewise they make their bodices of plaited-work, joined together with laces on the inside, and chequered with many pieces of work like flowers; those they wear in winter are thicker, those in summer more slender.

‘Their defensive arms are a shield, proportionable to the height of a man, ornamented with their own ensigns. Some of them carry the shapes of beasts in brass, artificially wrought, as well for defence as for ornament. Upon their heads they wear helmets of brass, with large pieces of raised work upon them, to be admired by beholders; for they have either horns of metal joined to them, or the shapes of birds and beasts carved upon them.

‘They have trumpets after the barbarian manner, which in sounding make a horrid noise, to strike a terror fit and proper for the occasion. Some of them wear iron breastplates, hooked, but others, content with what arms nature has afforded them, fight naked. For swords, they use a long and broad weapon called Spatha, which they hang across the right thigh by iron or brazen chains. Some gird themselves over their coats with belts adorned with gold and silver. For darts they cast lances, whose iron shafts are a cubit or