Note 3 — Chapter I · PREAMBLE: ON THE ORIGIN OF WEAPONS.

Frederick the Great declared that an army moves like a serpent, upon its belly. According to Plutarch, the snake was held sacred because it glides without limbs, like the stars. Fire, says Pliny (Nat. Hist. vii. 57, and xiii. 42), was first struck out of the stone by Pyrodes, son of Cilix—silex, or flint, the match of antiquity; and hence it was called πῦρ; and Vincent de Beauvais explains: ‘Silex est lapis durus, sic dictus eo quod ex eo ignis exiliat.’ It is the Sanskrit शिल (shila), a stone, both words evidently deriving from a common root, shi or si. The ‘religiosa silex’ of Claudian (Rapt. Proserp. i. 201) was probably a block of stone like those representing Zeus Kasios, the Paphian Venus, not to mention the host of stones worshipped in Egyptian and Arab litholatry, and the old Palladium of Troy transported to Rome. ‘Prometheus,’ who taught man to preserve fire in the ferule, or stalk, of the giant fennel, was borrowed by the Hindus and converted into Pramantha. ‘Pramantha,’ however, is the upright fire-stick, first made by Twastu, the Divine Carpenter, who seems to have been a brother of Ἑστία, the Hearth; and hence it has been held to be the male symbol. According to Plato, πῦρ (whence pyrites = sulphuret of iron), ὕδωρ, and κύων are Phrygian words; and evidently they date from the remotest antiquity. Pir (sun-heat) is found even in the Quichua of Peru, and enters into the royal name ‘Pirhua.’ The French and Belgian caverns prove that striking fire by means of pyrites was known to primitive man.