Herod. vii. 61. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 11. 11. Dioscor. i. 114. The Parthian kings, we are told, addicted themselves with pride to the forging and sharpening of arrow-heads: it may be presumed, because the bow was the national weapon of their country. Plut. Demet. § 20. The arrow-heads of the Indians were of unusually large dimensions. Plut. Alexand. § 63. That the arrow-heads of the ancient Scythians were of bronze appears from the following relation of Herodotus. Ariantas, a king of Scythia, desirous of ascertaining the number of his subjects, commanded them, on pain of death, to bring him each an arrow-head. His people obeyed the order; and when he had satisfied himself respecting their number, he ordered a huge vessel to be cast with the bronze, which, in the age of the Father of History, still existed at a place called Exampæos, between the Borysthenes and the Hypanis. It was six inches thick, and contained six hundred amphoræ. iv. 81. Footnote 917: Herod. vii. 69. Footnote 918: Phot. Bib. 445. 21. Poll. i. 138. Footnote 919: Poll. i. 42. ----- Besides the above, there were several other implements of destruction. The Greeks made use of the club, the battle-axe, and the sling.[920] And a tribe of barbarians, once mentioned in history, depended entirely on their daggers, and a noosed rope of twisted thongs,[921] which they used for entangling and overthrowing man or horse, much in the same manner as the lasso is now employed in the Pampas of South America. ----- Footnote 920: Id. i. 149. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 181. Footnote 921: Poll. ii. 30. Herod. vii. 85. ----- If we turn now to their armour, we shall find that they displayed in its manufacture the greatest possible skill, taste, and ingenuity. Their helmets, cuirasses, shields, cuisses, and greaves, were made of polished steel, or brass, or tin, sometimes curiously figured, and inlaid with metals of many different colours, and polished to an exceeding brightness,[922] sometimes adorned with representations in relief. Frequently they went cased in shirts of mail, composed of innumerable small metallic plates, lapping over each other so as to resemble the scales of fishes. Occasionally the opulent appeared on the field of battle in golden armour,[923] though this piece of ostentation was chiefly confined to the barbarians.[924] The armourers’ craft, however, seems to have gone on improving in proportion as the courage of the nation deteriorated, until at length, in Macedonian times, armour of enormous weight, and, literally, impenetrable, came into use. Thus Zoilos manufactured for Demetrios Poliorcetes two coats-of-mail,[925] of a steel so hard, that the surface could scarcely be grazed by an arrow discharged from a catapult. The whole suit weighed no less than one hundred and thirty pounds, exactly twice as much as an ordinary suit of armour. ----- Footnote 922: Herod. ix. 21. i. 15. Footnote 923: Id. i. 215.