could not have been that of a cavalry soldier at all, because a cavalry soldier would not have been armed with a short sword; and so far from regarding the sword as Roman, "On ne pourroit," he says, "également pas l'attribuer aux Romains, si l'on ne raisonnoit que d'après la matière dont elle est faite."[1] And in the next page he adds, "We are therefore certain, that after the second Punic war the Roman swords were made of iron,"[2]
It is true that five months later he changed his mind, and came to the conclusion that, after all, the bronze swords were Roman; but I cannot consider that much weight should be attached to this opinion, which was in direct opposition to that which he entertained a few months previously.
Finally, Mr Wright cites an instance of a bronze sword found with some Roman coins of Maxentius, who reigned from 306 to 312 A.D. This sword was discovered in a turbary at Piquigny, near Abbeville, in a large boat, which it would seem had been sunk, and in which were several skeletons. The reason for referring this bronze sword to the Roman epoch was the presence in this case, as in the last, of Roman coins. But it is somewhat remarkable that the antiquaries who recorded the discovery attributed so little importance to the presence of these coins that they did not in either case take the trouble to specify the exact position which these occupied with reference to the bronze weapons; in fact they only mention the coins casually, and as it were by an afterthought, in a footnote. I may be pardoned, then, if I do not myself look upon them as being certainly of the same date as the weapons near which they are said to have been discovered. But even if it be admitted that in these two cases bronze weapons were actually discovered near some Roman coins, still, when we consider the great abundance of Roman coins on the one hand, and of bronze weapons on the other, we cannot be
