129 : 29. Iron swords of the Nordics. Ridgeway, 1, pp. 407 _seq._: “Their chief weapon was a long iron sword; with trenchant strokes delivered by these long swords the Celts had dealt destruction to their foes on many a field. They used not the thrust, as did the Greeks and Romans of the classical period. This is put beyond doubt by Polybius (II, 30) who in his account of the great defeat suffered by the combined tribes of Transalpine Gæsatæ, Insubres, Boii and Taurisci, when they invaded Italy in 225 B. C., tells us that the Romans had the advantage in arms ‘for the Gallic sword can only deliver a cut but cannot thrust.’ Again in his account of the great victory gained over the Insubres by the Romans in 223 B. C., the same historian tells us that the defeat of the Celts was due to the fact that their long iron swords easily bent, and could only give one downward cut with any effect, but that after this the edges got so turned and the blades so bent, that unless they had time to straighten them out with the foot against the ground, they could not deliver a second blow. “‘When the Celts had rendered their swords useless by the first blows delivered on the spears the Romans closed with them and rendered them quite helpless by preventing them from raising their hands to strike with their swords, which is their peculiar and only stroke, because their blade has no point. The Romans, on the contrary, having excellent points to their swords, used them not to cut but to thrust; and by thus repeatedly smiting the breasts and faces of the enemy, they eventually killed the greater number of them.’ (II, 33 and III.)” Further evidence in support of our contention that iron was in use much earlier than is generally admitted, comes from an unexpected quarter. J. N. Svoronos, in a recent book on ancient Greek coinage, entitled _L’Hellénism primitif de la Macédoine, prouvé par la numismatique_, p. 171, remarks: “In the first place, indeed, it is forgotten that some of this information, that which is derived from people of ‘mythical’ times, can be referred not only to the invention of the first money struck in precious metal (gold, electrum, or silver), but even to obelisks of iron, or to cast plinths in the form of copper axes, which, of a determined weight, and legally guaranteed by the state, constituted, already before the XVth century, as we positively know at the present time, the first legal money.” 130 : 2. Keary, _The Vikings in Western Christendom_, chap. XIII; Steenstrup, _Normannerne_. 130 : 4. “Furor Normanorum.” On account of the suffering inflicted by the Vikings and other northern raiders in Europe, a special prayer, _A furore Normanorum libera nos_ was inserted in some of the litanies of the West.