According to history, the Greek infantry Sword was a straight two-edged blade, rather broad, and of equal width from hilt to point, which was of bevelled shape. For cavalry they preferred the sabre or cutting weapon.[829] Iphicrates (B.C. 400), when improving arms and armour, must have found spear and Sword too short, for he ‘doubled the length of the spear and made the Swords also longer’ (Diod. Sic. xv. 144; Corn. Nepos, xi.). Plutarch (in ‘Lycurg.’) tells us that a man in the presence of Agesilaus jeered at the Spartan blade, which measured only fourteen to fifteen inches long, saying that ‘a juggler would think nothing of swallowing it’;[830] whereto the great commander replied, ‘Yet our short Swords can pierce our foes.’ And when a bad workman complained of his tool, the Spartan suggested with dry heroism, ‘You have only to advance a pace.’ Dodwell[831] relates that an iron blade found in a tomb at Athens was two feet five inches long, including its handle of the same metal. Most of our museum specimens, both of bronze and iron, are of fair average dimensions. That of Mayence measures nineteen and a half inches (_a_ fig. 265), and that of the Museum of Artillery thirty-two. The Pella blade in the K. Antiquarium, Berlin, is only twenty-one centimètres, including four for the heft. [Illustration: FIG. 263.—GALLO-GREEK (60 cents. long).] [Illustration: FIG. 264.—GALLO-GREEK.] [Illustration: FIG. 265.—MAYENCE BLADE.] [Illustration: FIG. 266.—GALLO-GREEK BLADE AND SHEATH.] The Swords called Gallo-Greek,[832] with bronze blades and sheaths (figs. 263, etc.), are of moderate length—twenty-five inches. Pausanias[833] alludes to perhaps a shorter weapon (ταῖς μαχαίραις τῶν Γαλατῶν). And we are told that when Manlius invaded Galatia he found the Swords were _prælongi gladii_.[834] The Greek fashion of carrying the Sword apparently varied with the times, and, perhaps, with the length of the weapon: it is easy to draw a dagger from the right, but awkward to unsheathe a full-sized blade. Some writers make the Greeks carry the weapon on the right, and others on the left: Homer seems purposely to leave his description vague, e.g.:— Ἢ ὅγε φάσγανον ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος (or σπασσάμενος) παρὰ μηροῦ. Drawing the grided dirk fro’ the sheath which hung by his thigh-side.[835]