The Skythian bow, long and elastic, bending either way, like those of the Arabians (Herod. vii. 69). The connection of Ares with the wild, fierce tribes of Thrakia and Skythia meets us again and again in the literature of Greece. He was the only God to whom they built temples (_ibid._ iv. 59). They sacrificed human victims to an iron sword as his more appropriate symbol (iv. 62). The use of iron for weapons of war came to the Greeks from them (_Seven ag. Th._ 729; _Prom._ 714). Footnote 412: It may be worth while to compare the method adopted by the three dramatists of Greece in bringing about the recognition of the brother by the sister. (1) Here the lock of hair, in its peculiar colour and texture resembling her own, followed by the likeness of his footsteps to hers, prepares the way first for vague anticipations, and then the robe she had made for him, leads to her acceptance of Orestes on his own discovery of himself. To this it has been objected, by Euripides in the first instance (_Electra_, vv. 462-500), that the evidence of the colour of the hair is weak, that a young man's foot must have been larger than a maiden's, and that he could not have worn as a man the garment she had made for him as a child. It might be replied, perhaps, that there are such things as hereditary resemblances extending to the colour of the hair and the arch of the instep, and that the robe may either have been shown instead of worn, or, being worn, have been adapted for the larger growth. (2) In the _Electra_ of Sophocles the lock of hair alone convinces Chrysothemis that her brother is near at hand (v. 900), while Electra herself requires the further evidence of Agamemnon's seal (v. 1223). In Euripides (v. 527), all proof fails till Orestes shows a scar on his brow, which his sister remembers. Footnote 413: The saying is probably one of the widespread proverbs which imply parables. The idea is obviously that with which we are familiar in the Gospel “grain of mustard seed.” Here, as in the “kicking against the pricks” of Acts ix. 5, xxvi. 14, and _Agam._ v. 1604, we are carried back to a period which lies beyond the range of history as that in which men took note of the analogies and embodied them in forms like this. Footnote 414: So in the _Odyssey_ (xix. 228), Odysseus appears as wearing a woollen cloak, on which are embroidered the figures of a fawn and a dog. Footnote 415: An obvious reproduction of the words of Andromache (_Il._ vi. 429). Footnote 416: The words seem to imply that burning alive was known among the Greeks as a punishment for the most atrocious crimes. The “oozing pitch,” if we adopt that rendering, apparently describes something like the “_tunica molesta_” of Juvenal. (_Sat._ viii. 235.) Hesychios (s. v. Κωνῆσαι) mentions the practice as alluded to in a lost play of Æschylos. Footnote 417: