SAGA EIS AND SECURIS.
[To Tar Enrroa or TEO " 6ezcreroa."] Sia,—Can any of your olseeical readers give me any information on the following point? In the dnabasis, Lib. IV., cap. iv., para. 18, a description is given of the equipment of a prisoner captured by a scouting party, which inoludes a weapon termed "sagaris," described as being "such as the Amazons use." Horace (Carm. IV., ode 4), speaking of the victories of Drusna in the Tirol, mentions that the mountaineers carried the "securis of the Amazons," saying that he is unable to say from whence they derived the custom. Herodotus also mentions the use of the " sagarlis " by the Scythian. and there is little difficulty in understanding how tribes like those of the Tirol and Caucasus, who must equally have fought and traded with those nomads, acquired the habit of using the same weapons The similarity of the two names "sagaris " and "securis " is, however, interesting. The former is given a Persian origin by Liddell and Scott, whilst the latter is, I believe, usually attributed to the same root as " seeo." Is there any etymological connexion? The Amazonian origin of the weapon ascribed to it by two writers of such different dates as Xenophon and Horace, and founded on information drawn from two such widely separated localities, is also, I think, worthy of note.—I am, Sir, an.,
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