History, even written by their enemies, shows that the Ancient Germans were an eminently military and martial people. The bridal present consisted of a caparisoned horse, a shield, a spear, and a Sword. At their festivals, youths danced naked before the Sword-god, amidst drawn blades and couched spears. Their lives were spent in hunting and warfare. Despite their barbarism, a thorough topographical knowledge of their bogs and bushes, mountains and forests, enabled them to inflict more than one crushing defeat upon the civilised Romans. The highly-developed Teutonic brain also invented a form of attack which suited them thoroughly. It was theirs, as the Phalanx, borrowed from the Egyptians, became Greek, and its legitimate outcome, the Legion, was Roman; and, subsequently, the Crescent, adopted by the Kafirs, was Moslem. ‘Acies,’ says Tacitus,[1001] ‘per cuneos componitur.’ The Keil or Wedge was not unknown to the Greeks and Romans;[1002] but they used it subordinately, whilst with the Germans the ‘Schweinskopf,’ the ‘Svinfylking’ of the Scandinavians, was national: they attributed its invention to Odin, the country god. The apex was composed of a single file,[1003] and the numbers doubled in each line to the base; while families and tribesmen, ranged side by side, added moral cohesion to the tactical formation.[1004] It lasted a thousand years; and it played a conspicuous part in the Battle of Hastings, where the Normans attacked in wedge, and finally at Swiss Sempach. During its long life it underwent sundry modifications, especially the furnishing of the flanks with skirmishers; evidently the Wedge was admirable for the general advance against line or even column; but it was equally ill-calculated for a retreat. Most writers now consider the Cimbri a Keltic people, and possibly congeners of the Cymry or Welsh. Yet in the second century B.C. we find them uniting, as Pliny tells us,[1005] with the German Teutones or Teutoni (Thiudiskô, Teutsh, Deutsch). The ‘Kimpers’ of Italian Recoaro, the supposed descendants of the invaders who escaped the Sword of Marius (B.C. 102), undoubtedly spoke German. [Illustration: FIG. 292.—DANISH SWORD. (Bronze; 85 centimètres long. Copenhagen.)] Plutarch[1006] describes the Cimbrian Sword as a large heavy knife-blade (μεγάλαις ἐχρώντο καὶ βαρείαις μαχαίραις), They had also battle-axes, and sharp, bright _degans_ or daggers: the latter were highly prized, and their cuneiform shape caused them to be considered symbols of the deity,[1007] As usual amongst barbarians, the weapons of the chiefs had terrible names, so as to strike even the hearer with fear.[1008] Their defensive weapons were iron helmets, mail coats, and white glittering shields. Eccart holds that these arms and armour must have been taken from the foe: their barrows, in Holstein and elsewhere, having produced only stone-celts and spear-heads with a few copper Sword-blades, but no iron.