It may be thought that we have dwelt too long upon these cups; but the sequel of our history will show why we have examined them with an attention that, perhaps, neither their number nor their beauty may appear to justify. They are first met with in Assyria, but they must have existed in thousands among the Greeks and Italiots. Light, solid, and easy to carry, they must have furnished western artists with some of their first models. As we shall see, they not only afforded types and motives for plastic reproduction, but, by inciting them to find a meaning for the scenes figured upon them, they suggested myths to the foreign populations to whom they came. § 5. _Arms._ We shall not, of course, study Assyrian arms from the military point of view. That question has been treated with all the care it deserves by Rawlinson and Layard.[431] From the stone axes and arrow-heads that have been found in the oldest Chaldæan tombs, to the fine weapons and defensive armour in iron and bronze, used by the soldiers of Nineveh in its greatest years, by the cavalry, the infantry, and the chariot-men of Sargon and Sennacherib, the progress is great and must have required many long centuries of patient industry. In Assyria no trade can have occupied more hands or given rise to more invention than that of the armourer. For two centuries the Assyrian legions found no worthy rivals on the battlefields of Asia; and, although their superiority was mainly due, of course, to qualities of physical vigour and moral energy developed by discipline, their unvarying success was in some degree the result of their better arms. Without dwelling upon this point we may just observe that when war is the chief occupation of a race, its arms are sure to be carried to an extreme degree of luxury and perfection. Some idea of their elaboration in the case of Assyria may be gained from the reliefs and from the original fragments that have come down to us. [Illustration: FIGS. 220, 221.--Chariot poles; from a bas-relief.] It was from the animal kingdom that the Assyrian armourer borrowed most of the forms with which he embellished the weapons and other military implements he made. Thus we find the chariot poles ending in the head of a bull, a horse, or a swan (Figs. 220 and 221).[432] Elsewhere we find a bow no less gracefully contrived; its two extremities are shaped into the form of a swan’s head bent into the neck.[433] [Illustration: FIGS. 222, 223.--Sword scabbards, from the reliefs; from Layard.]