Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Eosphoros and Morning star as a Weopon.

Eosphoros(the dawn-bearer)in Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, Hesperus (Greek Ἓσπερος Hesperos) (Roman equivalent: Vesper cf. "evening", "supper", "evening star", "west"[1]), the Evening Star is the son of the dawn goddess Eos (Roman equivalent: Aurora) and brother of Eosphorus (Ηωσφόρος Eosphoros "dawn-bearer"; also Φωσφόρος Phosphorus, Lucifer "light-bearer", Iubar), the Morning Star. Hesperus' father was Cephalus, a mortal, while Eosphoros' was the star god Astraios.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eosphorus


The Morning star is Also Weapon.

Morning star from the [now closed] torture museum in Freiburg im Breisgau.

Morning star from the torture museum in Freiburg im Breisgau.

medieval weapon consisting of a spiked club resembling a mace, usually with a long spike extending straight from the top and many smaller spikes around the particle of the head. The spikes distinguish it from a mace, which can have, at most, flanges or small knobs. It was used by both infantry and cavalry; the horseman's weapon had a shorter shaft. The mace, a traditional knightly weapon, developed somewhat independently, became all-metal with heads of various forms, while the morning star retained its characteristic spikes, with a usually wooden shaft, often found in longer two-handed forms measuring up to six feet or more, was popular among footmen.

The morning star first came into widespread use around the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the term is often mistakenly applied to the military flail (fléau d'armes in French and Kriegsflegel in German) which consists of a wooden shaft joined by a length of chain to one or more iron balls or an iron shod wooden bar, in either case with or without spikes (heavy sword pommels have also been used as weights).


Although it is often assumed that the morning star was a crude peasant weapon, that is not entirely correct. There were three types in existence, all differing in quality of workmanship. The first was the well crafted military type used by professional soldiers, made in series by expert weaponsmiths for stocking in town arsenals. The second and much simpler type would have been hand cut by peasant militiamen, rather than turned on a lathe, from wood they had gathered themselves (for which reason forests were often known as "arsenals of God") and fitted with nails and spikes by the local blacksmith. The shaft and head were usually of one piece but sometimes reinforced at the top with an iron band. The third type was decorative in nature, usually short hafted and made of metal (one sixteenth century example being of steel and damascened with inlaid gold and silver, in the Wallace Collection of London).

Two impressive examples of the military type are housed in the museums of Vienna, both from the sixteenth century. The first measures 2.35 m (7' 9") in length including the top spike which is 54 cm (21"). The head is a separate wooden cylinder slipped over the top of the shaft and reinforced with steel bands, with five metal spikes in symmetrical arrangement. The second example has an all steel head of complex craftsmanship with four V-shaped spikes mounted on a long shaft that measures slightly less than two meters in length. A twisted and braided steel bar joins the socket to the base of the top spike. There are also 183 surviving specimens in Graz, made in series and delivered to the arsenal in 1685. They are comparable in length to the previous examples and have three rows of spikes around the head. The wooden shafts of most morning stars of the military type are reinforced with metal langets extending down from the head. Still others can be found in the Swiss arsenals of Lucerne and Zurich.

These types of morning stars are also depicted in medieval art. For instance, one is shown being carried by an armored knight or soldier in the Caesar Tapestries in the Historical Museum of Bern, depicting Julius Caesar's battle against the Germanic leader Ariovistus. These tapestries were woven in Tournai between 1465 and 1470, and taken as plunder from Charles the Bold after one of his defeats during the Burgundian Wars against the Swiss. In the poem Le Chevalier Délibéré written by Olivier de la Marche and first published in 1486, there is an anonymous woodcut depicting a knight carrying a rather simple morning star with spikes mounted in an asymmetrical pattern as well as a flail equipped with a single spiked ball, known in German as a "kettenmorgenstern" which, despite its name, is a type of military flail.

This Is the Morning Stars Connection to Germany.




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