The Homeric Sword has five names. The first is _Chalcos_ (copper, and perhaps base metal), used like the Latin _ferrum_. The second is _Xiphos_, a word still generic in Romaic poetry and prose; the diminutive being _Xiphidion_. The third is _Phásganon_, pronounced Phásg_h_anon,[752] and the fourth is _Aor_. Thrace,[753] a famous manufactory of art-works even in early ages, produced the best and largest of these blades; we find a Thracian Xiphos, possibly of steel, ‘beautiful and long,’ in the hands of the Trojan prince Helenos;[754] and Achilles at the funeral games offers as a prize a Thracian Phásganon, fair and silver-studded.[755] This hero[756] was drawing his mighty Xiphos[757] from the sheath (κολεός, _culeus_, _vagina_, scabbard) to assault Agamemnon, when at Athene’s instance, ‘still holding his heavy hand upon the silver hilt, he thrust back the great Sword into the scabbard.’ The Xiphos with silver studs or bosses occurs in sundry places,[758] and one, with a gold hilt and a silver scabbard fitted with golden rings, belongs to Agamemnon. Dr. Schliemann explains the epithet Πάμφαινον[759] by the line of gold bosses lying near one of the Swords; they were broader than the blade and covered the whole available space along the sheath. Thus the Homerid’s Helos (ἥλος), usually rendered ‘stud’ or ‘nail,’ was applied to the bosses, or buttons, that break the mid-rib or that stud the blade near the handle.[760] Paris slings on a copper silver-studded Xiphos.[761] Menelaus, with the same weapon, strikes off his enemy’s Phalos—the helmet-ridge bearing the Lóphos-tube which confines the Hippouris or horse-tail crest. Patroclus, when arming himself,[762] hangs from his shoulders the silver-studded Xiphos of copper (ξίφον ἀργυρόηλον, χάλκεον); and Achilles has a large-hilted Xiphos.[763] Peneleos and Lycon,[764] having missed each other with the spear, ran on with the Xiphos, which is here again called Phásganon; but Lycon’s weapon broke at the hilt (καυλός = _caulis_), and the Xiphos of Peneleos ‘entered, and only the skin retained it; the head hung down and the limbs were relaxed.’ On the shield of Achilles[765] Hephaistos[766] figures youths wearing the golden Xiphos slung from silver belts. [Illustration: FIG. 240.—TWO-EDGED BRONZE SWORD AND ALABASTER KNOB (MYCENÆ).]