The Horse in History. Basil Tozer
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