The inside edge has been preserved from days immemorial by the Abyssinian Sword;[825] an exaggerated sickle or diminutive scythe. It reappears in various parts of Africa, as shown by Barth’s Travels (chap. ii. 37 &c.). His ‘Danísko,’ which he translates ‘hand-bill,’ is used by the people of a highly interesting province—‘Adamáwa.’ The general weapon in the neighbourhood is the ‘goliyo’ or bill-hook of the Marghi, and the Njiga of the Baghirmi. It is a heavy and clumsy ‘Khopsh’ of the boomerang type.[826] [Illustration: FIG. 961.—THE DANÍSKO.] The inside edge characterises, to a certain extent, the Albanian yataghan, and the Flissa of the Kabáil (Kabyles); and it is thoroughly well developed in the formidable Korá or Kukkri of the Gurkha or Nepaulese mountaineers, whose edge swells out to a half-moon. The Mycenæ finds do not enlighten us upon the subject of the Ἄορ and other forms of the Greek Sword. We know nothing of the Thracian Ῥομφαία, the Rumpia of Gellius (x. 25), which the A. V.[827] translates ‘Sword.’ Most writers hold it to be a Thracian lance, like the European ‘partisan;’ and Smith’s ‘Dictionary of Antiquities’ describes it as a long spear resembling the Sarissa, with a Sword-like blade. This comes from Livy (xxxi. 39), who tells us that in woodlands the Macedonian phalanx was ineffectual on account of its _prælongæ hastæ_, and that the Rhomphæa of the Thracians was a hindrance for the same reason. But in modern Romaic usage it denotes the flammberg (_flamberge_), or that form of the wavy blade which the Church places in the hands of the angelic host. It is always carried by ‘Monseigneur Saint Michel, the Archangel, the first knight who in the quarrel of God battled with the Dragon, the old enemy of mankind, and drove him out of heaven.’[828] Mycenæ supplied no specimen of the χελιδὼν (_gladius Chelidonius_), the broad blade with a bifurcated swallow-tailed point. It is mentioned by Isidore (xviii.) and by Origen (chap. vi.); and I have alluded to it in Chapter VII. We are unable to specify the shape of the Athenian Κνήστεις (_Knesteis_) or the Lacedæmonian ξυίναι (_Xyinæ_), which Xenophon calls ξυήλαι (_Xuelæ_). They may have been, to judge from their use, thick cut-and-thrust daggers, in fact _Coupe-Choux._ Nor do we know what kind of blade was carried by the Xystophori (ξυστοφόροι) in addition to the _Xyston_: the latter was either the footman’s spear (δόρυ) or the horseman’s lance; in the ‘Iliad,’ as has been seen, it is a long pole studded with iron nails. [Illustration: FIG. 262.—GREEK XIPHOS (Jähns).]