That these pretended armorials were the mere figments of the writers who record them, no one doubts. In these ingenious falsehoods we recognize a principle similar to that which produced the 'pious frauds' of enthusiastic churchmen, and to that which led self-duped alchemists to deceive others. In their zeal for the antiquity of arms--a zeal of so glowing a character that no one who has not read their works can estimate it--they imagined that they must have existed from the beginning of the world. Then, throwing the reins upon the neck of their fancy, they ascribed to almost every celebrated personage of the earliest ages, the ensigns they deemed the most appropriate to his character and pursuits. The feeling inducing such a procedure originated in a mistake as to the antiquity of chivalry, of which heraldry was part and parcel. Feelings unknown before the existence of this institution are attributed to the heroes of antiquity. '_Duke_ Joshua' is presumed to have been only another Duke William of Normandy, influenced in war by similar motives and surrounded by the same social circumstances in time of peace. Chaucer talks of classical heroes as if they were knights of some modern order; and Lydgate, in his =Troy Boke= invests the heroes of the Iliad with the costume of his own times, carrying emblazoned shields and fighting under feudal banners: "=And to behold in the knights shields The fell beastes. "Where that he saw, In the shields hanging on the hookes, The beasts rage. "The which beastes as the storie leres Were wrought and bete upon their banners Displaied brode, when they schould fight.="[28] The fabulous history of the science might be fairly deduced to the eleventh century, as the Saxon monarchs up to that date are all represented to have borne arms. Yet as there are not wanting, even in our day, those who admit the authenticity of those bearings, their claims will be briefly referred to in the next chapter. In justice to the credulous and inventive armorists of the 'olden tyme,' the reader should be reminded that warriors did, in very antient times, bear various figures upon their shields. These seem in general to have been engraved in, rather than painted upon, the metal of which the shield was composed. The French word _escu_ and _escussion_, the Italian _scudo_, and the English _escocheon_, are evident derivations from the Latin _scutum_, and the equivalent word _clypeus_ is derived from the Greek verb [Greek: gluphein], TO ENGRAVE. But those sculptured devices were regarded as the peculiar ensigns of one individual, who could change them at pleasure, and did not descend hereditarily like the modern coat of arms. A few references to the shields here alluded to may not be unacceptable. Homer describes the shield of Agamemnon as being ornamented with the Gorgon, his peculiar badge; and Virgil says of Aventinus,[29] the son of Hercules--