THE HORSE IN HISTORY

THE KNIGHT, DEATH AND THE DEVIL
From an engraving by Albert Dürer

THE
HORSE IN HISTORY

BY

BASIL TOZER

AUTHOR OF
“PRACTICAL HINTS ON RIDING TO HOUNDS” ETC.

WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

First Published in 1908

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

AFTER directly helping on the progress of the world and the development of civilisation almost from the time when, according to Nehring's interesting studies, the wild and primitive horses of the great Drift began to exhibit distinct differences in make, shape and individual characteristics, the horse has reached the limit of its tether.

For with the dawn of the twentieth century, and the sudden innovation of horseless traffic, any further influence that it might have exercised upon the advancement of the human race comes rapidly to a close.

That the horse's reign is over—though it is sincerely to be hoped that horses will be with us still for many years—the statistics issued recently by our Board of Agriculture in a measure prove. For in those statistics it is stated that the number of horses in the United Kingdom decreased during last year alone by no less than 12,312, and later statistics show that the decrease still continues.

In the following pages, therefore, the writer has striven to trace the progress of the horse from very early times down to the present day mainly from the standpoint of the effect its development had upon the advancement of the human race. For this reason though a selected number of the most famous horses that lived in the centuries before Christ, and between the time of Christ and the period of the Norman Conquest, and that have lived within the last nine centuries, have been mentioned, the horses of romance and mythology have for the most part been passed over.

Every effort has been made to obtain information that is strictly accurate, a task of no small difficulty owing to the mass of contradictory evidence with which the writer has found himself confronted in the course of his researches. To the best of his ability he has winnowed the actual facts from the mass of fiction that he has come upon in the writings of some of the earlier historians, and to some extent in records, manuscripts and private letters of more recent times to which he has had access.

B. J. T.

Boodle's Club, 1908.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SOME WORKS CONSULTED

OF the many volumes the writer has consulted whilst engaged in compiling this book, the following are among the more important. The list is arranged alphabetically, according to the authors' names. To the authors or editors, as the case may be, and to the publishers of these works, the writer here begs to acknowledge his very deep indebtedness for the assistance he has derived from consulting the volumes named.

• Arrian (F.)—“The Anabasis of Alexander.”
• Aureggio (E.)—“Les Chevaux du Nord de l'Afrique.”
• Azara (F. de)—“The Natural History of the Quadrupeds of Paraguay and the River La Plata.”
• Berenger (R.)—“The History and Art of Horsemanship.”
• Blount (T.)—“Antient Tenures.”
• Blunt (W. S.) “Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates.”
• Bousson (M. A. E.)—“Etude de la Représentation du Cheval.”
• Charras (J. B. A.) “Histoire de la Campagne de 1815.”
• Chomel (C.)—“Histoire du Cheval dans l'antiquité et son rôle dans la civilization.”
• Church (A. J.)—“Roman Life in the Days of Cicero.”
• Cook (T. A.)—“The History of the Turf,” and “Eclipse and O'Kelly.”
• Darwin (C. R.)—“Variation of Animals and Plants.”
• Erman (A.)—“Life in Ancient Egypt.”
• Ewart (J. C.)—“The Multiple Origin of Horses and Ponies”; “A Critical Period in the Development of the Horse”; and “The Penicuik Experiments on Breeding between Horses and Zebras.”
• Fitzwygram (Sir F. W. J.)—“Horses and Stables.”
• Flower (Sir W. H.)—“The Horse.”
• Gast (E.)—“Le Cheval Normand et ses Origines.”
• Gilbey (Sir W.)—“Horses Past and Present,” and “The Great Horse, or War Horse.”
• Greenwell (W.)—“British Barrows.”
• Haddon (A. C.)—“The Study of Man.”
• Hall (H.)—“The Horses of the British Empire.”
• Hayes (M. H.)—“Points on the Horse.”
• Holm (A.)—“The History of Greece.”
• Hore (J. P.)—“History of Newmarket.”
• Hume (D.)—“Imperial History of England.”
• Hume (D.)—“The History of the House of Douglas.”
• Jonson (B.)—“The Alchemist.”
• Jowett (B.)—“Thucydides.”
• Lodge (E.)—“Illustrations of British History.”
• Mayne (C.)—“Odes of Pindar.”
• Mitchell (T.)—“The Comedies of Aristophanes.”
• Montfaucon (B. de)—“Antiquities.”
• Morgan (H.)—“The Art of Horsemanship.”
• Murray (D).—“Life of Joan of Arc.”
• Newcastle (Duke of)—“Observations on Horses.”
• Petrie (F.)—“History of Egypt.”
• Pietrement (C. A.)—“Les Chevaux dans les Temps Historiques et pré-Historiques.”
• Plutarch—“Life of Alexander the Great.”
• Prescott (W. H.)—“The Conquest of Mexico.”
• Reyce (R).—“Breviary of Suffolk.”
• Ridgeway (W.)—“The Origin and Influence of the Domestic Horse,” and “The Early Age of Greece.”
• Ruskin (J.)—“The Queen of the Air.”
• Schlieben (A.)—“The Horse in Antiquity.”
• Sidney (S.)—“The Book of the Horse.”
• Sotherby (W.)—“Georgics of Virgil.”
• Southey (R.)—“Iliad of Homer.”
• Street (F.)—“The History of the Shire Horse.”
• Strutt (J.)—“Sports and Pastimes of the People of England.”
• Tasso (T.)—“Jerusalem Delivered.”
• Taunton (T.)—“Famous Horses.”
• Trimmer (Mrs M.)—“Natural History.”
• Tweedie (Mrs Alec.)—“Hyde Park: Its History and Romance.”
• Tweedie (W.)—“The Arabian Horse.”
• Upton (Capt. R. D.)—“Newmarket and Arabia.”
• Vaux (Baron C. M. de)—“A Cheval. Etude des Races Françaises et Etrangères.”
• White (C.)—“History of the Turf.”
• Witt (C.)—“The Trojan War.”
• Yule (Sir H.)—“Marco Polo.”

Standard classics consulted have for the most part been omitted from this list. The writer wishes in addition to thank his friend, Dr William Barry, the distinguished classical scholar, for the trouble he has taken in helping to revise some of the earlier of the proof sheets; Professor William Ridgeway, of Cambridge, the famous historian and archæologist, for letters containing advice that has proved of use; Mr Theodore Andrea Cook, the most trustworthy authority we have upon the history of the Turf and the modern thoroughbred, for letters of introduction, etc.; and the Directors of the British Museum and the Directors of the National Gallery for allowing photographs to be taken for reproduction. For the sake of convenience the centuries b.c. are alluded to in the same way that centuries a.d. are alluded to, that is, one century in advance. Thus 550 B.C. is spoken of as the fourth century B.C.; 250 a.d. as the third century A.D., and so on.

THE HORSE IN HISTORY

PART I

FROM VERY EARLY TIMES TO THE CONQUEST

CHAPTER I

Rameses; early Egyptian chariots—Horses of Babylon and of Libya—Erichthonius; horse of Job; horses of Solomon—Early circus riding—Dancing horses of the Sybarites; the Crotonians' stratagem—Homer's “Iliad”; Menesthus; early wagering—Patroclus; Achilles; Euphorbus; Hyperenor—Horses and chariots of the Thracians—Ancient Greeks and horsemanship; decline in the popularity of war chariots; inauguration of cavalry—Xenophon on horsemanship—White horses

THOUGH according to the more trustworthy of our naturalists hoofed animals do not occur until the Tertiary Period in the history of mammals, there can be no doubt that from an epoch almost “so far back that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” in the literal meaning of that legal phrase, the horse has played a prominent part in the development of the human race.

Reference is made incidentally to “the horses of Abraham” by the author of a historical novel published recently; but then even the most pains-taking of writers of fiction is apt to err in minute points, and can one blame him when the lands over which he travels, and the subjects of which he treats, are so numerous and vary so widely? For we know from Genesis—also from certain other later sources that may be depended upon for accuracy—that though the prophet had creatures of divers kinds bestowed upon him, yet the horse probably is one of the few animals he did not receive.

Many of the important and famous victories won by Rameses—Sesostris as the Greeks termed him—and by other monarchs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, most likely would have proved crushing defeats but for the assistance they obtained from horses. As it happened, however, Rameses—whom recent writers declare to have been a very barefaced “boomster”—succeeded with the help of his horses in marching triumphant through many of the outlying territories in Africa as well as in Asia.

We have it on the authority of Professor Flinders Petrie and other distinguished historians that Aahmes I.—a king of the seventeenth dynasty who drove out the Hyksos—reigned from 1587 to 1562 B.C., and chariots do not appear to have been used in Egypt prior to his accession.

Indeed, as Professor Owen himself has pointed out, horses are not found represented on any of the monuments of the very early Egyptians, so that apparently the Egyptians of the eighteenth dynasty, whose monuments probably are the first to show horses and chariots, must have been the first to turn their attention seriously to the employment of horses for useful purposes.

And yet from further statements made in Genesis it seems certain that a native Egyptian king who flourished somewhere about the time of Jacob—that is to say between 1800 and 1700 B.C.—owned many horses and chariots. The Egyptians apparently did not mount horses until a very late period in their history, and even the chariots they constructed were, until many years had passed, used only in time of war. The lower classes, if one may call them so, used only the ass, a beast that must have been popular amongst the Egyptians for centuries before horses were even heard of in Egypt.

From Genesis we gather too that Pharaoh made Joseph drive in his second chariot; but the Egyptians who bought corn from Joseph and gave horses in exchange for it belonged probably to the well-to-do class that in time of war was compelled to provide the king with almost as many horses and chariots as he needed, or at any rate as many as he asked for.

In the records of Babylonia it is stated that horses were first employed in the great city about the year 1500 B.C. The Libyans, however, must have broken horses to harness some centuries before this, and indeed learnt to ride them with some skill, for it is proved beyond all doubt that the women of Libya rode horses astride at any rate so far back as the seventeenth century B.C., and that in addition to this horses were at about that time being driven in pairs by the Libyans, to whom even the four-horse chariot cannot have been quite unknown.

It has not been proved, from what I have been able to ascertain, that in Neolithic times horses were already tamed, but some remains of horses discovered at Walthamstow, in Essex, are said to date back approximately to that period and to indicate for that reason that horses were domesticated in the Neolithic Age.

Evidence does exist, however, that in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages horses of a type that closely resembled that of the horses of the Palæolithic Age were to be found in several parts of Europe. The Trojans, as most of us know, bred horses very largely indeed, so much so that we read of King Erichthonius, who in the thirteenth century B.C. was in his heyday, that he became “richest of mortal men” and the possessor of “three thousand mares which pastured along the marsh meadow, rejoicing in their tender foals,” a statement that indirectly recalls the fine lines in Longfellow's “The Minnisink”:

“They buried the dark chief—they freed

Beside the grave his battle steed;

And swift an arrow cleaves its way

To his stern heart! One piercing neigh

Arose,—and on the dead man's plain

The rider grasps his steed again.”

Erichthonius, according to Virgil, was the first to handle a four-in-hand, for in the third book of his “Georgics” we are told how

“Bold Erichthonius first four coursers yok'd

And urg'd the chariot as the axle smok'd.”

Rather a risky proceeding and one from which we may conclude that bold Erichthonius would have flouted the axiom promulgated recently by the more prudent members of a well-known coaching club that “no team ought to be driven faster than ten miles an hour, upon an average”!

Though allusions to the horse are made repeatedly in the Bible, they give us little or no insight as to the horse's influence upon the nations and their development. The notorious steed of Job that when among the trumpets exclaimed “Ha! Ha!” and then winded the battle afar off and fretted itself unduly upon hearing “the thunder of the captains and the shouting” has been described by several writers, but no two descriptions appear to tally.

Solomon, according to the “Book of Kings,” must have owned quite a large stud, for we read that he had horses brought out of Egypt, and that a chariot came up and went out for six hundred shekels of silver, a horse for a hundred and fifty, “and so for all the kings of the Hittites, and for the kings of Syria, did he bring them out.” The Hittites, whom Professor Jensen assures us were Indo-Europeans, are also shown to have had horses when they made their way into Northern Palestine, probably at some period prior to 1400 B.C., but trustworthy information about the horses and how the Hittites treated them is not obtainable.

As for the horses in the Mycenean Period—the Bronze Age of Greece—the monuments of that epoch bear testimony to the esteem in which they were held. The indigenous people of Greece were presumably the Pelasgians, and these monuments remain to bear testimony that such a people once existed.

In a like manner do the gravestones of the Acropolis of Mycenæ bear indisputable evidence, for upon three of them at least are to be seen sculptured in low relief a chariot, a pair of horses, and a driver, the date of this particular sculpture being approximately the fourteenth century B.C.

It seems practically beyond dispute that before the year 1000 B.C. no people rode on horseback except the Libyans, though chariots must have been used quite 2000 years before that. Yet by the time Homer wrote his poems horsemanship was becoming common amongst a section of the Greeks.

Indeed by that time feats of skill on horseback upon a par with the antics we see performed to-day in circuses were at least known, and probably they were often watched and greatly liked. Listen, for instance, to the following Homeric simile—the translation is almost literal:—

“As when a man that well knows how to ride harnesses up four chosen horses, and springing from the ground dashes to the great city along the public highway, and crowds of men and women look on in wonder, while he with all confidence, as his steeds fly on, keeps leaping from one to another.”

There are two references at least in Homer to “four male horses yoked together,” but the practice of driving four-in-hand certainly was not common in the eighth century B.C., or probably until long after. The above reference, however, to feats of skill performed on horseback, recalls to mind a story, probably more or less true, that has to do with the luxurious people of Sybaris, in Southern Italy.

In the early centuries before Christ, so it is related, this people trained all its horses to dance to the sound of music, to the music of flutes in particular. The inhabitants of Croton having heard of this, and being sworn enemies of the Sybarites, determined to take advantage of the information and attempt to conquer their foe with the aid of strategy.

For this reason they provided all the musicians in their own army with flutes in place of trumpets and the other instruments they had been in the habit of using, and then without delay declared war upon the Sybarites.

The latter, to do them justice, responded at once, in spite of the condition of lethargy to which the life of luxury they had been leading was supposed to have reduced them. No sooner did they approach the Crotonian lines, however, than “a great part of the army,” as we are told, “set up a merry tune,” which had the effect of stampeding the Sybarites' horses, for “they instantly threw off their riders and began to skip and dance.”

As a natural consequence the Sybarite army was taken at a disadvantage and quickly routed with great slaughter, “very many horses being killed during the engagement, to their owners' dismay and grief.”

This strange story may be in a measure exaggerated, but probably it is based on truth, in which case it proves that the Greeks of Magna Græcia at any rate made use of cavalry before the rest had attempted to do so. Also we know that in the year 510 B.C. the Crotonians destroyed Sybaris entirely.

The Assyrians too, at about this period, evidently had well-appointed cavalry, for Ezekiel speaks of their being “clothed in blue, captains and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses,” and goes on to give particulars which, in so far as they relate to the mode of life in vogue with these desirable young men, are calculated to shock the susceptibilities of prudish persons, and to amuse others.

In the light of the Higher Criticism Homer's “Iliad” is believed to have been written by various hands, and incidentally the Criticism throws useful light upon the horse in his relation to the history of the nations known to have flourished in the very early centuries before Christ.

One need not here describe such steeds as Agamemnon's mare, swift Æthe, that was given to him by his vassal, Echepolus of Sicylon, and subsequently driven in the chariot race by Menelaus; or Phallas, the horse of Heraclios; or the horses of the Pylian breed of which Homer speaks at length; or Galathe, Ethon, Podarge or any of the other steeds of which Priam's eldest son, “magnanimous and noble Hector,” was so justly proud. Also the horses of mythology do not possess great interest for the majority of modern readers other than classical scholars.

That Homer himself, however, had sound knowledge of the qualifications which go to make up what in latter-day English we probably should term a “finished charioteer” is shown by the following rather well-known lines that here are translated almost literally:—

“But he who in his chariot and his steeds

Trusts only, wanders here and there

Unsteady, while his coursers loosely rein'd

Roam wide the field; not so the charioteer

Of sound intelligence; he, though he drive

Inferior steeds, looks ever to the goal

While close he clips, not ignorant to check

His coursers at the first, but with tight rein

Ruling his own, and watching those before.”

Menesthus, emphatically one of the finest of the many fine riders spoken of in the “Iliad,” or, as Homer himself describes him, “foremost in equestrian fame,” is typical of the horsemen of that period.

In the “Iliad” too we find what I believe I am right in stating to be the first direct historical allusion to wagering on horse races. But the medium current on racecourses in those days was not coin. The odds apparently were laid in “kitchen utensils”—as a lad with whom I was at school once construed the line, to his subsequent discomfiture—namely, cauldrons and tripods.

Such, at least, we are led to infer from the paragraph in the twenty-third book of the “Iliad,” which, according to William Cowper's blank verse translation, edited by Robert Southey, runs somewhat as follows:—

“Come now—a tripod let us wager each,

Or cauldron, and let Agamemnon judge

Whose horses lead, that, losing, thou mayst learn.”

Or more euphoniously, as Lord Derby has it:

“Wilt thou a cauldron or a tripod stake

And Agamemnon, Atreus' son, appoint the umpire

To decide whose steeds are first?”

The cauldrons and tripods referred to were of course of great value, and, as trophies, highly prized by competitors in the races and other competitions calling for a display of skill and daring.

There is another allusion in the “Iliad” to the presentation of a tripod as a great reward for valour. It occurs in the eighth book, and the passage goes more or less like this:

“Let but the Thunderer and Minerva grant

The pillage of fair Ilium to the Greeks,

And I will give to thy victorious hand,

After my own, the noblest recompense,

A tripod or a chariot with its steeds,

Or some fair captive to partake thy bed.”

I recollect how at school this passage, with several others, used to be rigorously excluded when Homer was being construed, with the result that Kelly's famous “Keys to the Classics” used afterwards to be produced surreptitiously, and the “censored” lines turned carefully into English.

From what Homer tells us elsewhere, and from additional sources, we may conclude that of all the races that bred horses and took just pride in them in the early centuries before Christ the Thracians were probably the most renowned.

The brilliant horsemanship of “noble Patroclus of equestrian fame,” the amiable and staunch friend of Achilles, must not be passed unmentioned; nor the deeds of prowess that are attributed to Euphorbus, “famous for equestrian skill, for spearmanship, and in the rapid race past all of equal age”; nor yet the deeds of Hyperenor whose skill in handling horses may be likened to the skill of Rarey in our own time.

The following lines from the “Iliad” are of interest here because they serve to indicate to some extent the style of harness and useless trappings that must have been in vogue amongst the wealthy in Homer's day:—

“So Hera, the goddess queen, daughter of great Cronos, went her way to harness the gold-frontleted steeds; and Hebe quickly put to the car the curved wheels of bronze, eight spoked, upon their axletree of iron.”

Then:

“Golden is their felloe, imperishable, and tires of bronze are fitted thereover, a marvel to look upon; and the naves are of silver, to turn about on either side. And the body of the car is plaited tight with gold and silver straps, and two rails run round about it.

“And a silver pole stood out therefrom; upon the end she bound the fair golden yoke, and set thereon the fair breast-straps of gold, and Hera led beneath the yoke the horses, fleet of foot, and hungered for strife and the battle-cry.”

It has been argued that about the time of Homer gold and silver were deemed to be comparatively of small value, and that therefore the trappings described were not so costly as one naturally would conclude they must have been.

Upon this point opinions are about equally divided.

Professor Ridgeway tells us that by comparing the foregoing description with actual specimens of chariots and horse trappings that have been found in Egypt we can form an accurate impression of the appearance that was presented by the original old chariots, and form also an idea of the way they were put together, while the plaiting with straps of gold and silver recalls at once the floor of the Egyptian chariot with its plaited leather meshwork—probably the forerunner of leather springs.

Though Odysseus and Diomede are known to have mounted their Thracian horses, we have it on irrefutable evidence that at this period chariots were still generally used, so that most likely horses were ridden but seldom.

Indeed the Homeric poems provide us with probably as much authentic information as to the methods of managing and breeding horses that were in vogue in Greece, in Thrace, and in Asia Minor in the very early years before Christ, as any half-dozen other volumes put together that purport to deal with the ways and customs of a period of which, when all is said, little enough is known.

Naturally the Thracians had in those days some of the best horses that could be procured, while those they drove in their war chariots are said to have been quite unrivalled. That they possessed very many chariots is proved by Homer's realistic account of the slaying of Rhesus, the Thracian king, with a dozen or so of his bravest followers, and the episode in connection with that incident.

Indeed when Odysseus and Diomede had captured Dolon, the Trojan spy, the latter at once declared that there were “also Thracians, new-comers, at the furthest point apart from the rest, and amongst them their king, Rhesus, son of Eioneus,” adding that his were “the fairest horses that ever I beheld, and the greatest, whiter than snow, and for speed like the winds. His chariot too is fashioned well with gold and silver, and golden is his armour that he brought with him, marvellous, a wonder to behold.”

Apparently most of the horses bred by the Acheans at about this time were either dun-coloured or dapple. Xanthos signifies Dun, and balios dapple; but then we have to remember that xanthos was used frequently to denote also the colour of gold.

Achilles' steeds were mostly dapple-dun, and they had more or less heavy manes. They belonged most likely to the breed so popular among the Sigynnæ of central Europe about the fifth century B.C. Certainly Homer makes it plain that in the early Iron Age horses were bred in many parts of Greece; that, though driving was a common practice, riding was indulged in but rarely; that cavalry in battle was quite unknown; and lastly that though the heroes, as they were called, fought mainly in chariots, the great body of the army consisted of well-trained infantry.

As time went on horsemanship apparently came to be appreciated more and more, for we read that about the year 648 B.C.—the thirty-third Olympiad—“a race for full-grown riding horses” was inaugurated in addition to the chariot races, and there appear to have been plenty of entries. Then though the war chariot had disappeared almost completely, before the outbreak of the Persian Wars, its place was not taken by well-appointed and well-equipped cavalry until some years later.

Though little attention need be paid to the Greek legend that Pegasus was the first horse ever ridden—a legend not mentioned in Homer—it nevertheless is interesting to know that this historic animal was supposed to have been foaled in the Bronze Age, and in Libya. That naturally would have been prior to the arrival of the fair-haired Acheans from Central Europe, so one need not be astonished, as several writers obviously are, at finding that when these large-limbed Acheans first appeared the Greeks already knew how to ride.

At the same time they seldom did ride their dun-coloured little cobs, preferring, apparently, to drive them in pairs in chariots. That the Libyans were finished horsemen centuries before the Greeks learnt how to ride has already been mentioned; though whether or no the Greeks were first taught horsemanship by the Libyans is a question still debated by students of ancient history.

In the north-west of Asia Minor the Libyans had dark bay horses with a white star upon the forehead about the year 1000 B.C., and a hundred or so years later horses of this breed were largely imported into various parts of Asia Minor.

Indeed some of the more enthusiastic of the modern historians who have studied closely the descent of horses from generation to generation persist in maintaining that even in Great Britain and Ireland modern horses with this white star upon the forehead have in their veins some Libyan blood! How this can well be when we know almost without doubt that until towards the close of the Bronze or the beginning of the Iron Age the horse was hardly made use of at all by the inhabitants of these islands, I leave it to more learned men to decide among themselves.

It is remarkable that whereas from very early times horses of Asiatic-European breeds have proved more or less unmanageable except when bitted, the horses of Libya are known to have been controlled quite easily by nosebands only. Some of the nosebands, or rather halters, used in early times were made of plaited straw, and to-day halters of almost similar make and pattern are still employed in certain of the more remote parts of Ireland.

The bits found most suitable for Asiatic-European horses were made first of all of horn, then chiefly of bone, later of copper, and finally of bronze and iron. Homer, in his “Iliad,” alludes to bits of bronze placed between the horse's jaws, and this probably is one of the first instances of literary evidence we have that a thousand years before Christ's birth horses were controlled by bits.

Of course Xenophon has much to say upon the question of bits and bitting, and his capital treatise on horsemanship throws valuable light also upon the horse in its relation to the history of that epoch, as we shall see. Upon one point in particular in this connection Xenophon lays great stress. He maintains it to be imperative that every horseman shall possess two bits for his horse or horses, one with links of moderate size, and one with sharp and heavy links, bidding us at the same time remember that “whatever sorts of bits be used, they should be flexible, for where a horse seizes a rigid bit he has the whole of it fast between his teeth ... but the other sort is similar to a chain, for whatever part of it be taken hold of, that part alone remains unbent—the rest hangs.”

So that apparently bits single- and double-jointed, and therefore flexible, were used in the early Iron Age by the people of North-Western Europe.

COMBAT BETWEEN AMAZONS AND ATTIC HEROES. FOURTH CENTURY, B.C.
From a Greek vase in the British Museum

By the beginning of the fourth century B.C. many, though not all, of the Greek and the Macedonian mounted soldiers had come to consider some sort of covering for the horse's back to be necessary to their equipment; and so long previously as the eighth century B.C. horse cloths had been adopted by the Assyrians, a people sufficiently wise to realise from the first that a horse with something on his back is more comfortable to sit upon than one without.

These early races probably would have employed cavalry several centuries sooner than they eventually did, but for the difficulty they experienced in arming themselves to their complete satisfaction when mounted. Such peoples, for instance, as the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Greeks of the Mycenean or Bronze Age, habitually protected themselves with the aid of large and oblong shields when they fought on foot, but on horseback these shields proved cumbersome. Possibly that was the reason that when the Normans and other Teutonic races began to fight on horseback they so soon discarded their round and clumsy shields in favour of a shield broad at the top and tapering downward, the shape of shield we see on the Bayeux tapestry.

With regard to the war chariots in use before this time, we may be quite sure that even the very first employed had not wheels cut from solid blocks as some are represented as having, though possibly the most primitive of the agricultural chariots were so constructed.

For the rest, the early chariots of the Egyptians of the eighteenth dynasty, and in use in India under the Vedic Aryans, and amongst the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Libyans, the Mycenean Greeks, the Homeric Acheans, the Gauls of Northern Italy and in Gaul itself; also among the ancient Britons and the early Irish, had wheels with a hub, a felloe, and spokes, the latter from four to twelve in number.

And inasmuch as this information bears indirectly upon the horse in his relation to early historical records, it is not out of place here.

To return again to the question of harness, we have it on the authority of Herodotus that “the Greeks learned from the Libyans to yoke four horses to a chariot,” and we know already that before the time of Herodotus, who wrote in the fifth century B.C., the Greeks had found Libyans riding astride horses and driving sometimes two-horse and occasionally four-horse chariots. At that time—about 632 B.C.—the Greeks were planting Cyrene.

White horses were in ancient days at all times largely in demand among the people of the various nations; and while Pindar alludes incidentally to white horses being ridden by the Thessalians in his time, Sophocles, writing half-a-century or so later, describes a Thessalian chariot that was drawn by white horses.

One of the regions in which white horses were bred, probably in great numbers, was the banks of the Caspian where the River Bug flows from it, for Herodotus states clearly that “around a great lake from which the River Hypanis (called now the Bug) issued, there grazed wild white horses.” Those particular animals possibly may have been in reality only tarpans in their winter coats, and not actually horses. The point has been argued more than once, but has never been quite settled. A white horse famous towards the close of the fifth or early in the fourth century was Kantake, of the notorious Prince Gautama, but nothing need be said about it here, trustworthy records being unprocurable.

The great cities of Magna Græcia—Sybaris, Tarentum, Croton, and so on—obviously had formidable cavalry in the sixth century B.C.; Sicily and Southern Italy being almost equally renowned for the riding horses obtainable there. The statagem to which the Crotonians had recourse in 510 B.C. to bring about the fall of Sybaris has been described, and it is said that for some years prior to the destruction of the city some five or six thousand of the inhabitants were in the habit of riding in procession on horseback upon the occasions of the great festivals held there.

CHAPTER II

Increasing interest in horses—Herodotus; Thucydides; war chariots of the Persians—Horses represented on coinage—Wooden horse of Troy—The Parthenon frieze; Greek art—Plato; white horses—The procession of Xerxes; horses and men sacrificed—The horse of Darius—Horse racing introduced among the Romans—Xenophon and Simo—Early horseshoes, bits and bitting; ancient methods of mounting

AS we gradually approach the time of Christ we find increasing interest being taken in horses by the kings and great chiefs of different countries, for the value of cavalry in war was now quickly becoming manifest.

In the early days of the Homeric or Iron Age the Celts of Noricum and the Danube, though still retaining chariots, had begun to ride on horseback, and by the third century B.C. these Celtic tribes already possessed well-trained and very formidable cavalry. As a natural result the demand for still better horses grew steadily, and soon it became common to import horses into the Upper Balkan, and countries beyond the Alps, from the Mediterranean area.

Perhaps the best description of a chariot race at Delphi is to be found in the Electra of Sophocles—Sophocles flourished in the third century B.C. At about the same period Hero dotus tells us that the Sigynnæ, the only tribe north of the Danube that he mentions by name, had “horses with shaggy hair five fingers long all over their bodies.” These horses were “small and flat-nosed and incapable of carrying men, but when yoked under a chariot were very swift.”

Consequently the natives drove them largely in chariots.

Though Herodotus does not allude to the colour of these small, flat-nosed horses, there is reason to believe that dun was the colour most prevalent at about this time. With regard to the horses of Northern Britain Dio Cassius says that two of the chief tribes—namely, the Caledonians and the Mæatæ—“went to war in chariots, as their horses were small and fleet,” while when the Gauls passed into Italy, towards the beginning of the fourth century B.C., they drove chariots but did not ride, in which respect they resembled the Sigynnæ north of the Danube.

Thucydides, writing at the end of the third century B.C., speaks with interest on the subject of horses' hoofs, pointing out that the reason so many of the cavalry horses of the Athenians went lame towards the close of the Peloponnesian War was not that they had been wounded, as some historians have averred, but owing simply to their not being shod. This was after the Spartans had occupied Decelea and suffered their heavy loss.

Alcibiades, in the third century B.C., had many horses, and in the sixth book of “Thucydides” he tells us in his speech that he sent into the lists no less than seven chariots, adding that “no other man ever did the like”; and later he goes on to mention that he won the first, second and fourth prizes.

Apparently Alcibiades knew his world, and if so it would seem that his world was not unlike the world we know to-day, for in another passage he sententiously yet philosophically tells us that we “must not expect to be recognised by our acquaintance when we are down in the world; and on the same principle why should anyone complain when treated with disdain by the more fortunate?”

This particular sentence is according to the translation of “Thucydides” by the late Professor Jowett, who leaves us to infer what we please concerning the sociological views held by Alcibiades.

Among the first to employ war chariots with scythes intended to mow down the enemy were the Persians, if historical records are to be trusted, and we read that the chariots they used in the battle of Cunaxa, in 401 B.C., were provided with sharp blades, while in after years the people of Syria had war chariots with spears as well as scythes.

Thus in the bloody battle fought between Eumenes of Pergamus, and Antiochus of Syria, to mention but a single instance, Antiochus had four-horse chariots with scythes and spears in his front line of battle, whereupon Eumenes purposely “created terror” amongst these horses, with the result that they turned suddenly and dashed back into the lines of Antiochus, spreading devastation and death on all sides in their own ranks.

Certain it is that upon that occasion many horses were cut to pieces by the scythes, but for a full and graphic description of what happened I must refer the reader to the thirty-seventh chapter of the immortal “Livy.”

The esteem in which horses, especially war horses, were held in the centuries that immediately preceded the coming of Christ may to some extent be gathered from the prominence accorded to them when coins to be used as the circulating medium began to come into general vogue. Thus on the first of the Carthaginian coins—they were struck in the third century B.C.—we find represented a horse upon one side, a palm-tree upon the other, while on the coins of the important Sicilian settlement, Panormus, a horse is shown.

I have tried to disentangle from a mass of only semi-trustworthy records the true origin of the well-known saying: “He has Seius' horse in his stable.” So far as one can ascertain, it is traceable to the fates of the various ill-starred owners of the horses of Gnæus Seius, from Seius down to Anthony. Plutarch says that the famous Philip II. loved to commemorate his Olympian victories by stamping the figure of a steed upon some of his coins, and certainly he was devoted both to horses and horse racing. We read too that between 359 and 336 B.C. he entered both chariots and riding horses for the Olympian competitions.

GREEK COINS SHOWING HORSES IN THE EARLY CENTURIES BEFORE CHRIST
1, 3. Agrigentum. 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9. Syracuse. 8. Asia Minor and Greece. Philip of Macedon. 10. Hellenestic period. Hiero of Sicily

Similarly a proportion of the Sicilian coinage bore the impression of a horse, and many of the great chariot races are commemorated on coins. Several of the Agrigentine coins, for instance, show a quadriga driven by winged Nike, in commemoration probably of the victory of Exænetus, while some of the coinage of Syracuse dating back so far as 500 B.C., and even earlier, represents a four-horse chariot upon the face of the tetradrachms, and, on the didrachms, a man riding one horse and leading another. Some of the drachms show merely a man mounted.

Indeed we are told that Gela not only prided herself on her victories won on the race track, but upon what was, of course, of more importance—her splendid cavalry. A number of her coins represent a four-horse chariot, some a two-horse chariot, and occasionally a wounded foe being speared to death by a horseman, galloping or stationary. These coins probably are among the earliest of their kind ever struck.

The most ancient of all representations of Sicilian horses, however, which serve to prove that the Sicilians were beyond doubt a horse-loving race, is the quadriga on one of the metopes of the archaic temple of Silenus, believed to have been founded in 628 B.C.

While upon the subject of sculpture, casual reference must be made to the notorious Wooden Horse of Troy, described fully in Homer and alluded to centuries later by Virgil, the horse of which the famous sculptor, Strongylon, made a model in bronze towards probably the close of the fifth century.

The story of this horse hardly needs repetition, but briefly it is to the effect that soon after Hector's death Ulysses commanded Epeios to construct a wooden horse of great size that ostensibly was to be used as an offering to the gods to please them and thus ensure a safe voyage back to Greece.

Unsuspectful of treachery, the Trojans received the great effigy and brought it into their city; whereupon, in the dead of night, the Greek soldiers hidden within it crept cautiously out, pounced silently upon the Trojan guards and slew them before they could defend themselves; then opened the gates of Troy, let in their own soldiery, and finally set fire to the city.

Menelaus is said to have been among the Greeks concealed in the wooden horse.

If evidence in addition to that already given be needed to prove that the ancient Greeks held horses in high esteem, and that the Grecian conquests were probably in a great measure due to the help afforded by the possession of horses, notice has only to be taken of the vastness of the space occupied by the Athenian cavalry shown on the Parthenon frieze.

Indeed at about this period probably no accomplishment was quite so highly esteemed as horsemanship, with the result that the wealthy classes began to pay special attention to the training their sons received in it, while treatises were published upon the art and how best it might be acquired.

The first horsemen of whom we have indisputably authentic records invariably rode bareback, and, with the exception of the Libyans, used some sort of bit. According to Xenophon—and apparently no other historian of his time is so thoroughly to be trusted for strict accuracy—the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. were almost as fastidious upon the subject of bits and bittings as some hunting men of to-day are.

Some writers upon this subject have erred. Thus the impression is prevalent that the horses of the ancient Greeks were all much smaller than modern horses, and the steeds shown on the Parthenon frieze are sometimes said to afford proof that this was so. A proportion of the horses of those early times undoubtedly were smaller than the modern horse is, but on the other hand plenty were not. Probably the mistaken critics base their assertion upon the fact that the men shown on the Parthenon frieze and similar compositions, also on some of the vase paintings of that period, apparently are as tall as, or taller than, the horses beside which they are standing or on which they are mounted.

The reason men and horses are so represented simply is that according to a standard rule of ancient Greek art the heads of men and animals, and of all other figures shown on such compositions, must be as nearly as possible upon a level, even though some of the figures may be standing, some seated, some on horseback, some in chariots.

This rule, known as “Isokelismos,” is of course in direct opposition to the rule of nature, yet as it existed it had to be observed, and therefore no attempt should ever be made to compare the height of men or beasts shown in such representations as the Parthenon frieze merely by the appearance and the proportions they present. By observing how far below the horses' bellies the feet of the mounted men hang, an approximate idea of the height of the men by comparison with that of some of their horses may be arrived at.

Herodotus is of opinion that about the year 480 B.C. finer horses were owned by the Nisæan than by any other people of Asia, and he mentions that white horses were so highly valued by the Persians of about that period—who are known to have used many white horses for sacrificial purposes—that “some three hundred and sixty horses, or about one for every day in the year, and five hundred talents of silver,” was the tribute sent by the Sicilians. This statement leads to the conclusion that white horses must have been exceptionally plentiful in the region.

That Armenia had many horses, which were largely used even so far back as the fifth century B.C., can be gathered from the writings of Ezekiel, for the prophet does not hesitate to declare that the people of Togarmah, which presumably was part of Armenia, traded in the fairs in horses and mules.

Pindar, who so glorified King Arcesilas, tells us that Cyrene became famous as the city of steeds and goodly chariots, and later the poet Callimachus sang of his home “famed for her steeds.” Hiero II. of Syracuse owed practically all his great successes to the fact that he owned horses of considerable value, and to this day figures in marble of horses dedicated by him in commemoration of his victories at Olympia are to be seen in the local museum of Delphi.

Almost every year attempts are made by wealthy Americans and others to purchase some of these figures, but down to the present such attempts have proved of no avail.

Plato, again, has much to say upon the horse in its relation to the history of his epoch. Thus in one place he writes: “We must mount our children on horses in their earliest youth, and take them on horseback to see war, in order that they may learn to ride; the horses must not be spirited or warlike, but the most tractable and yet the swiftest that can be had; in this way they will get an excellent view of what is hereafter to be their business; and if there is danger they have only to follow their elder leaders and escape.”

Agrigentum—until 405 B.C., when it was destroyed by the Carthaginians—was famous for its horses. It is said that on one occasion, when one of the best-known citizens, Exænetus, won the principal chariot race at Olympus, the entire population came forth to meet him, and that he was preceded into the city by 300 chariots drawn by pairs of white horses. Indeed some of the most gorgeous monuments ever erected to the memory of famous race horses were those raised in this city during the period of its splendour.

1. THE EMPEROR TRAJAN. SHOWING ROMAN STYLE OF RIDING
2. THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS. SHOWING SADDLE
3. A PARTHIAN HORSEMAN. SHOWING PARTHIAN STYLE OF RIDING BAREBACK
4. SARMATHIAN HORSE AND WARRIOR. MEANT TO REPRESENT HORSE AND RIDER IN ARMOUR MADE OF PLATES OF BONE OR OF HORSE-HOOF

We have it on good authority that, some centuries before Christ, the Persian men of rank deemed it derogatory to be seen on foot, and that they habitually rode on horseback. Yet in common with the people of many other races they were addicted to immolating horses on festival days, while the practices in which they indulged upon these occasions are said to have been barbarous in the extreme.

In almost every age white horses in particular would seem to have been used for sacrificial purposes. The Persians sacrificed bulls as well as horses, a bull and a horse being sometimes bound together and then immolated. Arrian mentions that one horse at least was sacrificed to Cyrus every month, the ceremony being usually performed at Pasargadea, close to the famous tomb. Here again white horses were used for the sacrifices, for among the Persians in particular the white horse was for many centuries deemed sacred and pronounced “beloved of the gods.”

One of the descriptions that probably gives a true account of a triumphal march in the third century B.C. is that of Herodotus, where he describes the procession of Xerxes. The following order, he tells us, was observed.

There came first 1000 carefully selected horsemen, then 1000 carefully selected spearsmen, then ten sacred Nisæan horses “splendidly caparisoned.” These horses were called Nisæan, we are incidentally told, because they were especially reared on the plains of Nisæa, in Media, at that period famous for its great horses.

Next came the sacred car of Zeus, drawn by eight white horses “followed by charioteers on foot holding their bridles, for no mortal was allowed to mount the seat.” Xerxes himself brought up the train, usually in a chariot drawn by Nisæan horses, with his charioteer beside him.

The people of almost every nation of whom we have authentic records would appear to have been addicted in the centuries before Christ to the atrocious practice of sacrificing live horses to their gods. Particulars of the weird rites observed in connection with these sacrifices are for the most part too revolting to be described here, but one practice observed by the Scythians cannot well be passed unnoticed.

This people inhabited chiefly the treeless steppes of Asia, and is known to have sacrificed animals of many kinds, but horses most of all, and usually white or dun horses.

Thus we are told that when a Scythian king died, his favourite horse, his favourite concubine, and several important members of his establishment, preferably his cook and his cupbearer, were buried with him. When a year had passed, a further ceremony took place.

This consisted in the execution, generally by strangulation, of some fifty of the strongest, handsomest and generally most desirable young men—probably young men who had belonged to his suite—and in the strangulation also of an equal number of the best horses that had belonged to him.

Then, without delay, the bodies of men and horses were disembowelled, next they were stuffed with chaff or straw, and finally when the horses, supplied each with a bit and bridle, had been set up in a circle round the tomb of the deceased monarch, the bodies of the slaughtered men were set astride them.

And there the ghastly squadron remained until it fell away to dust.

That the literary records in which these gruesome details are to be found are accurate, has to some extent been proved by discoveries made from time to time—as for instance at the opening of the great tumuli in Russia about half-a-century ago.

Indeed during the thirteenth century A.D. ceremonies equally revolting are known to have been performed regularly among the Tartars, while at the funeral of Frederic Casimir, Commander of Lorraine, in 1781, a horse was killed, and then buried with its master, and at even so recent a date as the funeral of Li Hung Chang a horse and chariot made of paper were, according to the newspaper reports, burned at the grave-side—probably a last survival of some weird rite of a sacrificial nature observed formerly in China and Japan.

Another race known to have immolated live horses, especially white horses, was the Veneti. This people lived at the head of the Adriatic, and their name survives to this day in “Venice.”

The sacrifice of white horses was common too amongst the Scandinavian and the Teutonic races, and formed part of their religion. The Sicilian Greeks, again, are said to have set a high value upon white horses, and to have sacrificed them under the impression that by doing so they afforded additional gratification to their gods.

It would appear, indeed, that in all ages white animals were looked upon as sacred in a sense, for in parts of India the white elephant is deemed sacred to this day, and in parts of Persia the white ass. Then, in the fifth century B.C., the nomad Scythians, whose territories lay chiefly to the north of the River Don, owned immense herds of horses. These they used principally for food, while the milk of the mares they drank and made domestic use of in other ways, a practice long in vogue among the Turko-Tartaric tribes of Central Asia, and said to be still in vogue with them in remote regions.

Bearing upon early Persia is rather a well-known story that on the death of the famous Smerdis the seven princes who were his possible successors agreed to confer the throne upon the owner of the horse that should be the first to neigh when they all met on the following day. The groom of Prince Darius having been told of this, had recourse to a clever ruse, for on that same evening he led his master's horse to the exact spot where the horses were all to meet on the day following, and there showed the horse a mare. Upon arriving at this spot next day the horse, as we are told, “neighed furiously,” so that Darius won his kingdom!

We know that Hiero, King of Syracuse, who flourished towards the end of the third and during the beginning of the second century, B.C., won the great Olympic crown with his good horse Phrenicus. In simple language Tacitus describes how the people of Thurii—the city built on the ruins of Sybaris about the year 443 B.C.—first taught horse racing to the Romans.

Although towards the end of the second century B.C., bareback riding was still quite common, a covering of some sort for the horse's back was becoming much more popular among the Greeks despite the adherence to bareback riding by the jockeys at the principal festivals. Atiphanes, the “gentle humourist,” whose plays were performed in public for the first time towards the close of the second century B.C., alludes to “coverlets for a horse,” this being probably one of the first references we have to saddles among the early Greeks.

And now we come to Xenophon, one of the most finished of horsemen among the ancient Greeks, and apparently a true lover of horses. With the exception of an individual named Simo, or Simon, who wrote before Xenophon's time, there had not existed a man with deep and practical knowledge of horses or horsemanship, and the care of horses, who was able to write lucidly upon these subjects until Xenophon wrote with so much success his own exhaustive work.

Xenophon speaks of Simo—who, according to Suidas, was by birth an Athenian—on more than one occasion. Xenophon, however, did not hold Simo in high esteem, as we may gather from the former's tone of condescension when he states that though Simo wrote with some knowledge of horses, yet that he entertained an exalted opinion of himself that was unpardonable.

A PORTION OF THE PARTHENON FRIEZE, EXECUTED BY PHIDIAS ABOUT THE YEAR 440 B.C.

The truth of that statement is borne out by the evidence we have that when, on a famous occasion, Simo presented the brazen horse to the temple of the Eleusinian Ceres, at Athens, he had the effrontery to engrave upon the pedestal his own works!

Though when expressing opinions upon the points of a horse the ancient Greeks differed rather widely in their views, yet most of the rules laid down by Xenophon are as applicable to-day as they were some three and twenty centuries ago.

We read, for instance, that “the neck of the horse, as it proceeds from the chest, should not fall forward, like that of a boar, but should grow upward, like that of a cock, and should have an easy motion at the parts about the arch.” That the advice was not overlooked, even by early artists, can be accurately conjectured if the Parthenon frieze be inspected, for there almost every horse shown has a neck “like that of a cock.” Xenophon then proceeds:

“If a horse has the thighs under the tail broad and not distorted, he will set his hind legs well apart, and will by that means have a firmer and quicker step, a better seat for a rider, and be better in every respect. We may see,” he continues, “a proof of this in men, who when they wish to take up anything from the ground do try to raise it by setting their legs apart rather than by bringing them together.”

These remarks are sensible, yet probably there are few modern horsemen ready to admit that a horse's hoof should be high and hollow, and the frog kept up from the ground “as well before as behind,” which was Xenophon's opinion. Then in his time saddles and stirrups had not, apparently, been thought of, for we read that when first introduced they were looked upon with scorn, all who used them being laughed at and deemed to take rank among what we should call in these days “muffs.”

As already noted, Xenophon had something to say upon bits and bitting, and he describes at length the advantages of the jointed over the rigid bit. Also he alludes to the custom of wearing spurs, and describes incidentally the construction of the prick spurs then in vogue.

In this connection it is interesting to note that a bit was discovered in the Acropolis of Athens some twenty years ago, which, so it is said, dates back to the early Persian wars of 490-479 B.C.

Certain modern writers of books upon subjects more or less historical speak of horse doctors. Some twenty-three centuries ago, however, even the acknowledged experts upon horses and horse breeding would seem to have possessed only crude anatomical knowledge of the animal, some of the advice they tendered in cases of illness amongst horses being grotesque.

Equally it is evident that professional horse breakers and trainers, also professional riding masters, were known in Greece in Xenophon's day, and possibly before his time.

There is something rather delightful about Xenophon's ingenuousness when he tells us quite seriously that “a horse that has no longer the marks in his teeth, neither rejoices the buyer with hope, nor is easy to be exchanged”! He speaks too with emphasis when assuring us that when carefully examining a horse with a view to purchase we ought to pay most attention to the hoofs—advice to some extent discounted by remarks he makes a few lines further on.

“To sum up all in a few words,” he says elsewhere, “whatever horse has good feet, is mild-tempered, sufficiently swift, and able to endure fatigue, and is in the highest degree obedient, will probably give least trouble to his rider and contribute most to his safety in military occupations. But horses that from sluggishness require a great deal of driving, or, from excess of mettle, much coaxing and care, afford plenty of employment to the rider, as well as much apprehension in time of danger.”

The ancients evidently had a rooted antipathy to adopting any kind of contrivance calculated to afford protection for their horses' hoofs. Upon several occasions attempts were made to introduce metal horseshoes, but in vain. The device most resembling a horseshoe, that they were willing to consider and of which we have a trustworthy description, was a covering not unlike a sandal made of reeds, or, in rare instances, of leather. In reality it resembled a boot rather than a horseshoe, but it was used only where the ground was very rough or exceptionally hard.

In parts of Japan boots of this kind, made of straw, are worn to this day. Berenger speaks of a horseshoe said to have been in use in the time of Childeric, whose date was 481, A.D., and most likely it was one of the first horseshoes, properly so called, of which any record is extant.

If the figure of it preserved in Montfaucon's “Antiquities” is to be relied upon for accuracy, then it somewhat resembled the shoe in use to-day.

It seems clear that Xenophon was not an advocate for docking horses' tails, at any rate to the exaggerated extent we so often see them docked to-day, also that he was not partial to the hogged mane, for in speaking of the horse's forelocks, “while these hairs,” he avers, “though of good length, do not prevent the horse from seeing, they brush away from his eyes whatever annoys them. Therefore we may suppose that the gods gave such hairs to the horse instead of the long ears which they have given to asses and mules to be a protection to the eyes.”

A question sometimes set when the subject of early horsemanship is under discussion is: How used the ancients to mount, seeing that they placed at best only cloths on their horses' backs, and that they had not stirrups?

Historical records contain information upon the point, and we read that in the centuries before Christ horses were mounted apparently in three ways—by the rider's vaulting without assistance on to the back; by his vaulting or mounting with the aid of a pole; by his making the horse crouch.

There was a fourth way, but for an obvious reason it was less often resorted to. This was by making a slave bend his back, or kneel on all fours, and by then stepping upon him—using him as a mounting-block, in short. The last-named method was common in Persia, where Sapor, when he had conquered the Emperor Valerian, forced him thus to debase himself to show his complete subjection.

I believe I am right in saying that the soldiery used sometimes to mount with the aid of a spear. Xenophon, in his seventh chapter, instructs the horseman to mount “by catching hold of the mane, about the ears,” a feat surely impossible to perform save when mounting a pony.

In the illustration of a Sarmatian on horseback, facing page 33, both a man and horse are shown in armour made of horse-hoof cut into little plates, which, Pausanias tells us in his Attics, were sewn together with the sinews of oxen and horses. Sometimes bone was used in place of horse-hoof, but iron never, there being no iron mines in the country, to the knowledge of the Sarmatians. The soldier shown holding up his horse's leg, in the illustration facing page 45, presumably is about to tie on one of the “stockings” used in place of shoes; and on the same plate a soldier is about to mount on the off (right) side.

ROMAN SOLDIER ABOUT TO ADJUST “STOCKING” USED IN PLACE OF SHOES

ROMAN SOLDIER ABOUT TO MOUNT ON OFF SIDE

A MAURITANIAN HORSEMAN. SHOWING HOW THE MAURITANIANS AND HUMIDIANS RODE WITHOUT SADDLE OR BRIDLE

CHAPTER III

Xenophon disliked the “American” seat—Cavalry organised by the Athenians—Cost of horses twenty-three centuries ago—Aristophanes; Aristotle; Athenians' fondness for horse racing—Alexander the Great; Bucephalus—Story of Bucephalus; his death—Famous painters of horses: Apelles, Pauson, Micon—Mythical flesh-eating horses of Diomed—Hannibal's cavalry of 12,000 horse—Coins—Posidonius; horses of the Parthians, Iberians and Celtiberians

IN spite of the derisive remarks often uttered concerning Xenophon's advice to young riders, and his advice on horsemanship in general and the care of horses, there is much sound sense in plenty of the hints he gave to the Greek riders of three hundred years before Christ, while many of the rules he laid down are as applicable to-day as they probably were then.

His advice on the vexed question of bits and bitting, to take but a single example, is very sound, while his strong objection to allowing horses' legs to be washed frequently is shared by plenty of horse owners at the present time.

Then, the old Athenian apparently disapproved of or disliked what we have come to call the “American” seat on a horse, for he declares that the legs of a man mounted should be almost straight, the body upright and supple.

Attempts have repeatedly been made to trace the life of Xenophon prior to the time when, in 401 B.C., he first joined the army of Cyrus, but in vain. He is, however, known to have been a close friend of Socrates from a very early age, and probably when he wrote the “Anabasis” he was a little over thirty. But when he died, about the year 355 B.C., he was quite an old man.

Historians are almost unanimous in declaring that at Marathon, in 490 B.C., the Athenians were without cavalry, though by that time many of the wealthy citizens undoubtedly owned horses, some of which they most likely used for racing. When, however, the Athenians came to realise what an amount of execution could be done, and to see the execution that was done by the Persians, with the help of cavalry, they set to work to organise in Athens, as quickly as possible, a powerful body of mounted warriors.

How formidable that cavalry later on proved itself to be is well known to all classical scholars, and the more surprising it therefore is that the Greek cavalry should not afterwards have risen to the level of that organised by Macedonians. Indeed, according to more than one historian, the Greek cavalry was employed chiefly to harass an enemy when marching, or to pursue a vanquished and retreating regiment, while one writer at least maintains that the Greek cavalry at best never approached within javelin range of an enemy's line of battle during an attack.

The cost of horses at about this time varied almost as widely as it does now. Thus it was not unusual to pay three minæ, the equivalent of about fifteen guineas, for quite a common hack—an extraordinarily high price when we bear in mind the purchasing value of money in those days—while for trained war horses, or for race horses, any sum from ten minæ upward was paid frequently.

Xenophon is known to have given approximately eleven minæ for a little war horse that, so far as one can ascertain, did not afterwards fulfil expectations, so perhaps it is hardly astonishing to read that some years later the terms “horse owner” and “spendthrift” came to be deemed more or less synonymous.

A list drawn up at about this time of the principal defects to be guarded against when inspecting a horse with a view to purchase is interesting, inasmuch as the points looked upon as faults three and twenty centuries ago are with only a few exceptions deemed to be egregious defects to-day.

The following is the list that was drawn up, so it is alleged, by Pollux:

Hoofs with thin horn (sic); hoofs full, fat, soft and flat—or, as Xenophon termed them, “low-lying”; heavy fetlocks; shanks with varicose veins; flabby thighs; hollow shoulder-blades; projecting neck; bald mane; narrow chest; fat and heavy head; large ears; converging nostrils; sunken eyes; thin and meagre sides; sharp back-bone; rough haunches; thin buttocks; stiff legs, stiff knees.

Though among the horses of the ancient Greeks the hogged mane must at one time have been seen often enough, there does not appear to be in the works of the early writers any direct allusion to the hogging of horses as a regular practice.

Probably if the custom did exist it was on the wane by the time Xenophon began to write. There is evidence to show that in ancient Greece the horses at about this period were rather smaller than those of most other countries of which we have authentic records, a characteristic still noticeable amongst the horses in several parts of modern Greece.

The Greeks almost always used entire horses for all purposes. Even in war they did not employ geldings, a custom that has given rise to the belief that in the centuries before Christ all horses, with the exception of the Libyan steeds, were far more savage than the horses of to-day.

Emphatically we have no reason to suppose that the Greeks made friends and companions of their horses as the Arab race is known to do or to have done, though the fable of Achilles' love for his horse named Xanthus makes a pretty enough story. On the other hand, it is quite possible that Xenophon may have been fond of horses not merely because of the amusement they afforded him or the pleasure he derived from riding and hunting.

For the rest the Greeks, in common with the people of most of the warlike nations in those early days, enjoyed possessing horses mainly because they served to enhance life's pleasure, and were of practical use in war.

Certainly it may be said of Xenophon that he did not preach the doctrine of kindness to horses without himself practising it thoroughly, also that he was ever ready to rebuke severely all who ill-treated their own horses or his.

Apparently the Greeks of about this era did not keep what we should term to-day pleasure horses, though they affected pleasure horses in the sense that they kept race horses. With the death of Xenophon we lose touch, to some extent, with the progress of the horse in history, but the thread is taken up again in the Roman period when Varro, writing in 37 B.C., furnishes certain details that are of interest, Virgil adding to them a little later in his “Georgics.”

After that we find instructive comment in the writings of Calpurnius and Columella in the first century A.D.; in those of Oppian and Nemesian in the third century; and in those of Apsyrtus, Pelagonius and Palladius in the fourth century.

When all is said, Xenophon's information most likely is by far the most trustworthy of any that has been handed down to us, in the same way that his descriptions certainly are the most accurate. Only a few fragments of the book by Simo, written probably about the year 460 B.C., remain; yet even those fragments contain peculiar statements.

Thus in addition to insinuating that Thessaly was the only region famous for horses in the centuries before Christ—an assertion indirectly gainsaid by Xenophon—he didactically remarks that the colour of a horse ought not to be taken into consideration when the animal's qualities are being summed up, a statement that the majority of the early writers openly repudiated, and that, as most of us know, is in every country deemed devoid of truth at the present day.