Next in importance perhaps was the manufacture of javelins and spears.[906] Of the former, the heads,[907] light though sometimes broad, were mounted on slender ashen shafts shod with iron, or on the long Cretan reed[908] which abounded in the marshes about Haliartos in Bœotia. These javelins, in more modern times, were furnished with a looped thong, by which when the darter had missed his aim, they could be drawn back.[909] The best kind were supposed to be manufactured in Bœotia. Spear-shafts were likewise sometimes of ash,[910] but more frequently of cornel wood,[911] and occasionally, as in the case of the Macedonian sarissa, eighteen feet long. Like the javelin, the spear also was shod sharp with iron, in order the more easily to be fixed upright in the earth, when soldiers slept abroad in the fields.[912] This part of the iron-work, which was hollow and received the shaft into it, is said to have been shaped like a lizard, doubtless represented as holding the point of the handle in its mouth. Projections resembling legs extended on both sides, designed to prevent the spear from sinking too deep into the ground. In the lances of the cavalry there was, as some suppose, a small notch to receive the point of the horseman’s foot when mounting his steed. The spear-head, generally of iron or steel, was among the Arab allies of Xerxes formed of goat’s horn, fashioned like the iron of a lance.[913] ----- Footnote 906: Poll. i. 143. Footnote 907: Spearheads were sometimes poisoned with the juice of the dorycnion. Plin. xxi. 81. Footnote 908: Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 11. 13. Plut. Lysand. § 28. Dioscor. i. 94. Footnote 909: Poll. i. 136. x. 143. Footnote 910: Sibthorp. Flora Græca, tab. 4. Footnote 911: Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 12. 1, seq. Footnote 912: Poll. i. 136. x. 143. Footnote 913: Herod. vii. 69. ----- The bows[914] of the ancients were most commonly composed of horn, tipped with gold or other metal at either end. Among the barbarous nations there were those who manufactured them of cane or palm-branches, or even of the long stem of the date.[915] The bowstring was of thong or horse-hair. Reeds generally constituted the shafts of their arrows,[916] which were headed with iron or copper, or hard pointed stones, as those of the Arabs in the army of Xerxes, who employed for this purpose the same stones wherewith they engraved their seals.[917] Arrows were frequently winged with eagles’ feathers, and tinged at the point with poison.[918] In sieges they were often armed with fire.[919] ----- Footnote 914: On the Scythian bow, see Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 15; on the Cretan, Poll. i. 45. 149; on arrows, Athen. x. 18. Footnote 915: Poll. i. 244. Herod. vii. 64, 65. 69. Footnote 916: