At the time of the Roman invasion we find, of course, the Spaniards using iron weapons. I shall not tax the patience of my readers by enumerating all these weapons. Their names are many, and the comments and descriptions of old authors which refer to them are constantly at variance. Nevertheless, the sword most popular with the Celtiberians at the period of the Roman conquest seems to have been a broad, two-handed weapon with a point and double edge, and therefore serviceable both for cutting and for thrusting. Another of the Celtiberian swords, called the _falcata_, was of a sickle shape. It terminated in the kind of point we commonly associate with a scimitar, and which is found to-day in Spanish knives produced at Albacete. One of these swords, in good condition, is in the National Museum. It has a single edge, upon the concave side of the blade, and measures rather less than two feet. Other weapons in common use among the Celtiberians were an iron dart--the _sannion_ or _soliferrea_; the javelin; the lance--a weapon so immemorially old in Spain that patriotic writers trace its origin to the prehistoric town of Lancia in Asturias; and the _trudes_ or _bidente_, a crescent blade mounted upon a pole, mentioned by Strabo and Saint Isidore, and identical with the cruel weapon used until about a quarter of a century ago for houghing coward cattle in the bull-ring. [Illustration: XXXIX CREST OF JOUSTING HELMET (_Royal Armoury, Madrid_)] Thus, when the Romans entered Spain the natives of this country were experienced in the use of arms, and made their own from such materials as their own soil yielded. Their tempering was excellent, for Diodorus Siculus tells us that they had already discovered the secret of burying the metal in order that the moisture of the earth might eat away its baser portions. Besides the ancient Bilbilis in Aragon, a Spanish city famous for her faultless tempering of implements and weapons was Toledo. Martial,[103] the most illustrious son of Bilbilis, has sung the praises of the one; less celebrated poets, such as Gracio Falisco, of the other.[104] Even the armourers of Rome were found to be less skilful and successful swordsmiths than the Spaniards;[105] and so, before the second Punic War, the model or the models of the Spanish sword had been adopted by the Roman army. [103] "_Gerone qui ferrum gelat._" This river, the purity and coldness of whose waters lent, or so it is supposed, its virtues to the steel, rolls past the walls of Calatayud, and is called in later ages the Jalon. [104] "_Imo Toletano præcingant ilia cultro._" [105] "_Romani patriis gladiis depositis Hannibalico bello Hispaniensium assumpserunt ... sed ferri bonitatem et fabrica solertiam imitari non potuerunt._"--Suidas.