ere we find ourselves in full Roman parlance, and the word
signified certain terms which described admission into military service,
the release from this service, and the degradation of the legionary.
When St. Martin left the militia, his action was qualified as _solutio
cinguli_, and at all those who act like him the insulting expression
_militaribus zonis discincti_ is cast. The girdle which sustains the
sword of the Roman officer--_cingulum zona_, or rather _cinctorium_--as
also the baldric, from _balteus_, passed over the shoulder and was
intended to support the weapon of the common soldier. "You perceive
quite well," say our adversaries, "that we have to do with a Roman
costume." Two very simple observations will, perhaps, suffice to get to
the bottom of such a specious argument: The first is that the Germans in
early times wore, in imitation of the Romans, "a wide belt ornamented
with bosses of metal," a baldric, by which their swords were suspended
on the left side; and the second is that the chroniclers of old days,
who wrote in Latin and affected the classic style, very naturally
adopted the word _cingulum_ in all its acceptations, and made use of
this Latin paraphrasis--_cingulo militari decorare_--to express this
solemn adoption of the sword. This evidently German custom was always
one of the principal rites of the collation of chivalry. There is then
nothing more in it than a somewhat vague reminiscence of a Roman custom
with a very natural conjunction of terms which has always been the habit
of a literary people.

To sum up, the word is Roman, but the thing itself is German. Between
the _militia_ of the Romans and the chivalry of the Middle Ages there is
really nothing in common but the military profession considered
generally. The official admittance of the Roman soldier to an army
hierarchically organized in no way resembled the admission of a new
knight into a sort of military college and the "pink of society." As we
read further the singularly primitive and barbarous ritual of the
service of knightly reception in the twelfth century, one is persuaded
that the words exhale a German odor, and have nothing Roman about them.
But there is another argument, and one which would appear decisive. The
Roman legionary could not, as a rule, withdraw from the service; he
could not avoid the baldric. The youthful knight of the Middle Ages, on
the contrary, was always free to arm himself or not as he pleased, just
as