6. We frequently hear in the Poems of the golden studs or buttons which were used as ornamental adjuncts. In many passages we have the silver-studded sword, _xiphos_ or _phasganon arguroëlon_ (_Il._ II. 45, III. 334 _et al._). This, I say, is common. We have also studs, or bosses, of gold upon the staff or sceptre of Achilles (_Il._ I. 246), upon the cup of Nestor XI. 632-635: and upon a sword, only once it is true, but then that sword is the sword of Agamemnon, king of gold-abounding Mycenæ (_Il._ XI. 29). On this sword, says the Poet, there were gilt, or golden, bosses; and the expression he uses about them (_pamphainon_) is worthy of note. It is not easy to represent by any one English word. It means not merely shining brightly, but shining all over; that is to say, apparently, all over the sheath to which they were attached, so as to make it seem a shining mass. Is not this precisely what must have been the effect of the line of bosses found lying by the sword in p. 303, which lie closely together, are broader than the blade, and probably covered the whole available space along the sheath of wood, now mouldered away? And is it not now startling, to descend into the tombs with Dr. Schliemann, and to find there lying silently in rows these gold studs or bosses, when the wooden sheaths they were attached to have for the most part mouldered away, but by the very sides of the very swords which they adorned like binding on a book, and of the slight remains of warriors by whom, there need be little doubt, those swords were wielded? "Expende Annibalem; quot libras in duce summo Invenies?"[11] They also appear on the sword-handle knobs. The _helos_ of Homer is commonly rendered a nail or stud, which has a head of small size; but the word probably includes the larger buttons or bosses, which lie in lines along some of the swords. (See on this point pp. 281, 2; 303, 5, 6.)