The Horse in History. Basil Tozer
(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,