astonishment of the ear abated, which every one grows familiar with in a
short time, I look upon it as a weapon of very little execution, and hope
we shall one day lay it aside. That missile weapon which the Italians
formerly made use of both with fire and by sling was much more terrible:
they called a certain kind of javelin, armed at the point with an iron
three feet long, that it might pierce through and through an armed man,
Phalarica, which they sometimes in the field darted by hand, sometimes
from several sorts of engines for the defence of beleaguered places; the
shaft being rolled round with flax, wax, rosin, oil, and other
combustible matter, took fire in its flight, and lighting upon the body
of a man or his target, took away all the use of arms and limbs. And
yet, coming to close fight, I should think they would also damage the
assailant, and that the camp being as it were planted with these flaming
truncheons, would produce a common inconvenience to the whole crowd:

"Magnum stridens contorta Phalarica venit,
Fulminis acta modo."

["The Phalarica, launched like lightning, flies through
the air with a loud rushing sound."--AEneid, ix. 705.]

They had, moreover, other devices which custom made them perfect in
(which seem incredible to us who have not seen them), by which they
supplied the effects of our powder and shot. They darted their spears
with so great force, as ofttimes to transfix two targets and two armed
men at once, and pin them together. Neither was the effect of their
slings less certain of execution or of shorter carriage:

["Culling round stones from the beach for their slings; and with
these practising over the waves, so as from a great distance to