Halberd steadily decreased. The halberd all but disappeared as a rank-and-file weapon in these formations by the middle of the sixteenth century, though Hakluyt's 'Voyages' relate the death of a halberdier named Zachary Saxy (probably a German) in fighting on the coast of Ecuador during Cavendish's circumnavigation in 1587. The halberd has been used as a court bodyguard weapon for centuries, and is still the ceremonial weapon of the Swiss Guard in the Vatican and the "Alabarderos" (Halberdiers) Company of the Spanish Royal Guard. The halberd was one of the polearms sometimes carried by lower-ranking officers in European infantry units in
Types of Women as evidence as to early Greek attitudes towards women, it has received little scholarly attention and has generally been considered to be of little literary merit. Semonides was active during the seventh century BCE, though the "Types of Women" is preserved in the fifth-century CE "Anthology" of Joannes Stobaeus, which was first printed in 1535 by Vittore Trincavelli. The poem is 118 lines long, and written in iambic trimeter. The first 94 lines describe ten women, or types of women: seven are animals, two are elements, and the final woman is a bee. Of the ten types of women in