The Horse in History. Basil Tozer
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
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