Q. Claudius Quadrigarius in Aulus Gellius,[966] noticing the ‘monomachy’ of Manlius Torquatus with the Gaul, declares that the latter was armed with two gladii. Livy describes the same duel in his best style. The Roman, of middling stature and unostentatious bearing, takes a footman’s shield and girds on a Spanish Spatha—arms fit for ready use rather than show. The big Gaul, another Goliah, glittering in a vest of many colours, and in armour stained and inlaid with gold, shows barbarous exultation, and thrusts out his tongue in childish mockery. The friends retire and leave the two in the middle space, ‘more after the manner of a theatrical show than according to the law of combat.’ The enormous Northerner, like a huge mass threatening to crush what was beneath it, stretched forth his shield with his left hand and planted an ineffectual cut of the Sword with loud noise upon the armour of the advancing foe. The Southron, raising his Sword-point, after pushing aside the lower part of the enemy’s shield with his own, closed in, insinuating his whole body between the trunk and arms of his adversary, and by two thrusts, delivered almost simultaneously at belly and groin, threw his opponent, who when prostrate covered a vast extent of ground. The gallant victor offered no indignity to the corpse beyond despoiling it of the _torques_, which, though smeared with blood, he cast around his neck. Polybius,[967] recounting the battle at Pisæ, where Aneroestes, king of the Gæsatæ,[968] aided by the Boii, the Insubres, and the Taurisci (Noricans, Styrians), was defeated by C. Atilius (A.U.C. 529 = B.C. 225), shows the superiority of the Roman weapons. He describes the Machairæ of the Gauls ‘as merely cutting blades ... altogether pointless, and fit only to slash from a distance downwards: these weapons by their construction soon wax blunt, and are bent and bowed; so that a second blow cannot be delivered until they are straightened by the foot.’ The same excellent author,[969] when describing the battle of Cannæ (B.C. 216), tells us that Hannibal and his Africans were armed like Romans, with the spoils of the preceding actions; while the Spanish and Gaulish auxiliaries had the same kind of shield, but their Swords were wholly unequal and dissimilar. While the Spanish Xiphos was excellent both for cutting and thrusting, the long and pointless Gallic Machæra could only slash from afar. Livy[970] also notices the want of point and the bending of the soft and ill-tempered Keltic blades.