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This chapter focuses on sword and scabbards. Swords were important visual objects, larger than most other objects in Bronze and Iron Age Europe, and their shape made them visually striking. Two parts of the sword were especially important in this regard. In the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, the hilt and pommel were often the vehicles for elaborate eye-catching ornament. When a sword was in its scabbard, whether worn at the side of the bearer, hanging on a wall, or placed in the burial chamber, the only parts of the weapon that were visible were the handle and its end. During the Middle and Late Iron Age, the scabbard became especially important as a vehicle for decorative elaboration. Bronze and Early Iron Age scabbards were mostly made of wood, and we do not, therefore have much information about how they were decorated. From the end of the Early La Tène period on, however, swords were long, and scabbards of bronze and iron offered extensive rectangular surfaces for decoration.

Immediately following the slaying of Goliath and Saul's mystifying query about who that young slayer was, David becomes the object of Saul's fear and murderous jealousy, a mini‐drama of cat‐and‐mouse that takes up the last half of I Samuel and Saul's suicide. The contrast between David and Saul continues to be spelled out, implicitly but surely, through various repetitions of narrative detail, most conspicuously the motifs of fear and of sword‐and‐spear use. Still another and striking pattern, to be taken up in the following chapter, occurs in the middle of David's fleeing from Saul, when twice David spares the king's life—and spares, as well, the life of a common fool. The two motifs of this chapter plus the triadic pattern of the next serve to further illustrate just what distinguishes David from Saul. Such advancing clarity, of course, functions also to explain better the mind of God in fastening on David rather than Saul.

This chapter examines the realities of Renaissance combat in France. Sword fighting during the Renaissance was predominantly offensive — it taught how to kill as rapidly and as efficiently as possible. The key to self-defence was to seize the initiative; relentless thrusting and cutting blows prevented the possibility of a counter-attack. The best form of defence is attack — strike first and ask questions later. Without armour combats were likely to be short, and speed and surprise were essential to survival. This is significant because accused under interrogation and supplicants for letters of pardon invariably painted killing as an involuntary act of self-defence. In order to understand the economy of violence, the terminology must be clear to distinguish between battles, encounters, and duels. Paying close attention to the terminology also permits us to study the pace of change in combat techniques and modes of killing.

The festival of Kotunkalur, the ancient capital of Kerala, engages the worshipers with the Goddess of that region described in the Cilappatikaram epic as Kannaki. This Goddess is understood as temperamental, and demands erotic pleasure and blood sacrifices from her devotees. The priests close the temple during the festival because the devotees’ insistence on physical contact with the deity violates the restrictions of the priestly system. The many velicapatu or sorcerers who come to the festival have the power of their ritual swords renewed by having them placed on a sacred spot in the home of the Nair family that manages the temple. On the final day, a member of the ancient kingly lineage arrives and negotiates with the priests and the Nairs on behalf of the worshipers, and it is agreed that the temple will be reopened.

Chapter 1 considers the uncanny agency of weapons in Sophocles’ Ajax, Sophocles’ Philoctetes, and Euripides’ Heracles. On stage, the sword cues audience awareness of the intertextual factors conditioning the hero’s decision-making, forcing a reassessment of the Ajax’s rejection of suicide. His expressed desire to be rid of this weapon, which has brought him only pain and misfortune since the day he received it, gains in poignancy when Ajax is seen holding the weapon itself. A gift to Ajax originally from his enemy Hector, the sword continues to channel the animus of the unresolved duel they fought on Homer’s Trojan battlefield in the seventh book of the Iliad. The bow of Heracles in Philoctetes and the weapons in Euripides’ Heraclesprovide valuable comparanda for the animacy and entanglements of tragic weaponry.

Professional officers who kept abreast of military innovations understood the need to discipline their soldiers and keep them focused on achieving military goals. Armies which foraged and plundered often became involved in secondary wars with local communities, and forfeited the goodwill of those who might offer intelligence and assistance. Regular payment of troops and developed systems of supply obviated the need for plunder, while improved discipline reduced the incidence of mutiny. The articles of war of various British and Irish armies — which were based upon mainland European models — attempted to regulate crimes and depredations by soldiers, generally secured the more humane treatment of prisoners of war, and restrained plundering and atrocities committed against civilian populations. Ireland was an exception to this trend to improve discipline and limit the destructiveness of war. Here, the parliamentary forces, which became captives of their own anti-Catholic propaganda and the determination of Cromwell to achieve total victory, pursued a policy of ‘fire and sword’ and committed atrocities which made the war in Ireland more bitter.

Could ghosts be touched and, if so, were they susceptible to violence? Theological discussion of ghosts usually found in the negative, especially after Trent. But the neoplatonic tradition had long suggested otherwise, especially in the writing of the tenth-century Greek theologian, Michael Psellus. This chapter examines Psellus' reception in sixteenth-century France, and how his heterodox thesis of spiritual corporeality is gradually made subject to revision and reform. Against that background, the chapter then considers two literary instances of violence towards spirits. The first takes us to the battles with spirits imagined and theorised by Panurge in Rabelais's Tiers Livre. Then, in the light of Rabelais's story, and of the grander narrative of changing attitudes to the ghostly encounter charted in the opening section, the last section examines a constellation of similar moments in Ronsard, centred around the poet's celebrated verse translation of Psellus, the ‘Hymne des daimons’

At Luke 22:38, the disciples are presented as saying to Jesus, “Lord, behold, there are two swords”. The significance of the “two swords” (one drawn and the other undrawn) doctrine was debated from time to time in the early Middle Ages. In patristic exegesis, the undrawn and drawn swords are often interpreted as signifying, respectively, spiritual and temporal, or ecclesiastical and lay, power. During the Middle Ages, Luke's remarks about them became a battleground on which many issues relating to regnum and sacerdotium were fought out. This chapter examines certain aspects of William of Ockham's contribution to the debate which raise general hermeneutic issues, centering on the extent to which sound doctrine can rest on spiritual interpretation as opposed to literal declaration. Here, exegesis and politics intersect crucially, with potentially very serious consequences. The focus is on the status of allegory in William of Ockham's Breviloquium on the power of the pope. The argument of the Breviloquium depends heavily on the Bible as a source of authority for what should be believed about the nature of papal power.

This chapter argues that representations of the Japanese sword exhibit that distinctively feminized type of exquisite aesthetics. Feminized, because although Victorians were already interested in swords by the publication in France of Pierre Loti's story Madame Chrysanthème, it was through Anglophone revisions of that story that the play of the sword, as an instrument of internal and external violence, has become most deeply entrenched. This chapter follows the Chrysanthème story's mutation into the Americanized story of Madame Butterfly, the Anglo-Chinese-Canadian auto-Orientalizing revision of the Butterfly stories in the work of Onoto Watanna/Winnifred Eaton, and then to cinema: a Japanese body-horror movie named Audition (1999) and a couple of American blockbusters made by Quentin Tarantino. The particular form of body horror that psychoanalysis refers to as “castration anxiety” inevitably permeates Western concern with the samurai sword. But the chapter shows how such an object as a sword is here understood as both feminine, and feminizing, rather than as a kind of phallic auxiliary.

The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book were the last two animated features to be produced under the supervision of Walt Disney. They were also the first two animated films that included songs written by the Sherman Brothers. Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman were born into a songwriting family and found their first string of successes writing songs for Mouseketeer Annette Funicello. The chapter covers the use of Jazz in “The Bare Necessities” and “I Wan’na Be Like You.” “My Own Home,” which is equal parts work song, lullaby, and siren song, is contextualized in terms of the main theme of The Jungle Book.

The Augustan Revolution that gave birth to the alae and cohorts generated profound changes in Roman society. Unprecedented social stratification coexisted alongside unparalleled social mobility. Into such an environment, where status symbols were constantly being redefined and usurped, came new types of professional soldier with money to spend and power to wield. Analysis of the ways in which military identities were defined is only fruitful when their evolution is reviewed against this wider background. Such identities also reflect the role of individual competition stimulating and responding to the rise and fall of fashions. As noted in Chapter 15, sweeping empire-wide reforms of military equipment are nowhere described in the ancient literature and nowhere apparent in the archaeological evidence. This chapter examines how dress, arms, and other military equipment were used by auxiliary soldiers and their dependants to articulate their status in the changing societies of the provinces.

This chapter begins the third part of the book, which aims to present the belief systems and ritual practices associated with Durgā. Through these beliefs, which conveyed the myth of civilization and imperial kingship for independent rulers to cultivate, the cult made itself meaningful to its adherents. Among beliefs of heroic Śāktism there was, firstly, the belief that a goddess had granted investiture to a king, secondly, the belief that a king defeated in battle would regain power through a goddess, and thirdly, the belief that a goddess was to be worshipped in times of war. These are expressed among various examples of literature from poetry to inscriptions, in versions of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata that include scenes with Durgā aiding Rāma and the Pāṇḍava brothers, thereby showcasing her role in aiding the deserving hero. The chapter turns to the visual symbols and palladia whereby the relationship of king and goddess was made palpable for inhabitants of a kingdom, exploring rituals of goddess-empowered swords, crests, and fortresses, and chariot processions, whereby the protective, triumphant, militaristic and defensive aspects of Durgā's personality were manifested and enlivened within each and every aspect of a medieval city.

This chapter describes the arrival of wuxia pian, or Chinese sword-fighting movies, to Hollywood. It examines Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002) and House of Flying Daggers (2004), focusing on how these films grapple with the larger issues of cultural identity, the politics of Chineseness, and the immense pressure of American and global audience appeal.