Ancient Greek Horsemanship 0520000234, 9780520000230

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Ancient Greek Horsemanship

ANCIENT GREEK HORSEMANSHIP By J. K. Anderson

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles

1961

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California Cambridge University Press London, England © 1961 By The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 6i-6j8o Designed by Rita Carroll

Printed in the United States of America

In Memory of T. J. DUNBABIN

PREFACE

Most of the questions that this book discusses were suggested to me by the scholar to whose memory it is dedicated. If I have failed to answer them as well as I might have done under his guidance, the fault is my own and not that of the many friends who, by reading and criticizing preliminary drafts or by placing their knowledge at my disposal in other ways, have greatly improved this final version and saved me from many errors. First and foremost, I must thank Professor G. R. Manton of the University of Otago for his help from the very beginning of the work. Miss Sylvia Benton, Miss D. H . F. Gray, and M r . H. Wynmalen took great pains over the earlier versions, which were much improved by their criticisms. I must also thank M r . Wynmalen for permission to quote passages from his books, Equitation and Dressage. To M r . D. E. L. Haynes, M r . R. D. Barnett, M r . J. Boardman, and M r . R. M . Cook I owe thanks not only for their advice on particular points but for making available to me the means of further study while I was in England. Professors D. A . Amyx, J. Fontenrose, A . E. Gordon, W . C. Helmbold, and W . K. Pritchett of the University of California have been most generous in giving time to my problems, and Professor H. R. W . Smith has helped me by his encouragement and advice. Dr. Marian Stewart and M r . W . Hastie of Dunedin advised me on technical mat-

viii

Preface

ters. Mr. Max E. Knight of the University of California Press, Editorial Department, has shown himself indulgent to my foibles, but firm in rebuking error. I am most grateful to him and his colleagues. The many persons and institutions that have helped me with the illustrations are thanked separately in the notes to the plates. Much of the work on this book was done while I was on leave from the University of Otago, to whose Council I express my gratitude. To the Regents of the University of California I am indebted for a research grant covering the many expenses incidental to the preparation of the final manuscript.

CONTENTS A F E

I II

HORSES I N PREHISTORIC G R E E C E BREEDS OF HORSES

III

H A L T E R S AND E A R L Y

IV

LATER

V VI

VII VIII IX X XI XII

15 BITS

40

BITS AND B R I D L E S

HISTORICAL

50

D E V E L O P M E N T OF T H E B I T

SADDLE-CLOTHS,

I

DRESS,

AND

64

OTHER

ACCESSORIES

79

STABLE

89

MANAGEMENT

SCHOOLING AND O R D I N A R Y E Q U I T A T I O N FURTHER

U S E S OF T H E H O R S E

98 NO

A D V A N C E D EQUITATION

117

ECONOMICS OF H O R S E K E E P I N G

128

MILITARY

140

EQUIPMENT

AND T A C T I C S

APPENDIX

155

NOTES

183

BIBLIOGRAPHY

221

PLATES

235

INDEX

315

PLATES Afe,

1

2 a b c 3 a b 4a b 5 a b 6a

Rameses III (ca. 1204— 1 1 7 2 B.C.) hunting bulls from horse-drawn chariot (detail of sculptured pylon at Medinet Habu) Heads of chariot horses of Seti I of Egypt (ca. 1321— 1300 B.C.) Drinking vessel in the form of a mule's head (Attic, mid-fifth century B.C.) Greek rider and chariot (from an Attic mixing bowl, early seventh century B.C.) Reliefs from the bronze gates of Shalmaneser III of Assyria (859—824 B.C.) War chariot and lancer Horse archers Ashur-nasir-pal of Assyria (885—860 B.C.) hunting bulls with chariot and horsemen (alabaster relief) Cavalry of Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria (745—727 B.C.) (alabaster relief) Horsemen attendants of Sennacherib of Assyria (705— 681 B.C.) (alabaster relief) Baggage mules of Assurbanipal of Assyria (668—626 B.C.) (alabaster relief) Huntsmen of Assurbanipal of Assyria (alabaster relief)

xii

Plates b

7 8a b 9 a b 10 a b 11 a

b 12 a

Cavalry of Assurbanipal of Assyria pursuing Arab cameleers (alabaster relief) Greek baggage donkey (Attic, early fifth century B.C.) Chariot of Darius I of Persia (522—486 B.C.) Riding horses of Darius I of Persia Asiatic tributaries of Darius I of Persia Sagartian ( ? ) horses Cappadocian ( ? ) horses Asiatic tributaries of Darius I of Persia Indian mule Syrian ( ? ) chariot ponies Elamite horseman and mule cart fleeing before the Assyrians (652 B.C.) (alabaster relief from the palace of Assurbanipal) Greek mule cart in a bridal procession (Boeotian, sixth century B.C.) Assyrian horses being groomed and fed in camp (ninth century B . C . )

b

c

13 a

b 14 a b 15

Scythian horses (from a fourth-century B.C. vase of Greek workmanship found at Chertomlyk in the Kuban) Scythian horses (from a fourth-century B.C. vase of Greek workmanship found at Chertomlyk in the Kuban) Heavy cavalry attacking infantry (probably by a Greek sculptor, from the tomb of Payava, a Lycian, early fourth century B.C.) Lycian groom with horse (probably by a Greek sculptor, from Xanthus, Lycia, ca. 480 B.C.) Harnessing of Achilles's chariot horses (Attic, second quarter of sixth century B.C.) Greek horse's head in halter (Attic, first quarter of sixth century B.C.) Details from two vases painted about 530 B.C., probably by an Ionian Greek living at Caere, Etruria

Plates

xiii

a b

Stag hunt Woman with horses Greek chariot horses and boar hunt (Attic late sixth

17 a

Clazomenian youth on horseback (third quarter of sixth century B.C.) M a n with led horse (Campanian mid-fourth century

16

century B . C . )

b

B.C.)

18 a

Greek boy mounting horse (Attic mid-fifth century

b

Athenian youth on horseback (end of sixth century

B.C.) B.C.)

19 20 21 a b 22 a b 23 a

Head of Greek chariot horse (Bronze statuette from Olympia, ca. 460 B.C.) Head of Castor's horse, illustrating detail of bit and bridle (Attic, third quarter of sixth century B.C.) The Amazon Hippolyta on horseback, illustrating Greek bits (Attic, ca. 430 B.C.) Mounted Amazon, illustrating Greek bits (Attic, midfifth century B.C.) Mounted Amazon, illustrating Greek bits (Attic, midfifth century B.C.) Chariot horses and murder of Laius, illustrating Greek bits (Attic, mid-fifth century B.C.) Horse's head with spiked noseband (Attic, mid-fifth century B . C . )

b 24 25

Athenian youth with horse, illustrating form of bridle (Attic, early fifth century B.C.) Athenian youths with horse, illustrating form of bridle (Attic, early fifth century B.C.) Athenian youths with horses (Attic, mid-fifth century B.C.)

26 a

Coin of Philip II of Macedon (359—336 B . C . ) , showing Macedonian horseman

Plates

XIV

b

Persian fox hunting (seal stone, mid-fourth century

c d

Boeotian race horses (mid-sixth century B.C.) Rhodian traveller on horseback (ca. 525 B.C.) Head of Persian horse, illustrating form of bit and bridle (detail of the Alexander Mosaic, from Pompeii, supposedly a copy of the original of the late fourth century B.C.) Details from the Alexander Mosaic Head of Persian horse, illustrating form of bit Fallen Persian horse, illustrating bit, bridle, and saddlecloth Greek cavalry and heavy infantry (Attic, ca. 570 B.C.) Greek cavalry and barbarian horse archers (Attic, ca. 570 B . C . ) Athenian hunters (Attic, third quarter of sixth century

B.C.)

27

28 a b 29 30 a b

B.C.)

31 a b c 32 a

Battle of Arimaspians and griffins, illustrating saddlecloth (early fourth century B.C.) Battle of Arimaspians and griffins, illustrating saddlecloth Athena and Heracles mounting four-horse chariot; deer hunt (Attic, ca. 520 B.C.) Egyptian bit from Tel el Amarna (fourteenth century B.C.)

b 33 34 a b c d 35 36 a b 37 a

Scythian bit (fourth century B.C.) Bits from Olympia (ca. 550—490 B.C.) Asiatic bit (sixth century B.C. ?) Asiatic bit (sixth century B . C . ? ) Greek bit (fourth century B.C. or later?) Celtic curb bit (early third century B.C.) Persian bits from Persepolis (before 331 B.C.) Greek bit (fourth century B.C.) Greek muzzle (fourth century B.C.) Celtic ring snaffle (early first century after Christ)

Plates

xv

Roman bits and cavesson (second century after Christ) Head of Assyrian horse (ninth century B.c.) Head of Assyrian horse (seventh century B.C.) Head of Persian horse, illustrating details of bit and bridle (ca 500 B.C.)

I HORSES IN PREHISTORIC GREECE

The horse, as the soothsayers told King Croesus of Lydia, is a warrior and a foreigner, and it is as an invader that he appears in Greece. Wild horses were unknown in the countries round the Mediterranean, and to the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, but were hunted for food by primitive man in northern Europe and on the steppe of southern Russia and Siberia. Three main types are sometimes distinguished: 1 1 ) A breed from northern Europe and the western steppe, small but spirited, with fine legs and head, and elegantly seton tail. 2 ) Przewalski's horse, which still survives in small numbers in Central Asia, distinguished by its heavy build, low head carriage, and generally coarse appearance. 3 ) A west European "cold-blooded" or "forest" breed, whose blood may run in many of the heavier horses of the present day. From the steppe country knowledge of the horse penetrated to the Iranian plateau.2 A t Rana Ghundai in Baluchistan horse bones and teeth have been found in sufficient numbers to suggest not only that the horse was already domesticated but that the site itself may possibly have been a camping ground for nomad riders.3

2

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

In the third millennium B.C. the clay tablets of Mesopotamia occasionally mention the horse, under the name of "ass of the mountains," and the periphrasis shows not only the writers' comparative unfamiliarity with horses but the source from which such knowledge as they had of them was derived.4 Not until the second millennium was well advanced did the horse become common in southwestern Asia. Its introduction coincided with invasions by warrior nations, speaking related Indo-European languages, Hittites in Asia Minor, Mitanni in Armenia, Kassites in Babylonia, and Aryans in northwestern India. In Egypt the horse has been connected with the invasions of the Hyksos (whoever they were—probably Asiatic Semites), but a skeleton recently found at Buhen in the Sudan is believed by its excavators to date from the end of the Middle Kingdom and would certainly seem to be older than the first sack of the fortress in about 1675 B.C. In Greece and at Troy horse bones appear in quantity during the middle Bronze Age (after about 1800 B . C . ) , when the mainland was controlled by an invading people who spoke an early form of Greek, the ancestors of Homer's Achaeans.5 These Greek horses seem certainly to have been descended from the first group. The earliest pictures of them were found in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae, the tombs of a dynasty that reigned from about 1650 to 1550 B.C. One gold signet 6 shows an archer hunting a stag from a chariot pulled by two wildly galloping ponies with manes and tails flying in the wind. Slightly later pictures suggest a smoother, more polished animal, but clipping and grooming can make a great difference to a newly broken horse, and I cannot accept as proved the view that these represent an improved breed.7 The pictures on sealstones and signet rings are naturally very small, and though there are larger reliefs on tombstones, which show heroes in chariots pursuing foemen on foot,8 these are carved in too crude a style to allow firm pronouncements about details. A t least it would seem that the horses generally had fine legs and smooth

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

3

coats. Their heads are small and fine, their tails well set on. The high carriage of the head and neck that is so characteristic of the horses of classical Greece is already evident; it may be in part the result of the primitive method of harnessing, with a collar pressing upon the windpipe.9 From the mainland of Greece the horse reached Crete during or shortly before the fifteenth century B.C. On clay tablets containing records from the last period of the palace at Knossos (ca. 1400 B.C.) horses are associated with chariots and corslets for warriors,10 and as these Linear B tablets (unlike the Linear A , which date from a time earlier than the introduction of horses) are written in a form of Greek, it would seem that there too horses came with fighting men speaking an IndoEuropean language, who may have owed to their war chariots their power to rule a people far more advanced in the arts of civilization. Meanwhile in Egypt and Mesopotamia, in Syria and Asia Minor, the main strength both of the new invading nations and of the old-established powers lay in two-horse chariots, which carried, beside the driver, an archer or spearman, and sometimes also a shield bearer. These chariots charged in squadrons, drawn up in regular lines, and the soldiers fought from their vehicles, without dismounting. The monuments of the Pharaohs of Egypt show the horses of the time excellently (Plates 1, i a ) . They are small but finely bred, spirited, and carrying their heads high, generally "dish-faced" (with a concave profile), with beautiful heads, legs, and tails. The Egyptian monuments, which are careful to distinguish the dress, arms, and physical characteristics of the various nations of Asia and Africa show no difference between the horses of the Egyptians and those of their Asiatic enemies, such as the Hittites, which makes it unlikely that at this time "African" and "Asiatic" breeds were distinctly recognized. Nor can we distinguish on the monuments any obvious physical difference between chariot- and riding-horses. Riding, indeed, is rarely

4

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

represented, and seems to have been quite unimportant militarily. Horsemen are occasionally seen among the chariots, hastening with messages to laggard divisions of the army, or fleeing, perhaps on loose chariot horses caught and mounted in the confusion of the rout, but they do not play any effective part in the fighting. At least the art of riding was not unknown —indeed there are a few other mounted figures from Egypt and Syria which are older than any representations of horsedrawn chariots in those countries.11 In Greece chariotry can never have been developed on the same scale as in Asia and Egypt. Both the Egyptian archers and the Hittite spearmen deployed their chariots in long lines and charged at the gallop, and the plains of Greece are too small to allow such tactics to be copied on a large scale. The hills, which divide the plains into small pockets and cover most of the country, are steep and rocky and generally impracticable to horses (especially to unshod ones). A system of stone-paved roads through the passes linking the Argive plain with the open country about the Isthmus of Corinth was built by the kings of Mycenae, but though chariots could travel along these highways, and the similar ones that doubtless existed elsewhere, they could not turn aside from them to manoeuvre or deploy for action. And the system of horse breeding required wide stretches of pasture. Large herds of mares were left running loose in the water meadows, and the stallions were admitted to them as required. There are few parts of Greece (especially in the east) where good grazing is available all year. Generally the sun burns up the grass throughout the rainless summer. Moreover, land used for pasture must be taken from other crops. So once the horse had been introduced to Egypt and Mesopotamia, the kings of these fertile, wellwatered countries were soon in a position to supply their neighbours, who lacked pasture on which to build up their studs. Horses reared on these good pastures might be expected to show, over several generations, an increase in size over their

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

5

ancestors from the steppes. (I understand that the Arab horses now bred in England are appreciably larger than those of Arabia, though their blood remains pure.) Larger, better-fed horses would be better able to carry riders, but harder to control. In the late fifteenth century B.C. Hattusilis II, king of the Hittites, asked the Kassite king of Babylon for young horses of superior size—young, because the winter cold of the Anatolian plateau to which they were going would kill off old horses.12 But the horse had been a stranger in Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C., and even three hundred years earlier the traffic in horses had been in the other direction; there are "very plain indications that the art of fast chariot driving with horses was introduced from Anatolia into North Syria." 13 Hattusilis's request therefore no more proves the existence of a superior native Mesopotamian breed than Solomon's purchase of horses from Egypt in the tenth century B.C. proves that Africa was the original home of the best horses in the world.14 Horses imported from the plains to the Anatolian plateau would need to be acclimatized. The process is perhaps described in the famous book of Kikkuli of Mitanni, found written on clay tablets at the Hittite capital,16 which gives detailed dayby-day instructions for bringing chariot horses into condition over a course of several months, beginning with severe fasting and physicking, and continuing by a gradual process of building up, with exercise appropriately regulated at the various stages. If the Hittites looked to Mitanni for instruction in horsemastership, the Achaean princes of Greece may in their turn have looked to the Hittites, whose court they may even have visited in order to be taught, though the evidence on this point is far from conclusive.18 At least the monuments make it clear that, like the kings of Egypt and Asia, they put their trust in chariots. Riding seems to have been unimportant, and uninteresting to the artists of the period, though a mounted warrior,

6

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

seated awkwardly on his beast's rump (but the suggestion that it may be a donkey is rejected) is represented by a crude clay statuette of about 1300 B.C., found at Mycenae. 17 It has been questioned whether the horse and the war chariot reached Greece simultaneously. There is, after all, a gap of perhaps two centuries between the invasion of the "horsetaming" Achaeans at the beginning of the middle Bronze Age and the earliest pictures of chariots. And there are no remains of horse gear and chariot fittings to bridge the gap—bits, terrets, or linch pins, such as we might expect to be made of metal or other enduring materials. It has therefore been suggested that the horse (not in Greece alone, but throughout the Middle East) was ridden 18 or used as a pack animal 19 by the invaders who brought it. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, perhaps in Crete too,20 sledges and carts drawn by oxen and asses had long been used, both in war and peace, and the superior animal brought by the invaders is supposed to have been combined with the wheeled vehicle of the civilized world to produce the new chariotry, whose use spread through Asia Minor to Greece. The "pack-horse" theory I find unattractive. The horse (unlike the ass and mule) was seldom used as a mere beast of burden in later antiquity. Moreover, from Greece to India the Indo-Europeans succeeded in establishing themselves as masters over peoples far superior numerically, and in many respects culturally. The increased strategic mobility provided by the pack horse (to a tribe accompanied by women, children, and babes in arms?) is not enough to account for this. Some new weapon, conferring a tactical advantage, is needed to explain the conquest of superior numbers backed by the arsenals of fenced cities. The want of definite remains of horse gear is unimportant. As M . S. F. Hood points out, and as will be shown in later chapters, "the equipment of primitive riding is, after all, rudimentary," and may be made solely of rope or rawhide. In any case, in Hungary the horn cheekpieces of bits

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

j

have been found in association with horse bones in contexts dating from the late third millennium B.C.21 That the invaders were cavalry is at first sight plausible. History has many examples of settled lands overrun by horsemen from the steppes. But it would seem that heavy fourwheeled carts, drawn by oxen rather than horses, were already known in Central Europe at the end of the third millennium B.C. Their use probably spread from Mesopotamia (where they had been invented in the fourth millennium) through the Caucasus to the steppe country. T h e invention of the spoked wheel—an essential feature of the light horse-drawn war chariot —to replace the heavy solid or built-up wheel of the old carts, and the development of the chariot itself, may therefore have preceded rather than followed the entry of the "horse-taming" tribes into southwestern Asia. 22 T h e word "yoke" itself, with its various cognates in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and the Germanic tongues, suggests that the harnessing of animals (not necessarily horses, and by no means necessarily to war chariots) was familiar to the Indo-Europeans before they dispersed to their widely separated conquests. T h e Greek and Sanskrit epics tell of chariot-driving gods and heroes, and mention riding only as something rare and exceptional.23 Finally, if the invaders had possessed an efficient cavalry it is difficult to see why they should have given it up in favour of the chariot. In historical times the universal tendency is in the opposite direction. M y own opinion is that the ponies of the western steppes, being too small to make good cavalry chargers, were not formidable in warfare before the invention of the chariot though they may have been domesticated at an earlier period. It was the chariot that enabled the horse owners to break in upon the settled lands of the Middle East, where plentiful supplies of grain and better pasture were available. Better food enabled larger animals to be developed, over a long period covering many generations. But the larger, better-fed horses were harder

8

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

to control than their ancestors, and new equipment and a superior technique of riding had to be devised before cavalry could take the place of chariots. There was no sudden revolution caused by the introduction of a new breed of horses, but horses of Central Asiatic type, related to Przewalski's horse, were in fact brought in from the eighth century B.c. onwards by invaders, who did not drive but rode to battle. T h e descendants of the different breeds can still be distinguished in the historical period. Evidence for these developments will be presented in the following chapters. Late in the thirteenth century B.C. new invasions troubled the civilized world. T h e Hittite power in Asia Minor was violently overthrown and a mixed multitude of nations, refugees and invaders together, fought its way south through Syria. Egypt, threatened both from this quarter and from the west, where other hosts of "Land and Sea Peoples" were moving along the Libyan coast, was only saved by repeated hard battles, in which chariot-borne archers were one of the chief instruments of victory. Soon afterwards Greece was overrun, according to tradition by the Dorians, a Greek-speaking people from the north, who sacked the palaces of the Achaean kings at Pylos and Mycenae. T h e Dorian invasions were followed by a time of confusion and darkness, which lasted until the second half of the eighth century B.c. T h e Greek world was divided into small independent warring states, hostile to each other and cut off from the empires of the Levant, whose cities, recovering from the disasters of invasion, preserved the civilized tradition that had been lost in Greece. T h e Greeks were dispersed into miserable rustic villages. T h e peasants made their own ploughs, their own felt hats and water-proof cloaks, their own boots, and their own waggons—drawn by oxen, for the horse belonged to the nobility, petty squires who in mud-brick hovels or the patched ruins of ancient citadels maintained, by virtue of their weapons and armour, a claim to kingship and divine descent.

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

9

One specialized craftsman was supported by the village economy—the blacksmith. The technique of iron working, hitherto obscure, had spread through the Middle East during the upheavals of the late thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C., and may perhaps have been carried by the invaders and have given them an advantage over the users of bronze. But this one technical advance did not offset the general poverty and decline in standards. Hesiod, writing during the eighth century B.C. in a bleak farm on the Boeotian uplands, laments that he has been born in an Iron Age of labour and misery. 24 The aristocracy, even if they had little more than the peasants in the way of material comforts, were at least free to spend their time in politics, hunting, and war. The chariot dominated the battle field. The heroes of the early epics, which were probably composed during the early Iron Age, though they tell the story of the Trojan W a r centuries earlier, both in battle and on journeys used small chariots, drawn normally by two horses yoked on either side of a single pole. The chariot carries two men—an armoured warrior, who springs down to fight with sword and spear, and a charioteer, less honoured, though still of noble rank, who carries his superior about the battle field and keeps close to him after he has dismounted in order to bring him safely out of the fight if need be. Warrior and charioteer work together as a team, and only combine with the rest of their side as the result of individual arrangement, often made on the spur of the moment in the midst of battle. Chariots are not drawn up in squadrons with dressed ranks (though tradition may have recalled that in the Bronze Age "the men of old sacked cities and fortresses thus." 25 But the most important departure from the system of Asia and Egypt is that, though fighting from the chariot is not unknown, the warrior usually springs down, and a man on foot has the advantage when he attacks one still in his chariot. Such tactics are illustrated on Attic vases of the eighth century B.C., 2 6 and, in my opinion, persisted in Greece until then. Whether they had

io

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

already developed in the Bronze Age is a question outside the scope of this work. For riding there is little evidence either in literature or in art. The epics mention it twice in similes, which fall outside the main narrative and may represent the tradition of the poet's own day rather than that of the Heroic Age of which he tells,27 and once on a midnight foray chariot horses are mounted and ridden when circumstances do not allow them to be yoked in the usual way. 28 Another story in the epic cycle, perhaps composed in the seventh century B.C. but preserved only in the summaries of late antiquity, is frequently illustrated in vase painting from the sixth century B.C.29 onwards. Troilus, prince of Troy, was surprised and killed by Achilles when watering his horses before the gates. He is regularly shown riding one horse and leading another. If he had been going out to battle, the horses would have been yoked to his chariot, but he would not go to the trouble of harnessing them for what he expected to be a minor and uneventful excursion. This is not evidence for the way in which heroes of the Bronze Age behaved, but at least shows that the poetic tradition did not look back to a time when nobody by any chance ever sat astride a horse. Rather the invention of riding was traced to a very remote period, though who was responsible—god, hero, Amazon or half-brute Centaur—remained a matter of dispute among the ancients. Pictures of ridden horses are rare before about 700 B.C. A vase from Crete (perhaps ninth century B.C.) has a crude but spirited picture of an armed man on horseback, apparently seated sideways.30 But Cretan evidence does not necessarily apply to the Greek mainland; chariot-borne archers, and later horse archers, who shot without dismounting, both well attested in Crete, are foreign to the general Greek tradition. On the mainland from the second half of the eighth century B.C. onwards horsemen appear on vases and metal brooches and on bands of gold ornamented in relief. Some are seen in battle, or

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

11

riding down fallen opponents, but most are unarmed and follow quietly behind peaceful processions of chariots.31 The archaeological evidence thus supports the view that in the prehistoric period of Greece cavalry were generally unimportant, or indeed nonexistent, but it is clearly going too far to say that men never rode, or that their horses were incapable of bearing riders. Rather at this early period men rarely performed on horseback deeds worth commemorating by artists or poets. Troilus's trivial errand was celebrated for its tragic consequences, not for its own sake. Of the physical appearance of Greek horses at this time, the geometric vase paintings, which represent them only as conventionalized silhouettes, convey a very inadequate idea. Manes and fetlocks are always emphasized; tails are usually set on high, and the high head carriage noted as characteristic of the Bronze Age horses is still evident. When ridden horses appear on the same vases as chariots they are not distinguished by greater size or anything else, and there is no reason to suppose that they represent a different breed (Plate 2c). Nor is there any obvious difference between ridden and chariot horses in classical art. The Greeks possessed no heavy draught horses, and the same type of animal seems generally to have been used for both riding and driving until the fourth century B.C. or later. The Romans, as will be seen in the next chapter, had more sorts of horses to choose from, and differentiated. To Seneca it is a commonplace that the same animal cannot be a race horse, a riding horse, and a draught horse.32 Meanwhile in Asia true cavalry, including both lancers and horse archers, was developing, and gradually displacing the old chariotry. Lancers appear on reliefs from the petty Hittite principality of Tell Halaf (tenth century B . C . ? ) . The kings and captains still drive furiously in chariots, but the messengers between them are horsemen, and the cavalry, in the ninth century B.C. still outnumbered by the chariots, are by the time of Ezekiel "captains and rulers clothed most gloriously, horsemen

12

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men." 38 They are shown in great detail on the reliefs from the palaces of the Assyrian kings (Plates 3—6), whose reviving power was already active west of the Euphrates and whose dominion eventually extended from Egypt to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Their cavalry ride astride, bareback or more often upon quilted saddle-cloths, secured by a breastband, sometimes a girth, and more rarely a crupper. They have no stirrups, nor is there any trace of a saddle with a rigid tree. They manage their horses with bit and bridle, and the later reliefs show a remarkable anticipation of the modern martingale (not used, as far as I know, by any other ancient people). The reins are attached to a large tassel hanging below the horse's neck, which continues to provide a certain check on the horse's mouth when the rider drops the reins. The rider is thus enabled to use both hands for his weapons, and can shoot the bow at full gallop. The greater skill that developed with the increased military importance of cavalry is indicated by the contrast between the firm and easy seat of the riders on the later reliefs and the appearance of their predecessors in the ninth century B.C., who huddle cramped and round-shouldered on their horses' loins 34 (Plate 3 ) . The Assyrian horses are larger and coarser in build than those of the Egyptian reliefs. "The mountains" continued to be an important source of supply to Mesopotamia, and the Assyrian kings repeatedly led their armies into Media, largely with the object of recruiting their studs of horses.38 During the eighth century B.C., while the Assyrian power was expanding in western Asia, contact between Greece and the civilized world was resumed. Eastern goods again reached the Greek mainland. Greek traders were established at the mouth of the Orontes in northern Syria at least as early as the middle of the century,36 and at its end the Greek geometric style of art, that had slowly developed since the start of the Iron Age, was overwhelmed by oriental conventions and

Horses in Prehistoric Greece

13

motifs, among which Phoenician, Syrian, Egyptian, and Assyrian elements can all be distinguished. More important, and rather earlier, was the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet, which the Greeks improved by the invention of vowels. The revival of commerce and manufacture brought people together in cities. New Greek colonies were established in Sicily and southern Italy, and on the shores of the Black Sea. The rise of an urban commercial class broke the power of the old hereditary kingdoms and aristocracies, and the political change was hastened by the introduction of new military equipment and tactics, probably from the Carians of Asia Minor. The duel between individual chariot-borne heroes was replaced by the clash of masses of heavy infantry drawn up in close order and armed with sword, spear, helmet, cuirass, greaves, and round shield.37 These were out of the reach of the poor, but cost far less than horses and chariots, and so the old nobles lost their power and during the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. were generally replaced by tyrants, who in their turn, gave way to middle-class urban republics. In the "orientalizing" period (that is, from about 700 B.C.) riders on horseback become common in vase painting and other forms of art. A t first they generally ride badly, perched uncomfortably on their horses' loins. As has been noted, they are often unarmed, which shows that the painters were not solely interested in new methods of fighting. Not until the middle of the seventh century B.C. do the vase paintings suggest a firm and comfortable seat. Allowance must be made for the greatly increased skill of the artists, but it was just at this time, in 648 B.C., that a race for ridden horses was first established1 at the Olympic Games. Two-horse chariots had been raced since remote antiquity, and the four-horse chariot, which appears on late geometric vases,88 since 680 B.C. These dates 89 provide additional evidence for the comparative unimportance of riding in early times. Even after races for ridden horses had been introduced, the

i ¿j.

Horses in Prehistoric

Greece

skill of the rider seems to have counted for comparatively little. "The mare of the Corinthian Phidolas was named Aura, according to the Corinthians. At the start she happened to throw her rider, but continuing nevertheless to race in due form she rounded the turning post, and on hearing the trumpet quickened her pace, reached the umpires first, knew that she had won, and stopped. The Eleans proclaimed Phidolas victor, and allowed him to dedicate this statue of the mare." 40

II BREEDS OF HORSES

Though horses were ridden as well as driven in Greece in the prehistoric period, driving was far more important than riding until the seventh century B.C. A t this time Eastern influences were making themselves felt in every aspect of Greek life, and it is therefore natural to look for them in this matter too, especially as cavalry had already largely displaced chariots in Syria and Mesopotamia. One school, led by the late Professor W . Ridgeway, 1 held that it was the introduction of a new and superior breed of horses that made riding possible, and though this theory can no longer be maintained, since it has been shown that the horses of the Bronze A g e could and did carry riders, a reexamination of the evidence, most of which he collected, may be of value for its own sake. In the fifth century B.C. the Greek horse, as represented by painters and sculptors and described in literature,2 was a small animal, perhaps never exceeding, and seldom reaching, fifteen hands, with a fine head and legs, high head carriage, and rather heavy body. A t the same period the barbarous Sigynnae, living beyond the Danube, possessed a race of ponies "shaggy all over the body, with hair five fingers long, small and flat-nosed and incapable of bearing riders, but very swift when harnessed to chariots." 3 T o modern eyes the horse of classical Greece looks as though it might well be a cross between such a rough

16

Breeds of Horses

pony (from which it would derive the coarseness of its body) and something resembling the present-day Arab, from which would come the more admirable features of its head, legs, and well-set-on tail. That the Greek breed of horses was significantly altered by the introduction of fresh blood between the Heroic Age of the epics and the historical period is suggested by one piece of evidence.4 Homer's horses are conventionally described as xantbos, the colour of fair, or perhaps brown, human hair, in horses probably chestnut, though Ridgeway, to suit his theories, generally translates it "yellow-dun." Horses of other colours are all of remarkable origin and usually superior quality. King Rhesus of Thrace had white horses, and the Greek Diomedes captured from Trojan Aeneas a red-bay (phoinix) with a white star on his forehead, who had in him the blood of a divine strain, the gift of Zeus, father of gods and man. By contrast, the horses of classical literature seem to have been no more consistent in colour than the modern thoroughbred. Young spendthrifts lavish fortunes on "starling-coloured" race horses; chestnut fillies run through armed camps; generals and their ladies drive out behind Sicyonian greys; the names Melanippe and Xanthippe suggest that black and chestnut horses were admired in aristocratic circles; finally we may note the magnificent red-bay horse of Seius, which brought bad luck on all its possessors.8 The appearance of white and piebald horses in vase painting from the seventh century B.C. onwards is less significant, as the artist of the geometric period could not have drawn a white horse, even if he had wanted to. But Homer does not restrict the adjective xanthos to ordinary horses. The long-maned horses of Achilles, sprung from the union of the West Wind with Podarge ("Swift-foot") the Harpy, were called Xanthos and Balios. (Balios probably means "Dapple.") 6 So perhaps we should not make too much of the contrast between the "ordinary" chestnut or dun, and the "divine" bay. Homer mentions other divine horses, got by the North

Breeds of Horses

iy

Wind on mortal mares grazing in the water meadows before Troy. 7 But none of the divine horses are ever ridden, although they can gallop dryshod over the sea, or through the cornfields without bending the topmost ears. The white horses of Rhesus are ridden once, by Odysseus and Diomedes, but, as has been noted already, this is only because circumstances do not allow them to be yoked to the chariot. In short, the epics do not provide evidence for the existence of a superior breed of riding horse. And, as was seen in the preceding chapter, the archaeological evidence shows that the horses of Bronze A g e Greece were capable of being ridden, and had at least some of the qualities of those of the classical period. But supposing, as is likely enough, that new blood was introduced into Greece in the "orientalizing" period, and that it may have left its mark in the various colours of the horses of the classical age, we have still to see where it may have come from. It has been noted above that the horses of classical Greece suggest to the modern eye a cross between Arab blood and some rough pony, but Arabia never supplied horses to the ancient world.8 The kings of Assyria repeatedly raided Media, and cavalry horses formed an important part of their booty. They also led expeditions southwards, along their Arabian march, but here, though they carried off camels, there were no horses to be found. The bas-reliefs of the palace of Assurbanipal show Arabs mounted on camels (single-humped dromedaries) fleeing from Assyrians on horseback 9 (Plate . Two centuries later, Herodotus described the army which King Xerxes of Persia led into Greece in 480 B.C. This account, which brings the total number of men to more than five million, is certainly not an accurate description of the expeditionary force, but it may be based on an official record of the military resources of the entire Persian empire. The nations supplying cavalry are carefully listed, and the Arabs are expressly distinguished as "all riding upon camels, not inferior to horses in speed." 10 Of the horses of the Persian empire we can form an excellent

18

Breeds of Horses

impression from engraved seal stones and reliefs, above all, from the reliefs of the palace of Persepolis, which show the nations of the earth bringing tribute to the Great King. The king's own horses, perhaps the famous Nisaean breed, are of no great height, but solid and obviously very strong, with massive heads and marked Roman noses (Plate 8 ) . The great size of the Persian horses, especially when compared with those of Greece, was a source of pride to the Persians themselves and of admiration to the rest of the world, but it would seem that it was their weight and massiveness, rather than their height, that attracted attention. 11 The Sagartians and Sogdians, and other Central Asiatic tribes, have horses generally similar, but smaller, lighter, and longer in the back (Plate 9 ) . (These seem all to be strongly influenced by Przewalski blood. This may have been introduced by the Medes and Persians themselves, or by the Scythians, mounted nomads from the steppes, who, with other tribes, broke in upon southwestern Asia in the seventh century and played a part in the destruction of Nineveh in 6 1 2 B.C. A generation later they were themselves defeated and expelled by the Medes, but their horses may have been crossed with those of their conquerors.12 The difference between the Assyrian horses and the Persian ones of two and a half centuries later is most striking—see Plates 5a, 6, 8,—yet both nations recruited their studs from Media.). Other Asiatics are shown with a pair of pretty ponies harnessed to a chariot. The heads are coarser than those of the horses on the Egyptian reliefs of seven or eight centuries earlier, and the animals themselves look distinctly smaller (Plate 1 0 . The Indians bring handsome mules (Plate 10a). The Arabs too are listed among the subject nations. But the group that probably represents them leads one-humped camels, not horses.13 This evidence of course applies to the northern tribes who were in direct contact with Assyria and Persia. But the caravan routes, by which the Queen of Sheba came from the ends

Breeds of Horses

19

of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, brought Arabia Felix into contact with the north. After the Persian empire was conquered by Alexander the Great (336—323 B.C.) the Greeks were able to develop direct sea-borne trade with the Orient via the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, in which southern Arabia, the home of spices, played an important part. By the beginning of the present era they had a fair knowledge of the Arabian coast, based on direct observation, which naturally covered the produce of the country, or at least such of it as was exported. This information was drawn upon by the geographer Strabo,14 writing under the Roman emperor Augustus, who mentions the cattle, camels, deer, and wild asses (hemionoi, or half asses—the word is the same as that used for mules, but the ambiguity is as old as Homer) and other animals, both wild and domestic, found in Arabia, but states emphatically and repeatedly that horses, mules, and swine are unknown there. In this respect his information seems to have been out of date, as there are a number of Arabian representations of horses and riders, some of which are at least as old as Strabo's time, though probably none as early as that of Alexander. 15 This evidence suggests that the inhabitants of Arabia were using horses from before the beginning of the present era, but that the Arab horse enjoyed no reputation in the rest of the world and was not sought after by other nations. This is confirmed by its omission from the following catalogues of notable breeds drawn up by several writers.16 These lists show the development, especially in the Asiatic provinces of the Roman empire, of heavy chargers, and also prove that the Greek light horses, being now only used for racing and display, steadily deteriorated, though continuing for centuries to resemble, at least superficially, their ancestors of the classical period. The heavy war horse, with fine, small head, massive neck, and body of great depth and solidity carried on fine, clean legs, is shown to perfection by the statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 161—180) at Rome. But this heavy type is already

20

Breeds of Horses

differentiated from the light and elegant race horse in the fourth century B.C. The difference is strikingly illustrated by bronze life-size statues of a race horse and jockey, recovered from the sea off Cape Artemisium on the east coast of Greece. The rider, shown with vivid realism and in violent action, can safely be dated in the first half of the second century B.C. But his horse, finely bred but light almost to the point of weediness, is so unlike other horses of this time that some critics have suggested that this part of the statue was made some three centuries earlier and stolen from an early classical monument to be used in honour of some Hellenistic winner. I share the opinion of those who believe that horse and rider were made for each other, and would consider this animal to be of pure descent from those of fifth-century Greece, while most monuments of the same period show the effects of crossing with Asiatic blood.17 T o proceed with the literary evidence, Gratius, a younger contemporary of Strabo, begins with Greek horses, Thessalian and Argive. Tall and high-stepping, they make excellent race horses, but their qualities are too flashy for war or hunting. The horses of Syene (Upper Egypt) lack renown. The Parthian, excellent in his own soft plains, soon wears out his hooves in rocky Italy. He is spirited and docile, but his one fault balances these good qualities. The Spanish horses are famous, but not to be ventured upon in battle, as their hard mouths can scarcely be governed with iron-pointed bits. By contrast, the Nasamones of North Africa manage their horses with a light rod. So, through the horses of Thrace, Sicily, Epirus, and Macedonia the poet seems to be approaching a climax in his native Italy, when his book breaks off in disorder, the end being lost. The African Nemesianus, two and a half centuries later, mentions the horses of Greece and then describes the fine appearance of the broad-backed Cappadocian as he paws the ground. The noble race that dwells beyond the steep summits

Breeds of Horses

21

of Calpe (that is, the Spanish) can gallop long courses through the fields; no less beautiful in body than the horses of Greece, they snort, and neigh, and champ their bits as they paw the ground. Best of all is the Moorish steed which the dark Mazacean trains in the desert to bear continuous toil. He is not to be despised because he hangs his head down low and his mane covers his shoulders. It is because he wears no bridle, being easily governed by light blows of a stick, which teach him "to start, to turn, to run directly on." On the level expanses of the open plain he will gradually outrun all his rivals. The poet Oppian, in the third century after Christ, lists in his book on hunting "Tyrrhenian, Sicilian, Cretan, Mazic, Achaean, Cappadocian, Mauretanian, Scythian, Magnesian, Epeian, Ionian, Armenian, Libyan, Thracian and Erembian" horses. He gives a description of the ideal hunter, which agrees with, and is probably based on, Xenophon's description of the ideal war horse, and adds: "Such are the Tyrrhenian and Armenian and Achaean and the renowned Cappadocians who pasture near the Taurus." He also notes that the Sicilian are fast, the Parthian still faster, fastest of all the Iberian, but they lack staying power. For long distances the dappled Moorish horses are best; after them the Libyans of Cyrene, which are similar but larger. He adds a strange story about a spotted breed called Orynx, evidently marked like the modern Appaloosa, saying that the spots are produced by branding the foals with red-hot irons. Apsyrtus and Hierocles, writers on veterinary medicine who held high posts in the imperial service, the former under Constantine the Great, the latter perhaps a century later, give similar lists.18 Hierocles remarks simply that the treatment of a sick horse does not depend on its breed, whether it is Arcadian, Cyrenean, Iberian, Cappadocian or, for that matter, Thessalian or Mauretanian, or indeed of the breed in which the Persian king so prided himself, the Nisaean. Apsyrtus is more detailed; the Parthian is large, beautiful, and spirited,

22

Breeds of Horses

with remarkably good feet (contrast Gratius's observations); the Median (that is, Nisaean) of surpassing size; the Armenian and Cappadocian have Parthian blood but are rather heavy and clumsy; the Spanish large, symmetrically formed, carrying their heads (which are fine) high, but herring-gutted (entomi—divided at the waist like insects) and with poor quarters. They are strong road hacks but poor gallopers and unable to stand the spur, gentle when first foaled but difficult from the time they are broken in. The horses of Greece are praised for their size, fine heads, high carriage, and spirit, but have poor quarters. The Thessalians are best; the Epirote often vicious. The Thracians are compounded of all possible faults (Thrace had been repeatedly swept by invasions and the good breed doubtless destroyed). The horses of Cyrene are praised, especially as having good staying power. The Istrian and Sarmatian have their own qualities; the Argolic have good feet, poor quarters, fine heads and well-padded spines. If these various breeds are arranged geographically, it would appear that the horses best known to the Romans in the third and fourth centuries after Christ may be divided into the following groups: From the territories bordering on the eastern frontier and from the Persian empire, whose Sassanian kings had regained their independence from their Parthian overlords in A.D. 224, came a large breed, obviously descended, at least in part, from the great horses of the Persepolis reliefs, though the horses of the Sassanian monuments 19 do not have such marked Roman noses. In Armenia and Cappadocia the breed was not of the same quality as in Media, though Ridgeway notes that Strabo had praised the Armenian pastures, which, according to him, actually produced the Great King's own Nisaean horses.20 Xenophon, however, writing four centuries earlier, before the Persian empire had been dismembered by the Macedonians and Parthians, says that the Armenian horse, though similar to the Median, was smaller and more spirited.21

Breeds of Horses

23

The horses of Greece itself, among which the Achaean, Epeian (from Elis), Cretan, Ionian (probably from western Asia Minor), Arcadian, Epirote, Argive, and Thessalian strains are singled out, seem in general to have had a showy appearance, characterized by a fine head and haughty carriage, but to have had poor quarters and lacked staying power. W e may perhaps recognize in them the descendants of the classical breed, spoilt by centuries of breeding for parades and short sprint races on the flat. The qualities of the Italian and Sicilian horses are not particularly described, but they perhaps did not differ greatly from those of Greece. Spain seems to have produced two distinct types, both of which can be traced back into the classical period. Writers under the early empire describe how the mares of Lusitania are got in foal by the West Wind and bear a progeny celebrated for its great speed, but never living beyond three years. 22 Of this breed will come Oppian's Iberians that outrun all others but lack staying power. Apsyrtus's road hacks also had their forerunners under the late republic and early empire, when Spanish hackneys were valued by lawyers and other professional men. 23 Wild horses, as will be seen later, had been found in Spain as late as the second century after Christ. The horses of North Africa seem to have retained more of their primitive virtue than did those of Europe. Oppian and Apsyrtus both praise them as good stayers. At Rome, even if the Iberians were supposed to be faster, the Africans were particularly sought after as race horses.24 The largest of them, those of Cyrene, seem to have had the good points of the Greek horses without their defects. Of the horses of the northern provinces, which had been repeatedly devastated by barbarian invasions, we hear very little. From the lower Danube frontier and the lands behind it we have the Thracians—base, ugly, low-shouldered, ewenecked, flat-footed, bad walkers, worse gallopers, and though

2 ¿j.

Breeds of Horses

the Istrian and Sarmatian horses were obviously useful in their way they evidently did not conform to the classical standards of beauty. From the fourth century after Christ onwards the Huns had made the Romans only too familiar with the Central Asiatic pony, descended from Przewalski's horse. Ammianus Marcellinus says that they are tough but misshapen; their riders hardly ever dismount, even easing nature on horseback, seated sideways like women. Vegetius says that they have a great hooked (Roman-nosed) head, protruding eyes, narrow nostrils, broad jaws, strong and stiff neck, mane hanging below the knees, overlarge ribs, curved back, bushy tail, cannon bones of great strength, small pasterns, wide-spreading hooves, hollow loins, body angular all over, with no fat on the rump or the muscles of the back, their stature inclining to length rather than to height, the belly drawn, the bones huge. The very thinness of these horses is pleasing and there is beauty even in their ugliness. He adds that they are quiet and sensible and bear wounds well. 25 With the type one may compare the ponies of the Scythians, with whom the Greeks on the northern coast of the Black Sea had been in contact for centuries. But the excavations at Pazyryk show that a better class of animal was reaching Central Asia as early as the fourth century B.C., though most of the horses found there were of the Przewalski type 26 (Plate 12 b, c, probably cross-bred). W e miss a reference to the horses of Gaul, formerly so famous. This is supplied, however, by the veterinary surgeon Theomnestus, who tells how he accompanied the Emperor Licinius across the Alps in the February of A.D. 3 1 3 . Licinius was on his way to his wedding, and in his eagerness took risks with the weather. The party was overtaken by a blizzard, in which many of the soldiers froze to death and were carried on by their horses, sitting bolt upright with their weapons in

Breeds of Horses

25

their hands and their lips drawn back from their teeth. When the horses too froze, they remained standing in their tracks. Theomnestus's own eight-year-old Gaulish horse was seized by the cold, "which grieved me exceedingly, for there is nothing a man would rather have than a beautiful and spirited horse." But in the nick of time they struggled into a town, where, with the help of the kindest of hosts, who brought him unlimited firewood and everything else that he needed, he was able to save the animal's life. 27 The horses of Gaul seem to have been a light breed, similar to, and perhaps represented by, that now found in the Camargue (though the possibility that the Saracen invasions may have introduced North African and Arab blood into these regions must not be overlooked) . Professor J. C . Ewart recognized the remains of three distinct types of horse among the bones from Newstead near Melrose—a Roman fort garrisoned in the second century after Christ by Gaulish cavalry. These included "14-hands horses as fine in head and limbs as modern high-caste Arabs," "well-bred ponies under 13 hands at the withers," and "broad-browed big-boned ponies of the 'forest' or robustus type." These last, which may have served as transport animals, "probably came from Germany-belonged, in fact, to the "bad and ugly" native German breeds referred to by Caesar." In discussing these horses (in the second appendix to Curie's report of the excavation: A Roman Frontier Post and its People) Ewart was perhaps excessively influenced by Ridgeway's theory of the Libyan origin of the light horse, but he notes that "teeth and limb bones from French and English Pleistocene deposits point to the existence of a fine-headed race from 12 to 13 hands high, with limbs slender as the desert Arab . . . ," and these may, in my opinion, have been the ancestors of the horses of classical Gaul. As a light breed, thev will have lost favour as cavalry armour became progressively heavier, which may account for their omission from the lists of the later veterinary writers.

26

Breeds of Horses

Of the Arab horse we have no description earlier than that of Timotheus of Gaza, who, probably in the sixth century after Christ, wrote about four-footed beasts among the Indians, Arabs, Egyptians, and Libyans.28 He says that the Arab horses "near to the mountain of the land of India" are of a good size, generally red-bay, carrying their necks high, with faces regular and well proportioned, carrying their heads close to their riders' faces, haughty and spirited, having a superabundant pride, very keen, swift, with supple limbs, giving themselves wholly to the ardour of the course, bounding lightly rather than galloping, with compact flanks and lean bodies, their spines "hollow" (this does not mean a "hollow back" in our sense, but a back having the flesh and muscles on either side of the ridge of the spine so well developed that the spine is actually sunk between them. Such a horse is of course far more comfortable to ride bareback than one with a sharp ridge. This "double back" was naturally much sought after in antiquity— At duplex agitur per lumbos spina says Virgil of his ideal horse.29) The Arab horse is unwearied in the heat, rather rejoicing in the sun; his coat is beautiful, his diet simple, his bearing dignified. He crosses obstacles without being forced. Timotheus describes other horses too, but more briefly.30 His account agrees in general with those of earlier writers: The Armenians are of a fair size, spirited, broad-backed, the spine sunk in the flesh, the profile of the face sometimes hooked (that is, Roman-nosed), sometimes oxlike. The Cappadocian breed seems to be a cross between the Armenian and Phrygian; so does the Dalmatian—a rare breed, but of excellent quality, beautiful and combining docility with courage. The Lydians are big and beautiful, with long heads and broad backs, with gentle eyes and dark irises, beautiful coats and thick tails, but they are disobedient and quarrelsome; they do not stand hard weather well; they have good mouths (? literally "their jaws are tender") ; they make good heavy cavalry horses and excellent draught horses [western Asia Minor had produced good

Breeds of Horses

27

horses, of a type heavier than those of classical Greece, in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.: witness the chariot horse of Mausolus and an earlier relief from Xanthus (Plate 131)]. The Medes are of moderate size, with small ears, and heads unlike a horse's; they are courageous, but tire easily in the heat through difficulty in breathing. The Nisaean horses are noticed for their great size and feet that shake the earth. Of the horses of Europe, Timotheus continues, the Thessalian are of fair size but weedy, with a sharp ridge to their back, except for one strain, named after the Centaurs, whose spine is padded enough to provide a moderately safe seat. The Lucanians of Italy are mean, small in body, ugly in colour, base in appearance, but good workers in harness. The Sicilians are much like them. The Odrysians are a little better than the Thracians, and large, but hard to tame; the Gallic horses good workers and spirited; the Iberian small, light, and apparently descended from wild horses; they are good gallopers but unused to walking. Larger than these are the excellent Sarmatian horses of the north. The horses of Hyrcania have projecting eyes, are given to shying, but wait for their rider if he falls off, make good war horses, and are fed on hay rather than grain. Of the horses of Africa, Timotheus mentions the Libyan, small and ugly to look at, but good gallopers; they are ridden without bridles and therefore carry their heads low. The Mauretanian faces spears and trumpets without flinching, is very swift, and so tractable that it is governed merely with a rod; he endures hunger and thirst well. The Barcaean (Cyrenean) is notable for the length of his sides between the flank and shoulder. Some part of Timotheus's information may be anachronistic and drawn from books, but the following facts seem reasonably certain: On the eve of the Moslem invasions the Arabs had developed a magnificent breed of light horses, the ancestors of

28

Breeds of Horses

the modern Arab, and far superior to anything else anywhere. This breed had been developed within Arabia during the preceding seven or eight centuries, before which the horse was unknown there. A t the same time the light breeds of classical Europe had degenerated into worthless, flashy creatures. In the harder conditions of North Africa, a tougher race had survived. The barbarian invasions, which had overrun most of the western provinces of the empire, had introduced a lot of Central Asiatic blood, though heavy cavalry, the ancestors of the mediaeval knights and contemporaries of Arthur's Round Table, certainly continued to flourish. In the eastern provinces and in the Persian empire good heavy cavalry horses were still bred. But their armoured riders lacked the mobility of the Arab light cavalry, and, once battle was joined, were unable to close with them and crush them. Gibbon records that in the distribution of spoils after the battle of the Yarmuk "an equal share was allotted to a soldier and to his horse, and a double portion was reserved to the noble coursers of the Arabian breed." 3 1 Timotheus's suggestion that wild horses survived in Spain until a comparatively late period is shown to have been correct by earlier evidence, though we cannot perhaps be certain that these horses were truly wild and not the descendants of ancestors escaped from domesticity. A n inscription of the second century after Christ records that Tullius Maximus, prefect of a legion stationed in Spain, hunted wild horses, himself mounted on an Iberian steed, and Strabo too notes these wild horses, and draws a local distinction between Celtiberians and Iberians. Rather surprisingly, he states, on the authority of Posidonius, that they are like the Parthian horses. But a passage in Vegetius (ca. 400 A.D.) suggests that the resemblance may have been in their action: "It is generally agreed that the following invention too is due to the Parthians, whose custom it is to make the paces of their horses smooth for the rider's

Breeds of Horses

29

pleasure by the following method. They do not load their legs with weighted circlets to teach them to move with a high action, but they train the special horses that are called trepidant in common speech and tottonarii in military language to a lightness and certain smoothness of action, so that they resemble Spanish hackneys (asturcones). On dry level ground a course is marked out between rows of filled gabions, fifty paces long and five paces broad, to resemble a stadium. This is roughened with furrows, which serve as obstacles to the horses when they compete in speed. In this space the horse is exercised frequently. To begin with he cannot help striking his feet, both fore and hind, against the furrows, and sometimes he either falls or stumbles so badly that he seems to fall. Later he learns by painful experience and picks his feet up higher and carries his rider smoothly by bending his knees and fetlock joints. Moreover he learns to make his steps very short, in order to put his hooves down between the furrows, for if he tries to extend them he strikes against the ridges. And by moving with very short steps the horse carries his rider more comfortably and looks more beautiful in his action." This passage makes it clear that the Spanish and Parthian hackneys did not amble or pace (moving both legs on the same side of the body together) as is often supposed, but travelled at the fast, short-stepping, high-actioned trot that is still displayed by the horses of Asiatic Turkey. This is surprisingly smooth for the rider, but how the Turkish horses are trained to do it I do not know. Vegetius notes elsewhere that the Persians have the best saddle horses (meaning apparently these trotters), though for warfare the tough enduring horses of the Huns are best, and after them those of the Burgundians and other German tribes.32 Aelian and Arrian, who lived in the reign of Hadrian, confirm the testimony already cited. Aelian mentions that Xenophon had esteemed the horses of Epidaurus above all others, but himself describes more particularly the remarkable

jo

Breeds of Horses

Libyan mares, the swiftest of horses, who scarcely felt fatigue. Being themselves lightly built, they were suitable for lightweight riders. Their masters did not look after them or groom them or clean out their hooves or comb and braid their manes or wash them when they were weary, but simply dismounted and turned them out to graze. 33 Arrian notes that Xenophon did not know the Celtic hounds or the horses of Scythia and Libya. H e describes stag-hunting on Scythian and Illyrian horses, which over short distances might be despised when matched with those of Sicily, Thessaly, or the Peloponnese. But they would persevere long after the fast, big, showy animals were exhausted, till the quarry was run off its feet, to be shot or lassoed at the hunter's pleasure. Again, Xenophon had said that even Cyrus, the son of the Great King of Persia, had no horses that could catch wild asses. But the Libyans hunted wild asses with their horses, which were exceedingly docile. Little boys of eight rode them bareback, guiding them with a rod, as the Greeks guided theirs with bit and bridle.34 Arrian's commander and friend, the Emperor Hadrian, had a favourite hunter named Borysthenes, whom he buried under a tombstone, with an inscription, still extant, describing the horse's prowess against the Pannonian wild boars. Both the horse's name ("Dnieper") and the fact that he is described as Alanus, suggest that he was a "Scythian," from the regions north of the Black Sea, where the Alans and other wandering tribes were continually pressing upon the imperial frontiers. 35 Arrian himself, as governor of Cappadocia, had repulsed, in A.D. 134, an Alan horde that burst across the Caucasus into Asia Minor. Both his plan of battle for this campaign and his report on the coastal regions of the Black Sea have survived. It is worth noting here that the Roman monuments generally show horses of a coarser and heavier type than those of Athens in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. T h e small Scythian and Libyan horses are praised as hunters, not chargers. T h e reference to the large size of Greek horses is at first

Breeds of Horses

j i

sight surprising, but is confirmed by the description mentioned above, of the horse of Seius, one of the Argive breed which claimed as its origin the mythical Thracian mares carried off by Heracles. This animal is described as having been of unusual size, with a high head carriage, red-bay in colour, with a flowing and luxuriant mane and every other desirable characteristic. It became proverbial for the bad luck that pursued its successive masters, the last of whom was the triumvir Mark Antony. After all, size is relative, and the Greek horses may have looked large to the ancients, comparing them with other breeds of their time, and small to us. T h e famous Nisaean horses would have been dwarfed by our Clydesdales. Even in the fourth century B.C. want of stamina was a problem, for Xenophon recommended that cavalrymen presenting their horses before the Athenian Council should ride the usual course twice over, those that were unable to keep up being rejected.36 And specially trained runners were generally preferred to horsemen for carrying messages over long distances. During the past generation the history of the extraordinarily hardy and docile horses of North Africa has gradually been traced from crude pictures scratched on the rocks up and down the Sahara. This evidence has recently been collected and analyzed by H . Lhote, 37 whose account I follow. T h e pictures form a long series, within which relative dates can be established on stylistic grounds. Absolute chronology is far more difficult to ascertain, as the drawings, whether painted or scratched on the rock, are crude in style and seldom directly associated with datable objects. But Lhote notes that the earliest paintings, which show light two-wheeled chariots drawn by pairs of horses on either side of a single pole, with occasionally a third trace horse running beside them, have resemblances to the art of Mycenaean Greece. T h e conventional method of representing the gallop is the same; the horses are shown at the "flying gallop" with all four legs outstretched,

32

Breeds of Horses

whereas in Egypt, and later in the Middle East and archaic Greece, a sort of half rear, with the front legs off the ground, is the usual convention.88 Spiral patterns associated with the chariots recall similar spiral patterns from the Shaft Graves. This evidence seems to connect these earliest chariots with the combined movement of "Peoples of the Sea" and Libyans against Egypt at the end of the thirteenth century B.C. It must be admitted that the style of these rock engravings is crude and that a stronger link that seemed to bind the Peoples of the Sea to Mycenaean Greece has been loosened. This was the identification of the Akaiwasha, a people named in the Egyptian inscriptions, with the Achaeans—an identification to which, as Professor D. L. Page has pointed out, there are serious objections.89 But whether Achaean or not, the Peoples of the Sea were at least in contact with the Aegean area. A n d there is further evidence, admittedly imprecise, that the horse entered Libya in the late Bronze Age. When King Sahure of the Egyptian Fifth Dynasty (ca. 2475 B.C.—long before the horse was known in Egypt itself) raided Libya his plunder included vast numbers of cattle, asses, goats, and sheep. But Rameses III, in about 1 1 7 5 B.C., returned with horses, as well as the various animals listed by his predecessor.40 In the second group of Saharan pictures are some remarkable four-horse chariots with bodies of great width, to which are fastened two poles, each having at its end a yoke for a pair of horses. Such chariots might be faster than those pulled by a single pair, but they would be less easily turned and require wide tracks. Their pictures are therefore confined to those parts of the Sahara that afford large expanses of level sand. 41 They are not found in Greece, where the plains were small, the hills rough, and the roads generally so narrow that columns of infantry marched only two abreast.42 The Greek four-horse chariot normally had a single pole, with a yoke at the end for the middle pair of horses. The two outside horses were attached by traces only, and can have added little to the pulling

Breeds of Horses

JJ

power of the team, though they may have helped to swing it round sharp corners. A later development, which is at least as early as the fourth century B.C., was the use of a yoke long enough for all four horses, fastened to the single pole in the middle.43 Vehicles with more than one pole may have existed in Asia. A t least Xenophon in his Cyropaedia describes a Persian army supported by armoured chariots, each of which had four poles and four yokes and was drawn by eight horses, and ox-drawn towers, each with eight poles and yokes and sixteen draught animals.44 This is romance, not history. But when Alexander the Great died at Babylon, his body is said to have been conveyed to Alexandria on an immense hearse fitted with four poles, to each of which were attached four yokes, each with four mules, making a grand total of sixtyfour mules.46 Despite the difference in the method of harnessing, the twopoled four-horse chariots of the Sahara recall Herodotus's statement that the Greeks learned from the Libyans to yoke four horses to a chariot, and his report that the Garamantes of the interior chased the "Troglodyte Ethiopians" (whoever they were) in four-horse chariots.46 With the Garamantes Lhote associates the modern Touareg; 47 the sketch that he publishes of their tasselled goatskin dress certainly bears out Herodotus's contention that it was from the Libyan women that the Greeks learned to represent the Aegis of Athena. In Lhote's opinion it was the Garamantes-Touareg who brought the horse with them across the Sahara, starting from Cyrenaica and penetrating southwestwards wherever the nature of the ground allowed chariots to go. It is important to note that in Libya, as elsewhere, the chariot everywhere preceded the ridden horse, as the rock drawings now prove. The date of the change from driving to riding cannot be precisely fixed and was probably gradual. War chariots were still used in Africa in 308 B.C., when Agathocles of Syracuse attacked Carthage on her home ground,48 but in the Punic wars of the next century the skill

Breeds of Horses of the Numidian cavalry confounded the Romans. Livy has described the contemptible and unwarlike nature of their first appearance; the small and slender stature of men and horses; the lack of arms, except javelins; the uncollected and awkward gallop of the horses, unbridled and with outstretched neck; the derision which the riders purposely excited by tumbling off their horses. But as the Romans came to know their adversaries they learned to respect them. 49 From these remarkable animals Lhote 50 believes that the modern Barbs are in the main descended. They are the most widespread of the horses of North Africa at the present day. Purebred Arabs, found in isolated groups in Mauretania, are all of known and established race. In the southeast of the Sahara is found the Dongola horse, introduced by Arab invaders from Upper Egypt in the thirteenth century of our era. It is perhaps worth noting that the camel, which, as we have seen, was domesticated in Arabia long before the horse, is a late comer in North Africa. Strabo believed that it had been established in Egypt by Ptolemy Philadelphus (285— 246 B . C . ) . But camel caravans, like that of the Ishmaelites who brought Joseph into Egypt, must have reached the fringes of the Nile Valley much earlier. B y 46 B.C., when Julius Caesar captured some camels from Juba of Mauretania, they must have been known in much of North Africa, though perhaps not yet in large numbers. 51 Since the ancients, from the beginning of the present era on, are agreed in describing the North African horse as smaller and less beautiful than the Greek, it is extremely unlikely that the Greek horse owed its size and appearance to the introduction of new blood from North Africa in the eighth or seventh centuries B.C. Moreover, we have seen that the Egyptian horses in the Bronze A g e were of the same type as those of Asia, and not of some superior breed. There is therefore no need to suppose that they were descended from a race obtained from outside Asia, and it is unnecessary to assume

Breeds of Horses

35

the previous existence of Libyan horses in order to account for those of Egypt. 8 2 Whether the Libyan horse was itself imported from Egypt or brought by the Peoples of the Sea is a question not yet answered with certainty, but it would seem fairly well established that the Greek, Hittite, Egyptian, Libyan, and, later, Arab horses were alike descended from the common or related stock introduced in the second millennium B.C. at the time of the Indo-European invasions. This accounts for their resemblances; their later divergences are due partly to the effect of local conditions and specialized breeding within the different strains over a period of more than a thousand years, partly, as we have seen, to the introduction of Central Asiatic blood, which produced a heavier type of animal. It may here be argued that winged Pegasus, whom Bellerophon rode against the Chimaera, came from Libya and represents a divine breed of riding horse. But in fact the Chimaera and Bellerophon too have Asiatic connections, and the winged horse, like other mixed monsters, had been known in the East long before the Greek artists adopted it early in the seventh century B . C . 5 3 Though the home of Pegasus's mother Medusa had been established in Africa by the fifth century B.C., Hesiod, our earliest authority, drawing perhaps on an Asiatic source, talks of a remote land beyond the streams of Ocean (that is, beyond the confines of the world of man, in the far West) .54 Pegasus, the son of the god Poseidon and Medusa the Gorgon, is closely related to Areion, another divine horse, born to Poseidon from an earth goddess in the lowlands of Boeotia or among the Arcadian mountains, and therefore at home in Greece. 55 Poseidon and his brood of divine horses may well belong to the most primitive stratum of Greek belief. 56 Again, the kings of the Greek city of Cyrene, founded in about 632 B.C. by settlers from the island of Thera, won successes in horse races during the fifth century B.C., which were

36

Breeds of Horses

celebrated by the poet Pindar. Pindar quoted, or invented, a prophecy that the colonists "instead of short-finned dolphins should take to themselves fleet mares, and reins instead of oars should they ply and speed the whirlwind-footed car." 57 But other rich and powerful Greeks won similar glorious successes. Cyrene proved an excellent land for horse breeding, but this does not prove the existence of a superior native breed of horses. As well say that the victory of Phar Lap in the Melbourne Cup proves that the thoroughbred originated in New Zealand. Moreover we have noted already the testimony of writers in the Roman period that at that time the horses of Cyrene were larger than the other North African breeds. Far from African blood improving the light horses of Europe, it seems probable that the kings of Cyrene introduced European horses into their own dominions. All this does not mean that the Greeks did not value foreign horses. One interesting piece of direct evidence is as old as the seventh century B.C., and comes, rather surprisingly, from Sparta. The poet Alcman (said to have been a Lydian slave who wrote for his Spartan masters) playfully compares young girls engaged in a ritual dance to Venetic, Colaxaean, and Ibenian steeds (the word used definitely implies ridden horses) .B8 Unfortunately these names are of doubtful meaning, and it is not certain whether the horses (obviously all superior animals, though the context suggests that the Colaxaean was not quite as good as the others) came from the head of the Adriatic, to which Greek trade was beginning to penetrate, or from the poet's own native Asia Minor. "Colaxaean" may be Scythian, the coarse but hardy and enduring pony of the mounted nomads who had overrun western Asia, giving the civilized world good reason to appreciate the qualities of their horses. It has already been seen that these animals, descended from Przewalski's horse of the Central Asiatic steppe were probably responsible for the development of the heavy Persian horses and their descendants.

Breeds of Horses

37

"Ibenian" may be Celtic, or even conceivably Ionian Greek, while "Venetic" recalls Homer's Eneti from the south coast of the Black Sea, whose land produced "wild half asses" (that is, onagers). But the Veneti of the upper Adriatic, where their name survives in the modern Venetia, were certainly famous as horse breeders from the fifth century B.C. onwards. It was for a Spartan that Venetic horses won their first Olympic victory (though this was not until 440 B.C.) and in the next century the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius used them as the foundation of his racing stud. They seem to have been driven more often than ridden, and may have been related to the fast chariot ponies of the Sigynnae, whose territory, according to Herodotus, marched with that of the Adriatic Veneti. Ancient chariot races involved repeated 180-degree turns after comparatively short straight gallops, and handy ponies might well do better than big horses, which would hardly have a chance to get into their stride. A curious story was told of the origin of the Venetic breed. A man who was well known for his readiness to give bail met some hunters carrying a live wolf in their nets, and jokingly agreed to go bail for it and pay for all the mischief that it did. The grateful animal rounded up a large herd of unbranded horses and brought them to its benefactor, who branded them with a wolf, whence they got the name of lycophori or wolf bearers. His heirs maintained the breed, which was distinguished for speed rather than for beauty, and resolved never to let any of the mares out of their own hands, so that they alone might possess the true strain. But by the beginning of the present era horses were hardly bred in that country any more.89 These lycophori are sometimes connected with the lycospades, or "wolf-torn" horses. The latter were short and compact in appearance, and dish-faced. They were said to have a special affinity with men of Greek race, in whose company, both by day and night, they delighted, and Aelian, who gives the fullest description of them, certainly did not connect them

Breeds of Horses with the Veneti. When a barbarian approached, they would snort and run away as if from a wild beast. "Wolf-torn" seems to have been originally an epithet applied without any precise significance to spirited horses in general. Callimachus (third century B.C.) gave it to a Thessalian horse. Four hundred years later Plutarch had two rather hesitant explanations. Some said that the stubborn spirits of such horses had to be tamed by the "wolves" on bits (these "wolves" were probably the sharp spikes that Xenophon calls "hedgehogs." Plutarch's name for them is a Latinism not found in any earlier Greek writer). But his own father had remarked that young horses which were attacked by wolves and escaped commonly turned out good ones, on which he himself sensibly comments that "Odysseus was not made prudent by escaping the Cyclops, but escaped the Cyclops because he was prudent." 60 Of the differences between the various breeds of Greece itself, I have said nothing, because I do not believe that either the literary or the monumental evidence allows us to draw clear distinctions. The ancient system of breeding, as described above, with the mares running loose in the meadows, would not allow the scientific exactness that is aimed at nowadays. The legends of mares got in foal by the winds are still quoted in all seriousness by Roman writers on agriculture, though it must be admitted that they speak of this strange happening as taking place in outlandish parts of the world such as Crete and Lusitania. Random mating between brood mares and stray stallions must have been common, for most working horses were male, and gelding, though known to and approved by Xenophon,61 was rarely practised by the ancients, perhaps from fear of infection. This helps to account for a difference between ancient and modern usage; we call a horse of a certain breed a Clydesdale, for example, whether he comes from Lanarkshire or Otago. But, in my opinion at least, to an ancient writer a Thessalian horse is one bred in Thessaly. Though the herds of brood mares doubtless generally con-

Breeds of Horses tinued for generations in their pastures, the chance of the introduction of random blood from outside must always have been strong. And in time of war the brood mares were liable to capture, 62 and invading armies must continually have been bringing new blood with them. In the absence of proper records, the effect of even deliberate mating of particular beasts must have been impossible to trace for more than a few generations. Besides we have seen that the development of heavy cavalry had an adverse effect on the breed of light horses, and that, by aiming at speed over short distances and a showy appearance, the Greeks had spoiled their breed by the beginning of the present era. But no doubt they did their best according to their lights. Theognis, a gentleman of ancient lineage who had lost his estates, remarks: Ram, ass, and horse, my Kyrnos, we look over With care, and seek good stock for stock to cover; And yet the best men make no argument But wed, for money, runts of poor descent.63

III HALTERS AND EARLY BITS

Horses, like other animals, can be managed in many different ways. W e have had occasion in the preceding chapter to notice frequent references to the horses of ancient Libya, whose riders mounted them bareback and guided them either with rods or with simple cords passed round the neck. Lefebvre des Noettes notes the revival of the latter method—merely for sport—by young French cavalry officers in 1885, 1 and describes how this led him, years later, to the correct interpretation of the sculptured figures of Numidians on Trajan's Column. The use of sticks to guide unbridled horses is confirmed by rock paintings in the Sahara and by coins of the Numidian king Syphax (d. 204 B.C.) .2 But neither method was used in Greece, and so they do not need to be discussed further here. Most nations have managed their horses through direct control of the head. This is generally achieved either by pressure upon the outside of the nose, or by pressure upon the sensitive parts inside the mouth, or by a combination of both. Pressure upon the outside may be applied by a halter or noseband—a rope or leather strap passing round the horse's nose. This is most effective when fitted low down, so as to bear upon the nostrils, which are soft and gristly, but obviously here it will interfere with the horse's breathing, and this is undesirable if he is to travel fast and far. If the noseband is fitted higher

HOLES (for attachment of chnk »trap of brldl.)

- SIDEBAR

Names of parts of the bridle and the bit as used in this book

Halters and Early Bits up it will press only upon the bony parts of the head, and its action will be far less severe, so that it will serve rather to indicate wishes than to enforce commands. The bit, acting upon the inside of the mouth, is a stronger means of control when the horse is being ridden or driven, but is obviously unsuited to leading a horse round the paddock or tying him up in the stable, where it will interfere with his eating. Moreover, as Xenophon points out,3 leading the horse by the bit may injure his mouth by exerting pressure more heavily upon one side than on the other, and therefore is inadvisable. The halter ("ass halter"), for tying the horse in the stable, is already distinguished from the bridle and metal bit in which he was worked by Kikkuli in the fourteenth century B.C.4 Such halters are often shown on Greek vases of the archaic and classical periods, and are used both for tying horses up in the stable and for leading pack animals and sumpter mules or donkeys ridden by the elderly and inactive—notably Hephaestus, the lame blacksmith god, whose return to Olympus, conducted by the Dionysiac rout, is a favourite subject in art. Perhaps because of this connection with the god of wine, rhyta (drinking horns) shaped like the heads of mules or horses generally have halters rather than bits and bridles (Plate 2 b). The simplest type of halter consists of a noseband divided into two halves, front and back, held in place by a third strap passing over the horse's head just behind the ears. The junctions between these straps, on either side of the horse's head, are normally formed by two large rings, presumably of metal. A single lead rope is fastened to the back part of the noseband, under the chin. More elaborate examples have browbands and throat lashes, or two straps crossing under the chin in place of a simple band. The distinction between the halter and the bit and bridle is made clear by a vase painted about 540 B.C. by the Athenian artist Nearchos, and found in fragments on the Acropolis of

Halters and Early Bits 5

Athens. The four-horse chariot of Achilles is being harnessed; the two yoke horses are already in position, with their bits in their mouths; Achilles is adjusting that of the near-side trace horse. The off-side trace horse is just being led up, and he wears a halter of the simple type described above, with a single lead rope fastened under the chin (Plate 14a). When he is in position, his halter will be replaced by the bit and bridle, which, together with his collar, are to be imagined hanging ready from the end of the yoke (Plate 1 6 ) . Most of these harnessing scenes, which are common in Attic vase painting of the later sixth century B.C., show the trace horse wearing a muzzle as well as a halter. The use of the muzzle, whenever the horse is led without a bridle, is recommended by Xenophon.6 Those illustrated in the vase paintings are perhaps made of leather straps or basket work; actual examples made of metal (Plate 36) are later in date. The "restraining muzzle, pierced all round" is mentioned in a dedication, dating from about the first century B.C., of the gear of a victorious race horse to Isthmian Poseidon.7 It is perhaps worth noting that the horses on the big Attic "horsehead amphorae" of the first half of the sixth century B.C.8 wear halters (Plate 14^) and so are to be thought of as in the stable or paddock. Halters of this simple type could be slipped on or off by the groom without unfastening the straps; in fact, none of the pictures that I know suggest that the straps could be unfastened. The modern buckle, with a tongue, was unknown, a point to which we will have to recur when considering the bridle. The rope by which the horse is to be tied or led is generally shown fastened to the strap that goes under his chin. Xenophon warns expressly against attaching it to that which passes over the top of the horse's head; if there is a knot up near his ears he will rub sores when he rubs himself on the manger, and so become difficult when he is bridled and groomed.9

Halters and Early Bits Phorbeia, the ancient word for halter, is related to phorbe, fodder; 10 hence, I suppose, that by which a horse is tied up while eating. Like our "halter," phorbeia seems to be used either for the leather headstall or the fastening rope. Thus Aristotle says that the Macedonians formerly had a law that a man who had never killed an enemy must be girt with a phorbeia. But the word is also used for the leather band round the head by which a flute player supported his instrument,11 and Strabo says that the chariots of the Indian army on the march were drawn by oxen, the horses being led loose in a phorbeia.12 This suggests something more than a mere rope (Plate 14a). To give greater control of led animals, a mouthpiece, consisting perhaps of a chain stretched between the two rings, was sometimes added to the halter.13 The action of this mouthpiece is entirely subordinate to that of the noseband, and so differs from that of the ordinary bit. Here it must be noted that the fact that an animal's mouth is open, its teeth bared and its ears back, does not prove the existence of a mouthpiece; see, for example, Plate 2 b, where the gap between the rings of the halter and the corners of the mouth leaves no possibility of mistake. Ridden horses seem sometimes to have worn halters under their bridles, so that the rider, when he dismounted, would not have to use the reins to tie the horse up or to lead it. 14 The use of lead ropes fastened under the chin (either to a halter or to a metal cavesson of the type to be described later, or to the chin strap of the bridle) is illustrated on several Greek vases, and seems to be derived from Assyria (Plates 5, 1 yb). But to ride a horse in a halter alone was probably no more usual in ancient Greece—at least after the seventh century B.C.—than it is nowadays. On a large drinking cup made at Corinth early in the seventh century B.C. appears a picture of naked boys, seated sideways like ploughmen on clumsy sway-backed horses. The

Halters and Early Bits riders sit on the near side, with sticks in their left hands and in their right ropes, which are fastened to simple halters. The horses are obviously moving at a walk. But Castor and Pollux, shown on another, slightly earlier, Corinthian vase, will presumably have to gallop in hot haste after Theseus, who is abducting their sister Helen. Yet one of their horses has halter and lead rope only. 16 On a water jar from Caere in Italy, made perhaps about 530 B.C., is a horseman galloping, with brandished javelin, after a stag. He rides bareback and manages his horse with a simple halter. But other vases of the same group show horses with similar halters being held by dismounted boys or women, and while admitting that a horse can be ridden in a halter, we may perhaps question whether the painter was not more used to led horses in the stable yard than ridden ones in the hunting field (Plate 1 5 ) , 16 So much for the halter in historical times. In the Bronze Age, a different form of noseband, worn lower on the head and so exerting a more powerful pressure, was often used to control chariot horses. Most of the evidence comes from Egypt. Thus the bridles found with the chariot in the tomb of Thutmoses I V consisted of "nose-strap, forehead-, three cheekand one neck-strap." The reins were "fixed to the nose-strap and passed through a loop attached to the breast-harness and girth," and the excavators add that "we believe that the command of the horses was obtained simply by the nose-strap, and not by a snaffle or bit." 17 This type of bridle, with cheek straps dividing just below the horse's eye into two or three separate branches, dropped noseband, and browband and throat lash is shown on the monuments. On a bas-relief of Seti I at Thebes the reins, which are tied round the royal charioteer's waist, are fastened to the front of the noseband and obviously exert pressure directly on the nostrils. There is also a bearing rein, fastened to the back of the noseband and thence to the yoke, which re-

j.6

Halters and Early Bits

strains the horses when the charioteer is using both hands for his weapons (Plate i d ) . But the Egyptian reliefs also show another sort of bridle, which resembles the first except for a circular disc which covers the corners of the mouth, and to which the reins are attached. This circular disc seems to mark the end of a mouthpiece. And indeed bronze bits have been found at Gaza and elsewhere consisting of a straight or slightly bent one-piece mouthpiece guarded at each end by a circular disc, like a spoked wheel, studded on the inside with short spikes. These discs would stop the mouthpiece from being pulled sideways through the horse's mouth, and with their spikes would reinforce the action of the noseband to which they were attached. These bits have been admirably described by G. Hermes, who gives them the name of "Hyksos bit." 18 But, setting aside all doubts as to who the Hyksos may have been, we may note the use of a similar device in India, in the time of Alexander the Great, if not later. Arrian writes: The horses of the Indians are not saddled, nor bridled with Greek bits, nor yet with Celtic ones, but round about the muzzle of the horse is fitted a band of stitched rawhide, and in this points of bronze or iron, not very sharp, turned inwards. The rich use points made of ivory. And in their mouths their horses have a piece of iron like a spit, to which the reins are fitted. And so when the rein is pulled the spit controls the horse, and the points too, which are as it were fitted to it, by pricking him do not allow him to do anything but obey the rein.

And Strabo says: "Instead of bridles the Indians use nosebands [phimoi] differing but little from muzzles. And the horses' lips are pierced with studs." 19 A similar device may have been used in Bronze Age Greece; at least, a fragment of a fresco from Tiryns shows a horse's head with a round disc fastened to a noseband over the corner of the mouth.20 The Greeks may have learned its use from the Middle East (Egypt or the Hittites?) but it seems at

Halters and Early Bits

qj

least possible that it was invented by the Indo-Europeans before their dispersion. But there is no archaeological evidence to confirm this. It is, however, remarkable that bits of an essentially similar type (bar mouthpieces, with large ornamental cheekpieces fitted with spikes on the inside) have been found in considerable numbers in Luristan, a wild mountainous district of western Persia. The cheekpieces of these bits are in the form of animals, usually fantastic winged monsters, with extra heads growing out of their backs. These creatures have a large hole in the middle of the body, through which the bar of the mouthpiece passes freely, and two loops on the back for the attachment of the branching cheek straps of the bridle. They are perhaps to be dated in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. and connected with the Scythian invaders, though they may be the work of local workmen, as nothing quite like them is known from Scythia.21 Except for the fact that they have cheekpieces in the form of animals, these bits have nothing in common with the smooth jointed snaffles found in Italy at the same period, and it is remarkable that though snaffles with jointed mouthpieces were in use in Luristan too, these all have quite different cheekpieces. A different type of bit was also in use in Egypt and Greece during the Bronze Age. By courtesy of the authorities of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and of Miss S. Benton, who informed me of its existence, I am able to illustrate a specimen found at Tel el Amarna, and so dating presumably from the early fourteenth century B.C. (Plate 32a). This consists of a jointed mouthpiece formed of two interlocking canons, round which are engraved shallow spirals, intended perhaps to imitate the appearance of twisted wire. These pass through the cheekpieces by means of cast tubes of superior workmanship, in which they move freely, and end in substantial cast D's for the attachment of the reins. The cheekpieces consist of straight bars, flat on the inner face, slightly convex on the outer, cast in one piece with the tubes for the canons. At each end they

48

Halters and Early Bits

have a hole for the attachment of the cheek straps of the bridle, and half way to each end a sharp spike about a quarter of an inch long projects from the inner face. This bit may be compared with a bit found in a tomb at Mycenae, which dates from the late Bronze A g e and is the earliest known from Greece.22 This has twisted canons—perhaps recalling a time when a cord served as mouthpiece. They end in simple loops for the attachment of the reins, and pass through wide holes in the cheekpieces, instead of the cast tubes of the Egyptian bit. The cheekpieces have spikes on their inner faces. I do not believe that these bits were fastened to dropped nosebands of the type just described (though they might have been used in conjunction with them, and I may be mistaken on this point, as the dropped noseband seems always to be shown in Egyptian pictures and reliefs; see Plate i ) . One cannot attach a flat piece of metal securely to a curved piece of leather by means of a short spike; a stud with an enlarged end is necessary. Moreover the jointed mouthpiece, when both reins are pulled, folds in the middle, and herein lies a good part of its effect. It would be unable to do this if it were firmly attached to a noseband. Bits of very similar form, though without spikes, were used later in Assyria, certainly without dropped nosebands.23 Nor need we suppose that the ancients would have forborne, whether from humane or practical reasons, from driving sharp spikes into their horses' lips. W e shall see very much more severe bits later and, besides, there is the testimony, already cited, of Strabo and Arrian. 24 The action of these bits is clear. On either side of the horse's head the cheek straps of the bridle divided into two branches, one of which was fastened to each of the holes at the ends of the cheekpieces of the bit. The bit was thus held with the cheekpieces roughly at right angles to the horse's mouth. 25 The reins were fastened to the ends of the canons on either side.

Halters and Early Bits When they were pulled, the mouthpiece bent in the middle and the two cheekpieces, instead of being roughly parallel, converged, and compressed the horse's lower jaw between their lower ends. This action was reinforced by the spikes. That the purpose of the spikes was to act on the horse, not to fasten a leatherband or backing to the cheekpieces, is shown by another bit from Egypt, 26 which has spikes (three on each side) on the lower sidebars of the cheekpieces only. This is more logical, as it is the lower sidebars that compress the jaws when the reins are pulled. Without the spikes, these bits would be similar in their action to a modern jointed snaffle. Two such spikeless bits, slightly later in date than the one from Mycenae, have been found at Miletus. 27

IV L A T E R BITS A N D B R I D L E S

The horse's jaws are long, narrow, and U-shaped, the upper jaw (as in all other animals) being fixed, and the lower movable. Each contains six incisor teeth, set together round the front of the jaw (the curve of the U ) . Behind these, and slightly separated from them, are the canine teeth, two in each jaw. (These are not normally found in mares.) Behind the canine teeth is a wide gap (the "bars of the mouth") where the jawbone contains no teeth, and is covered with a thin layer of sensitive gum. Behind this again are the molar teeth, along the upper part of each arm of the UThe whole mouth is enclosed in the lips, which are soft and sensitive. Their corners come just in front of the front molars on either side. Within the mouth is the tongue, its roots attached to the base of the lower jaw, within whose hollow it normally lies when at rest. The roof of the mouth, or palate, behind the upper incisors, is slightly concave, and consists of bone covered by a thin layer of sensitive gum. Under the lower jaw is a distinct groove, the "chin groove," running from side to side. The essential part of the bit is the mouthpiece, lying across the bars. With a rein fastened to each end, the rider can put pressure upon either side of the mouth, to turn the horse, or

Later Bits and Bridles

51

upon both at once, in order to stop him. Obviously the mouthpiece can be so designed (for example, if it is thick and covered with spikes) as to act upon the tongue and palate. But these parts will be little affected by a thin, smooth mouthpiece. The mouthpiece may be connected to the bridle in such a way as to hang more or less free in the horse's mouth. Then, if the reins are pulled, the bit will tend to be drawn backwards and upwards as far as the corners of the lips. Much of its effect will therefore be transferred from the bars to the lips. Such bits (and there are many different forms of them) are snaffles. If the one rein is pulled more strongly than the other, the snaffle bit will slip sideways through the horse's mouth, unless it is provided with cheekpieces large enough to prevent this. These cheekpieces also provide points for the attachment of the bridle, by which the bit is kept in position. Their pressure on the outside of the cheeks and lips is yet another element in the action of the bit. Like the mouthpiece, the cheekpieces may be of various forms. A second type of bit has, in addition to the mouthpiece, another part—chain, wire, strap, or metal rod—passing beneath the horse's lower jaw and resting in the chin groove. This is the curb. Since the lower jaw is held more or less tightly between the curb and the mouthpiece, the bit does not slip up into the corners of the mouth, but continues to act on the bars. Moreover, a strong levering action may be obtained by fastening the reins, not to the ends of the mouthpiece, but to long cheeks. In the ancient examples known to me, the curb (a piece of wire or metal rod) is simply fastened to these cheeks at a convenient distance below the mouthpiece. Accordingly, when the reins are pulled the whole bit rotates about the axis of the mouthpiece and the curb is raised to press on the underside of the lower jaw, which is thus compressed between mouthpiece and curb (Plate 3qd). Modern curb bits have a still stronger action, the curb (an

jj 2

Later Bits and Bridles

adjustable chain) being hung from hooks fastened just above the mouthpiece, which thus acts as the fulcrum of a lever, whose longer arm is the lower part of the cheek, to which the rein is attached. In general, the snaffle tends to raise the horse's head, as the pressure is upwards into the corners of his mouth, and the curb to lower it, as the pressure is downwards against the bars. But, as Xenophon points out, 1 the rider can lower the horse's head with the snaffle by carrying the hands low. Conversely the horse, by throwing his head up and opening his mouth, can transfer the action of either snaffle or curb entirely from the bars to the corners of the lips, as the pull of the reins is then more or less parallel to his jaws, instead of across them. Xenophon warns against pulling on the horse's mouth too roughly, so that he throws up his head to avoid the bit, or pulling at his mouth with the bit and spurring and whipping him, by which behaviour most people think they make their horses brilliant. For these people obtain a result quite contrary to their intentions. B y pulling their mouths up in the air they blind their horses instead of letting them see where they are going, and by spurring and whipping they bewilder them, so that they are confused to the point o£ danger. T h i s conduct belongs to horses that particularly dislike being ridden and misbehave instead of doing well. 2

(Compare Plate 18b—but the painter had to fit his picture into a circular frame. The rider, by slackening the rein, is about to remedy matters.) W e are not much concerned here with the curb, whose principle was unknown in classical Greece. It seems to have been introduced by the Gauls, who, coming down from Central Europe, had long threatened Italy, and early in the third century B.C. broke into the Balkan peninsula, attacked Greece, and established themselves in Galatia in the heart of

Later Bits and Bridles

53

Asia Minor. They often served as mercenaries in the armies of the civilized powers and, after their conquest by the Romans, formed an important element in the auxiliary cavalry of the empire. Plate 34d, with its horrible mouthpiece, is one of the earliest curb bits known,3 being from a site in Thrace that was perhaps occupied by the Gauls in 276 B.C. after their defeat by Antigonus Gonatas of Macedonia. Later, milder examples, with jointed or bar mouthpieces, are found on sites of the Roman period (Plate 37). I believe that these are the Celtic bits which Arrian contrasts both with those of the Greeks and Romans and with the Indian studded noseband and bar mouthpiece. Coming now to the bits of ancient Greece, I must begin by lamenting the rarity of complete specimens. Many bits are known from Italy, Central Europe, southern Russia, and Luristan, where it was customary to bury horse trappings, and sometimes horses, with the dead. But in Greece bits are very rarely found among grave offerings. Complete examples, and many fragments, come from sanctuaries, where they were probably dedicated by successful race-horse owners, and there are also several specimens in museums, whose provenance is dubious or unknown.4 I shall begin by attempting a translation of what Xenophon has to say on the subject 5 and then try to show how the archaeological material illustrates his remarks. This is not easy, as he does not describe his bits, but alludes to them as something well known to his readers, and therefore we cannot be absolutely sure that he is talking about types known to us. A t least it is certain that he is not talking about such bits as are in use today. (It is a waste of time to try to read into his words a direct reference to the modern double bridle, for instance. The two bits of which he speaks are to be used on different occasions, not both put into the mouth at once.) Xenophon, then, is explaining how "to treat a good war

^

Later Bits and Bridles

horse so as to make him more magnificent and spectacular to ride," and in passing offers the following observations on bits: (x 6) First of all, you must have not fewer than two bits. Of these, one should be smooth, having discs of a fair size. The other should have its discs heavy and narrow [?] and the "hedgehogs" sharp, so that when the horse takes hold of it he may be repulsed by its roughness into letting it go, and when instead of it he has the smooth one in his mouth, he may be pleased by its smoothness and perform in it too the lessons taught by the rough one. (x 7 ) A n d again, he may despise its smoothness and often lean upon it. This is the reason that we add large discs to the smooth bit, so that they may compel him to open his mouth and let go of the mouthpiece. It is possible to make the rough bit of all sorts, both compressing and pulling. 6 (x 8) However many bits you have, 7 let them all be flexible. For wherever the horse takes hold of a stiff bit, he holds the whole of it against his jaws, just as a spit, from whichever end one may take hold of it, is held as a whole. (x 9) But the flexible bit behaves like a chain, of which only that part which one is actually holding remains without bending, and the rest hangs down. A n d the horse, continually chasing after the fugitive part in his mouth, releases the mouthpiece from his jaws. For this reason too the small rings are hung in the middle of the bit from the canons, so that in pursuing them with his tongue and teeth he may neglect to take hold of the bit against his jaws. (x 10) A n d in case anybody does not know the meaning of "flexible" and "stiff" with reference to the bit, we will set this down also. "Flexible" is when the canons have their connecting links wide and smooth, so as to bend easily. A n d if all the parts that revolve on the canons have wide holes and are not set too close together, they are more flexible.

Later Bits and Bridles (x 1 1 )

55

But if the various parts of the bit run through each

other and interlock with difficulty, this is to be stiff.

Before turning to the archaeological evidence, we may make the following preliminary observations: Xenophon divides his bits into two main classes, "smooth" and "rough." The latter have "hedgehogs" (or "sea urchins"?) which must be sharp spikes. They are further subdivided by their action, either "compressing" or "pulling." Xenophon also classifies his bits as "flexible" or "stiff." In the latter category obviously belong all with bar mouthpieces, and also with jointed mouthpieces whose canons interlock too tightly to move freely. "Flexible" bits have jointed mouthpieces, and Xenophon also (x 10) recommends that freely revolving rollers be fitted round the canons, and (x 9) that small rings be hung from their point of junction, for the horse to keep chasing in his mouth, so that he will never take a firm hold of the mouthpiece. This may seem surprising to the modern reader, who expects the horse to take a light hold on the bit with the bars of his mouth, so that the rider may feel the horse's mouth the whole time, through a gentle and continuous tension on the reins. "Leaning on the bit" (x 7 ) we certainly regard as a fault; the horse, unaccustomed to the extra weight of the rider upon the forehand, literally leans upon the bit for support. (But we try to teach him to balance himself better, rather than making the bit so uncomfortable that he will not "despise" it.) But "taking hold of the bit" we regard as a virtue, and it is surprising to find Xenophon making it so clear that he does not. This is very important and will have to be discussed later from the rider's point of view. Let me emphasize that Xenophon's words are to be taken literally and not as a warning against letting the horse get the bit between his teeth, a danger of which he was fully aware.8 Xenophon's remarks may be illustrated by the plates. Plate

j6

Later Bits and Bridles

36a shows a bronze bit in Berlin, said to have been found, together with a second bit and a metal muzzle, in a grave in Boeotia, and dating probably from the fourth century B.C.9 The canons of the jointed mouthpiece are connected by interlocking rings, on either side of which are wide discs rotating round the canons, with sharp edges, designed to dig into the tongue and the roof of the mouth, and so prevent the horse from closing his jaws and taking hold of the bit. Outside these are rollers furnished with four rows of spikes, designed to act on the bars of the mouth. From the junction of the canons hang two short lengths of fine chain, whose purpose, as Xenophon explains, is to keep the horse continually chasing the loose ends in his mouth. The cheekpieces are in the form of long metal rods, one end of which is bent horizontally inwards, the other outwards, giving the whole the form of a long S- The inward-turning ends probably went under the chin (Plate 2 7 ) . The ends of the canons pass freely through holes in the middle of the cheekpieces. On the outside of the cheekpieces, on either side of these holes, are small horizontal rings for the attachment of the straps of the bridle. Outside the cheekpieces are bronze hooks, rotating freely round the ends of the canons, to which the reins were attached. The bit shown in Plate 34c is supposedly "from Achaea" and is now in the British Museum. 1 0 This bit has crescentshaped cheekpieces, with points turned upwards, and the rings for the attachment of the bridle along the inner curve (upper edge) of each crescent. There are two short rollers with spikes instead of one long one, and there is no chain suspended from the junction of the canons. These bits are obviously both "rough" (their spikes well deserving the name of "hedgehogs") and "flexible." It would be easy to construct a bit similar in general form, but without spikes on the rollers, and with the discs at the junction of the canons made bread and without sharp edges. Such a bit might

Later Bits and Bridles be called "flexible" and "smooth." But no actual example has survived. The manner in which these bits were attached to the bridle is made clear by the monuments. I refer especially to Plate 19, which shows the head of a small bronze statue of a chariot horse, dating from slightly before 460 B.C. and found at Olympia. 11 This horse has a bit with crescent-shaped cheekpieces, through large holes in the middle of which pass the ends of the canons. These cheekpieces are close in form to those of Plate 33a, and we may hope that the mouthpiece was correspondingly smooth. The points of the crescents are turned up, and are pierced with round holes, to which are fastened short straps. These straps are fastened to a large ring low down on the horse's cheek; here they meet the cheek strap of the bridle, which passes straight over the horse's head behind his ears. There is a throat lash, or rather a strap which serves the same function but passes under the upper part of the jaw, and a noseband, which begins on either side just above the ring where the cheek strap joins the short straps fastening the bit, and goes round the front of the nose only. There is no browband; perhaps the resistance of the mane was enough to prevent the cheek strap from slipping backwards down the horse's neck. The throat lash is fastened by a quick-release knot on the near side. Obviously once it was undone the whole bridle could be taken off by slipping the top of the cheek strap over the ears. None of the other straps could be either undone or adjusted, and so the bridle must have been fitted permanently to one particular horse. The proper fitting of the bridle is important, as Xenophon points out. The groom must be taught . . . the proper distance between the bit and the jaws. For if it is too close against them it hardens the mouth so that it becomes insensitive, but if the bit is let down too far towards the front of the mouth it gives the horse a chance to take the bit between his teeth and disobey. 12

58

Later Bits and Bridles

(Obviously if the bridle is too tight the bit will press upon the corners of the mouth continually and pinch and tear them, whether the reins are relaxed or not. But a horse's front teeth, like a human's, are insensitive on the outside, so if he is able to get the bit between them, instead of resting across the bars of the mouth, he will be able to escape its action.) The "rough" bits described so far acted mainly by the pull of the mouthpiece against the bars and corners of the mouth, and so might properly be described as "pulling." W e have already seen the Bronze Age type, with jointed mouthpiece and spikes projecting inwards from the cheekpieces, and noted that when the reins were pulled the horse's lower jaw would be compressed between them. This I believe to be what Xenophon means by the "compressing" bit. By his time it had taken a still more formidable shape. Plate 32b shows an iron bit found in the Kuban, in the grave of a Scythian chieftain whose people, like most of the dwellers round the coast of the Black Sea, had certainly had some contact with Greek civilization. It was made early in the fourth century B.C.13 The mouthpiece is plain and jointed. The cheekpieces, in the form of iron rods (the only complete one is bent at one end, but this may be an accident), pass through loops in the ends of the canons, instead of having holes through which the canons pass. Just inside them are oblong bronze plates, each having four spikes, turned inwards, at the four corners. (They are probably made of bronze because iron spikes would be too brittle.) N o actual examples of this type of bit have yet been found in Greece. But a number of vase paintings and other works of art, dating from the third quarter of the sixth century B.C. to the first half of the fourth century, show bits with small oblong rectangles, filled with dots, inside the cheekpieces (Plates 20—22). I believe that these rectangles are bronze plates, like the ones on the bit from the Kuban. They would show clearly from the side, especially if the rest of the bit were made of iron.

Later Bits and Bridles

jjcj

The dots are to remind the beholder of the inward-turning spikes.14 The purpose of the noseband on the bridle just described (Plate 19) is of course different from that of the dropped noseband of the Bronze Age. Not only is it fitted higher up, but the reins, which would have been attached to the ends of the canons of the bit, would not have acted upon it. So it plays no part in the control of the horse, and serves only to keep the bridle in position. It is often omitted (Plates 18b, 20, 24), especially when the bridle is fitted with a browband. Or there may be both browband and noseband, perhaps connected by a vertical strap down the front of the nose, to which may be fastened a frontal, either ornamental or defensive. Or there may be straps crossing diagonally in front of the horse's nose.15 The points at which the various straps cross are often masked by ornamental discs, but the vase paintings suggest that in Greece proper (as distinct from Asia Minor, for which see Plates 17aj 26d") these were seldom of great size or elaboration before the fourth century B.C. Surviving examples, made of bronze, have at the back of the ornamental disc a framework consisting of four short legs supporting a metal ring or a square plate with a hole in it. Through the gaps between these legs the intersecting straps evidently passed.18 On the Asiatic fringe of the Greek world we find small bronze and ivory animals used instead of bronze discs. And in Persia ornaments shaped like boars' tusks are found (Plates 8, 9). These mask small rectangular bosses, pierced through the four vertical faces by intersecting holes for the straps.17 Since the point is important, I would like to repeat that the ancients had no device like our modern buckle by which the fitting of the bridle could be quickly adjusted in the field. Harness buckles have been found in Syria in contexts dating shortly before the beginning of the present era, but these specimens are considerably older than any known to me from Europe.18

60

Later Bits and Bridles

The altered form of the bridle does not mean that the use of pressure on the outside of the nose had been abandoned as a means of controlling the horse, though it was now generally subordinate to the bit. A n Attic vase in the British Museum, dating from the middle of the fifth century B.C., shows the departure of a hunter or soldier.19 His horse is controlled by a broad band round its muzzle, marked with dots which may represent sharp points, like those fitted to the nosebands of the Indian horses described by Strabo and Arrian (Plate 2 3 ) . Another device, used generally in conjunction with the bit, was the psalion.20 This was a metal cavesson, of which examples are known from the Assyrian site of Sultantepe (seventh century B.C.) 21 and, in an almost unaltered form, from many sites of the Roman imperial period.22 It consists of a U-shaped strip of metal, designed to fit horizontally round the front of the horse's nose, from the open ends of which rise two straight pieces, usually about six inches long, whose tops are connected to a second horizontal U , turned the opposite way and designed to pass under the upper part of the jaw (Plate 3 7 ) . The arms of this U are modified to allow the leather straps of the headstall to be attached securely. Beneath the open ends of the lower U are two ring-shaped projections to which would be attached the reins, or rather, when the psalion was used in conjunction with a bit, as Xenophon expects it to be, a chin strap to which a single lead rope might be fastened.23 When this rope was pulled, the lower U would press on the front of the nose, the upper on the underside of the jaw, and the resulting scissors effect (psalis, scissors) would obviously be more powerful than the simple pressure of an ordinary noseband. Hence we find "the bite of the crooked cavesson" specially mentioned by a writer in the Anthology .24 This device would be particularly powerful when used to reinforce a bit, as by pressing the nose down and the jaws together it prevents the horse from throwing his head up and opening his mouth in order to escape the bit's action. But even

Later Bits and Bridles

6x

by itself it would be formidable. Xenophon particularly warns against jerking the horse's head with it accidentally in mounting. 25 I do not know any certain representation of this form of cavesson in art, but a number of vases (Plate 17b) show horses, whose reins have been left on their necks, being held by a separate lead rope which is fastened under the chin, though perhaps more usually to the chin strap of the bridle than to a psalion. The same arrangement is also shown on the Assyrian reliefs (Plate 5 ) , and far more commonly; it would seem to have been usual there, but exceptional in Greece, though Xenophon warns against leading horses by the bit. The Scythians (followed by the Greeks) seem sometimes to have combined lead rope and reins, by making one rein of a convenient length for riding and fitting a loop or slip knot at the end, through which the other was passed.26 This other rein was made many times longer. Its end would have to be carried looped up by the side while riding. When the rider dismounted, he could leave the reins on the horse's neck and hold the long end while the horse grazed. This arrangement I do not think good; Plate 24 shows the generally tangled effect and the danger of the horse putting his foot through the reins while grazing. When the horse is being led, he is led by the bit, and when ridden, there is the awkwardness of the looped-up end (Plate i8&). Another bad arrangement, attested by vase paintings of the seventh and sixth centuries, is for the reins to be divided in the middle, one being generally held in each hand (Plate 2 6 d ) . If either rein is accidentally dropped it falls straight to the ground, instead of remaining on the horse's neck, and the horse becomes uncontrollable. It is used by boys on race horses (Plate 26c) and by other civilians, but never, as far as I know, by armed men. Xenophon 27 recommends "reins that are even and neither weak nor slippery, nor yet thick, so that the hands may be able to hold both spear and reins when necessary." The position of the hands holding the reins is not always

62

Later Bits and Bridles

clear in the pictures. When it can be seen, the reins usually pass from the bit over the forefinger and so downwards through the hands. This is the normal hold for driving, but for riding the opposite hold (that is, upwards through the hands) is nowadays generally approved. But, just as the horse was discouraged from taking hold of the bit, so the rider was recommended to leave the rein slack except when actually using it to enforce his orders.28 It is of course impossible to "feel the horse's mouth" by means of a light continuous tension on the reins when he is being ridden in a bit like those described above. Horses that are accustomed to the "thorn mouthpieces" of modern India are "almost impossible for an European to ride," so violently do they react to the least touch upon their mouths.29 The ancient rider, riding bareback or upon a saddlecloth, would enjoy a different means of communication with the horse, through the seatbones, which is nowadays largely lost. Unfortunately it cannot be doubted that the ancient Greeks did use bits that cut their horses' mouths. Dio Chrysostom has a story of how Apelles, the famous painter, was baffled in his attempts to portray realistically a horse's mouth covered with blood and foam. Eventually he lost his temper and threw a sponge at the picture, thus achieving the desired result by accident.30 Plate 28a, from the famous Alexander Mosaic at Pompeii, shows a Persian war horse being reined in by a "rough" bit. The open mouth allows the mouthpiece with its rollers to be seen clearly, and proves that this type of bit (doubtful though the provenance of museum specimens may be) is not an invention of the modern forger. Plate 21 a, from an Attic vase of about 430 B.C., shows the Amazon Hippolyta on horseback. This vase shows clearly the effect of fastening the reins to revolving hooks instead of to the ends of the canons. The hooks hang below the bit, and unless the rider pulled very strongly indeed they would not be pulled round in a straight line with the reins. The pull of the

Later Bits and Bridles

6j

reins would be transmitted to the bit along the line of the hooks, and so act downwards on the bars of the mouth rather than upwards into the corners. Since the hooks were free to turn, there would be little leverage. The ancient sidebar snaffle, being held by two comparatively short straps, which may be secured by a noseband fitted at the point where they unite, would seem to have slightly less freedom of movement than the modern ring snaffle. This would reduce the tendency for it to slip up into the corners of the mouth when the reins were pulled, and so further increase its effect on the bars. A few monuments, both Assyrian and Greek, seem to show the reins attached to the end of the lower sidebar of the cheekpiece.31 But I am not certain that they are reliable, though they seem clear enough. The artists may have been unwilling to obscure the details of the mouth and bit by carrying the reins across them, just as Assyrian sculptors sometimes omit half a bowstring rather than carry it across the archer's face.32

V HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE BIT

In the Bronze Age, when chariot driving was more important than riding, men generally controlled their horses either with nosebands or with bits that worked largely by the action of the cheekpieces. In the classical period—roughly the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.—when men rode more than they drove, bits of new forms, with very severe mouthpieces, had been devised. W e will now look more closely at the development of the bit, in order to determine whether the change in its form is directly connected with the change in the relative importance of driving and riding. The "bits of new forms" to be considered are still sidebar snaffles and act partly through the mouthpiece, partly through the pressure of the cheekpieces on the lips. Some stress the effect of one action, some of the other, but none introduce any new principle, as the curb does. The addition of spikes to the mouthpiece does not make the bit act in an entirely different way, but it obviously makes it act more powerfully. Our immediate concern is to determine the date of the introduction of the spiked mouthpiece. Unfortunately, most of the evidence comes from sculptures and vase paintings, which, though they may show the details of the bridle and the shape of the cheekpiece, cannot tell anything (except by inference) about what was in the horse's

Historical Development of the Bit

(>5

mouth. The bits shown in Plate 33a and Plate 34c both have half-moon cheekpieces, and both would look much the same in a vase painting, but from the point of view of the horse there is obviously all the difference in the world. Again, it makes a considerable difference to the horse whether the cheekpieces have spikes on the inside or not, but none whether they are shaped like a crescent or a chimaera. The appearance (whether in actual surviving specimens or in art) of an unusual form of cheekpiece in two countries is good evidence for a connection between them. 1 But bits are not to be classified merely by the forms of their cheekpieces. Cheekpieces in the form of animals, such as were common in Italy and Luristan, were almost unknown in Greece. I know of only one complete pair and one fragment—imports, in my opinion—and have found none represented in sculpture or painting. 2 In Assyria too such cheekpieces were unusual and seem to have been marks of rank and splendour; they are worn, for example, by King Sennacherib's horses, but not by those of his attendants.3 In Greece few bits were buried in graves or otherwise put away safe for posterity. I have noted fourteen only (some of doubtful provenance) and a few others that are called Greek for no adequate reason, besides some fragments. But in Athens alone, during the fourth century B.C., there must at any time have been nearly two thousand bits in use. Not one of these has survived. Obviously our specimens are unlikely to represent all the types that ever were used, and it will be unsafe to argue that the bit (or any particular form of bit) was unknown at any given place or time merely because none has turned up in excavations. For the crucial period (late eighth and seventh centuries B.C.) direct evidence is wholly lacking, as we have nothing to fill the gap between the late Bronze Age bits from Mycenae and Miletus and some sixth-century specimens to be described below. Nor is the indirect evidence satisfactory. Geometric

66

Historical Development

of the Bit

vase paintings do not show the details of harness, and those of the early seventh century B.C. are generally crude and unreliable. But we have noted several pictures of horses being ridden in unmistakable halters, and other vase paintings of the midseventh century might be interpreted as showing plain nosebands, fitted a little higher up than the Egyptian ones, and controlled by a rein fastened to each side.4 Various Syrian and Hittite monuments, dating from the first three centuries of the first millennium B.C., might be explained in the same way. But I do not feel certain about any of these works of art. The style is generally too crude to make the artists' intentions absolutely clear. Straight lines running from side to side of the horse's nose may represent a noseband, but they may conceivably be the sidebars of a snaffle bit. Indeed, sometimes the reins go closely below the supposed noseband to the horse's mouth,5 and in these instances I believe that some form of bit is probably intended. After all, bits had been used in Greece during the Bronze Age. It is unlikely that they disappeared altogether during the Iron Age. It may be significant that Homer mentions the bit only once, but then he may simply have taken it for granted.6 The animals (often mules) that pulled country carts were generally managed without bits at a far later period, but this fact does not throw any light on the present question. For ridden and chariot horses were certainly guided by means of reins, the uncertainty being whether the reins were fastened to bits or to nosebands, and the cart animals had their heads left completely free, being guided only with a long whip or stick, with which they could be tapped on this side or that (Plate 11). Sometimes they were urged on with a goad, but it does not seem to have been thought necessary to have a means of restraining them—a fact which suggests that they were often overloaded and in miserable condition. Nausicaa's mules in the Odyssey, which were doubtless better fed than the average, were controlled with reins (but perhaps not bits).

Historical Development of the Bit

6y

Country carts in parts of Asia seem to have been managed in the same way. The bas-reliefs of Assurbanipal, celebrating the conquest of Elam in 652 B.C., show Elamites seated in small two-wheeled carts drawn by pair's of mules which wear nosebands but no reins and are controlled by long sticks. Horsemen accompanying the carts govern their horses with bits and bridles of the Assyrian type (Plate 1 1 . The carts are being used for flight, not in battle like war chariots. The Greek carts can hardly be directly connected with those of Elam, because, apart from problems of time and space, the Elamite carts have high spoked wheels, and most Greek ones have the more primitive heavy crossbar wheel. This clearly distinguishes them from chariots. Moreover, a charioteer, whether in battle or on the race course, stands: the driver of a cart usually sits. But we may note here that the Panathenaic Games at Athens included a "cart-horse Derby" in the sixth century B.C. The earliest surviving Athenian prize amphora, whose date cannot be far from 566 B.C., has on the reverse a picture of a driver seated in a small cart with crossbar wheels, drawn by a pair of horses which he manages without reins, by means of a goad and a long guiding stick, rendered more effective by jangling pieces of metal hanging from its end. This method of control evidently proved inadequate for teams highly fed to bring them into racing condition; two later vases show racing carts (with spoked wheels) whose horses are managed by bits and reins, like those of chariots. The event for which these prizes were given is perhaps to be identified with the synoris, a race for pairs of horses, in some way different from the ordinary chariot race, which was also run at Olympia—but not until 408 B.C.7 The seventh-century Assyrian sculptures show bits with curved cheekpieces resembling, at first glance, the crescents of classical Greece. By contrast, in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. we see cheekpieces in the form of flat metal plates. The earlier ones (Plate 3; qa) are wide at the ends, where the holes

68

Historical Development of the Bit

for fastening the bridle were, and in the middle, where the canons of the mouthpiece passed round them, and are ornamented with what I take to be decorative incisions. The later ones (Plate 4b; soldiers of Tiglath-Pileser III, 745—727 B.C.) are smaller, undecorated, and in the form of narrow rectangles. The cheek straps of the earlier bridles divide into three branches, of which the outer two are attached to the ends of the cheekpiece and the middle one to its middle. They unite well below the horse's eye, in this differing from the straps of the Egyptian bridle, which join higher up. A more significant difference is the lack of a noseband (Plates 3, 4 ) . Obviously these horses are managed by the bit alone. (These pictures are carefully selected; some reliefs show cheekpieces so large that they stretch from side to side of the nose and might be mistaken for nosebands unless examined very closely.) The cheek strap of the later bridle divided into two branches only, the cheekpiece of the bit being smaller. There is a marked difference between the riders of the ninth century and those of the eighth; still more those of the seventh. The earliest are crouched awkwardly on their horses' backs, with thighs horizontal and lower legs gripping their horses' sides instead of hanging free. They lack confidence in their power to control their horses; at least, the mounted archers of Plate 3 (from the bronze gates of King Shalmaneser, 860—825 B.C.) are escorted by companions holding leading reins. W e might suppose that the bit with the flat cheekpiece was not very powerful, and in fact an actual example—or perhaps rather a model intended for some ceremonial purpose, since its mouthpiece is 26 cm. wide—has a plain two-piece jointed mouthpiece, without spikes.8 But, granted that the ninth-century bits were not very severe, there seems to be no reason to suppose that those of Tilgath-Pileser's time were very different. Yet his soldiers ride much better than their ancestors. The next bits to be considered are those with curved cheek-

Historical Development

of the Bit

69

pieces, which had in fact been introduced before the end of the eighth century.9 These cheekpieces are not regular crescents, like those of the later Greek bits. The front end is pointed, but the back is blunt, and the shape of the whole resembles the tine of a deer's antler. Deer-horn cheekpieces, pierced by three holes, of which the middle one is clearly intended for the mouthpiece and the end two for the branches of the cheek strap, are well known from Central Europe. They seem generally to have had mouthpieces of perishable material, perhaps cord or rawhide though one bar mouthpiece of horn has been found. 10 Later came the use of metal mouthpieces, usually in the form of two interlocking canons, each of which ends in a large loop. The cheekpieces, made separately, of horn, wood, or metal, might be passed through these loops, which also served for the attachment of the reins, or hooked on to them, or fastened independently to the bridle. This is the type of bit found at Pazyryk, with remarkable carved wooden cheekpieces.11 This type was also found, with metal cheekpieces of various forms, in the northern Caucasus, Iran, and elsewhere, in contexts dated from about 800 to 550 B.C. 1 2 We may fairly associate it with the nomads of the steppes, and see in the altered bits of the Assyrian reliefs a further consequence of the movements of Scythians and Cimmerians, who doubtless made their presence felt even before the great invasions. In passing it may be noted that this type has not yet been found in Greece. So far the enquiry has not tended in the expected direction, as the mouthpieces of these bits are invariably smooth, and their action is apparently no more powerful than that of those previously used in Assyria. The patient, enduring Central Asiatic ponies doubtless needed nothing more severe, but I cannot see why the introduction of this type should have given the Assyrians greater confidence in managing their more difficult horses.13 But other evidence shows that far more formidable bits were now available too. Plate 3/\a, b shows a bronze bit, now in the Ashmolean

jo

Historical Development of the Bit

Museum at Oxford. This is one of three recovered from the plundering of a cemetery at Deve Hiiyiik, near Carchemish on the Euphrates, which was used for burials during the Persian period, from about 600 to 300 B.C. at the latest. With the bits were found terracottas showing Scythian features, and it is suggested that they may have been made about the beginning of the sixth century B.C. under Scythian influence.14 But the rough mouthpiece is so far unknown in Scythia. The mouthpiece has two canons—thick, solid cylinders, linked together by interlocking rings. They are covered with rough knobs—less formidable than Xenophon's "hedgehogs," but severe enough. Each is cast in one piece with its cheekpiece, which is formed of two sidebars, bent outwards at a sharp angle and pierced with holes for the attachment of the branches of the cheek strap of the bridle. The reins were fastened to large rings, which stick straight out beyond the ends of the canons in the same plane as the sidebars. One sidebar of each cheekpiece ends in a realistically modelled hoof, the other in a phallus—obviously sympathetic magic, designed to make the stallion wearing the bit at once a fast runner and a potent sire.15 When the bit was bent in the horse's mouth the cheekpieces and rein rings would be turned slightly upwards (Plate 34h). But they would still project outwards in the main. On the horses of the Persepolis reliefs (about 500 B.C.) the phallus, hoof, and rein ring of the cheekpiece are clearly shown (Plate 39), making it almost certain that the bits represented are of this type. The cheekpieces are nearly straight, with their sidebars only slightly turned up. Other artists might have turned the ends up more sharply, in order to suggest the outward projection that they were unable to represent in accurate perspective, but it seems likely that most of the bits with curved cheekpieces shown in sculpture and vase painting are of other forms. Several bits of the rough type have been found in Trans-

Historical Development of the Bit

71

caucasia, in graves which may be as early as the ninth to eighth centuries B.C. 1 8 Being cast, spikes and all, in only two pieces, they must have been far cheaper and easier to manufacture than the Greek bits with "rollers"; on the other hand they would not be nearly as "flexible." The type may have originated among the bronze founders of civilized countries, perhaps the kingdom of Urartu, or Ararat, rather than among the nomads, and had a long life; when Alexander the Great sacked Persepolis it still seems to have been standard equipment in the Persian cavalry (Plate 3 5 ) T h e influence of Urartu on Greek metalwork can be traced back to the seventh century B.C. But at present only two specimens of this type of bit are known from Greece, of which the earlier was found in the debris left behind by the Persian sack of the Acropolis of Athens in 480 B.C. and may very possibly be Persian. 18 It is almost identical with the bit shown in Plate 35 b from Persepolis. The rendering of the leg and hoof on the one sidebar is conventionalized, and there is a knob on the other in place of the phallus. The second specimen from Greece (which is probably of Greek manufacture) has knobs on all four sidebars. It was found in the ruins of Olynthus, destroyed in 348 B.C. by Philip II of Macedon. 19 Closely related to this type of rough bit is one with a threepiece mouthpiece. Rein ring, cheekpiece, and mouthpiece are again cast in one piece, but the canons do not interlock with each other, but with a large ring which serves as a connecting link. All the parts of the mouthpiece are covered with rough studs. This type has one advantage over the two-piece type, in that its main parts are mirror images of each other and could be cast from one mould. Examples from Assyria 2 0 and of unknown provenance 21 have projecting sidebars very similar to those of Plate 35 b, but without hooves and phalli. The danger that the sidebars might catch on obstacles, or in the harness of other horses, is obvious.

j2

Historical Development of the Bit

The cheekpieces are perhaps turned out in order to avoid all risk of the horse snatching at the end of the sidebar and getting it between his teeth. When cheekpiece and mouthpiece were made separately it was preferable to turn the ends up, but when the cheekpiece was cast together with the mouthpiece the form of the mould would have been excessively complicated, unless all the parts of the casting lay in the same horizontal plane. Plate 35c shows a later specimen (fourth century B.C.?) from Persepolis. This has straight sidebars. It is heavy and clumsy in appearance, and the knobs are far more severe than those on the other bits found with it (Plate 35a). Probably the rougher, heavier bit was used for breaking and schooling horses, as Xenophon recommends, rather than for ordinary riding.22 Of course, smooth bits as well as rough ones could be made, exactly similar, except for mouthpieces moulded without spikes. Two smooth bits were found at Deve Hiiyiik as well as the rough one, and a two-piece smooth bit of unknown provenance in Cairo has cheekpieces which, though broken, seem to have been like those of the rough Assyrian three-piece bits.28 More distantly related smooth two- and three-piece bits have been found distributed from Hungary to Kurdistan.24 So far, then, the evidence shows that heavy bits of solid cast bronze with rough mouthpieces were being used in Mesopotamia and neighbouring countries at the time when not only the military importance but the skill and confidence of mounted men were being definitely established. King Assurbanipal's hunters (Plates 38^) wear bits with rein rings that seem to be made in one piece with the cheekpieces. They may therefore be bronze, and possibly have rough mouthpieces. But his baggage mules (Plate 5b), and the cavalry horses of King Sennacherib, half a century earlier (Plate 5a), have clumsier cheekpieces, which may be of horn, and have smooth mouthpieces hooked on to them. Rough bits of the Deve Hiiyiik type continued to be used,

Historical Development

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73

in almost unaltered form, by the Persians, until the fall of their empire, and by the Greeks in the fourth century B.C. T h e "flexible" type described in the preceding chapter did not replace them completely, being more complicated, and therefore more expensive to make. But the use of rough bits for riding was not universal, though perhaps it tended to become increasingly common. The knowledge that rough bits could be used for the management of difficult horses may have accounted for the increased confidence and skill of the later Assyrian riders and their successors both in Asia and in Europe, but it certainly did not make riding possible. N o direct evidence has been found for the use of the rough bronze mouthpiece in Greece before the Persian wars. But bits with curved cheekpieces were certainly making their appearance in Greece about the middle of the seventh century B.C., as has been shown by N . Yalouris. 25 The curved cheekpiece can first be clearly distinguished on vases painted at Corinth. One of the earliest shows Bellerophon riding against the Chimaera. His legs are largely concealed by Pegasus's wings, but his body is relaxed and his bearing confident—in marked contrast to some of his Boeotian and Attic contemporaries. This picture was probably painted just before 650 B.C.—within a few years, then, of the introduction of horse racing at Olympia; moreover in the next generation a strong Assyrian influence appears in Corinthian art.26 It is, then, a fair assumption that bits with curved cheekpieces were introduced to Greece from Assyria by the Corinthians, and quite probable that among them were some with rough mouthpieces. From Corinth the curved cheekpiece was spread throughout Greece in the late seventh century and thereafter. In Attic black-and-red-figure vase painting it is by far the commonest type. But the mere fact that a bit has curved cheekpieces, or is represented as having them by an artist of the archaic period, does not prove that its mouthpiece is rough. This fact is brought home by a group of four bits found together at Olym-

74

Historical Development

of the Bit

pia, and dating, as their context shows, from about 550—490 B.C. 27 (Plate 3 3 ) .

The finest of these, of bronze (Plate 33^), has been mentioned in connection with the "rough flexible" bits with rollers round their mouthpieces. Its mouthpiece is a straight bar, enclosed in a single length of narrow tube, which was evidently intended to revolve and give the horse something to play with in his mouth. The ends of the bar pass through holes in the middle of the curved cheekpieces, and there are rings fastened to short arms, which rotated freely about the outer ends of the mouthpiece, for the attachment of the reins. The roller (of which this is the earliest example to my knowledge) and the rein rings both point forward to the fourthcentury bits described in the preceding chapter, but this has neither their roughness nor their flexibility. It was probably dedicated by a successful race-horse owner, though whether it comes from a ridden or a chariot horse must remain uncertain. The other three are of iron. All have two-piece jointed mouthpieces. The simplest has curved cheekpieces with large rings through which the canons of the mouthpiece pass—but no rein hooks (Plate 3 3 c ) . The second has rein hooks, but no cheekpieces; perhaps they were made of some perishable material (Plate 3 3 ^ ) . The third, and most remarkable, has cheekpieces slightly bent at each end, in the form of a long shallow S- The rings for the cheek straps of the bridle are so arranged that the ends of the S would be turned upwards and downwards, not inwards and outwards as in Plates 27, 36a. Between the cheek strap rings, and on the opposite side, is another ring, which interlocks with the ring at the end of the canon of the mouthpiece. Hooks for the reins also hang from the ends of the canons—inside the cheekpieces, a most unusual feature. The canons are thickened and roughened by being bound round with iron wire (Plate 3 3 J ) . The fact that the cheekpiece was S-shaped rather than crescent-shaped of course makes no difference to the action of the bit. But it is worth

Historical Development of the Bit

75

noting that the S shape was known (though doubtless uncommon) in the Assyrian sphere of influence during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III (745—27 B . C . ) , which is the period when the more common crescent shape appears on the reliefs.28 Wooden S-shaped cheekpieces, with ends carved in the form of animals' heads, were found at Pazyryk 29 (late fifth to fourth centuries B . C . ) , and bronze ones, which cannot be precisely dated but may be fairly late, came from Delphi, Dodona, and Olympia. 30 All these have ends turning up and down, not in and out. The vase paintings, then, tell us no more than that the Corinthians introduced a new form of bit (or more than one?) and that it (or they?) spread rapidly through Greece in the late seventh and sixth centuries B.C. That some of the new bits had rough mouthpieces seems to me probable. The Corinthian bronze workers were among the most famous in antiquity and fully capable of casting spikes, and indeed spiked rollers for bits have been found at Corinth and its dependency Perochora.31 (But these, though their date is uncertain, are probably quite late.) The roller mouthpiece is perhaps a Greek invention, though the Alexander Mosaic (probably a copy of a late fourth-century original) suggests that some of the Persian cavalry may have used it as well as the stiff type found at Persepolis (Plates 27, 28). As Yalouris points out, the legend of the golden bit and bridle that Athena gave to Bellerophon was peculiarly attached to Corinth, and there was even a tradition that the bit was invented there.32 But the importance of whatever it was that the Corinthians did should not be exaggerated. Whether they introduced bits where only nosebands had been known before, or merely brought in bits of a more powerful type, it was not their invention that made riding, or even the use of cavalry, possible. Horsemen, a few of whom were armed and even fighting on horseback, had appeared in increasing numbers in Attic and Boeotian art since the late eighth century B.C.

j6

Historical Development of the Bit

It must be remembered that the ancients had no stirrups, and therefore, when they tried to pull their horses up were in much the same position as a man trying to row a boat without anything against which to brace his feet. Chariot drivers, who had the floor boards of the chariot, were better off. It is remarkable that the Celtic tribes whose use of particularly brutal curb bits for riding was noted in the preceding chapter, also developed the ring snaffle of modern form, which is found in Central Europe, France, Britain, and Ireland, and seems to have been used mainly for driving chariots. It usually has a smooth two- or three-piece jointed mouthpiece (Plate 374), but plain half-moons are also known. I believe that it developed during the La Tene period from sidebar snaffles with rein rings attached to the ends of the canons, but must leave the question to be more fully investigated by someone more familiar with Celtic antiquities. By the beginning of the present era the Romans too had given up the comparatively clumsy sidebar snaffle. On equestrian statues and reliefs of the early imperial period the cheek strap of the bridle does not divide, and is fastened directly to the end of the mouthpiece. The rein is also generally fastened to the end of the mouthpiece, which is ornamented with a small metal disc—too small to prevent the bit from being pulled sideways through the mouth. To keep the bit in place a noseband is fastened to the cheek straps a few inches above the corners of the mouth. This may go right round the horse's nose (as on the statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome) or round the front only (as on the statues of the Balbi, from Herculaneum). It is often further secured by a strap running down the front of the horse's nose, and allows free play only to the few inches of cheek strap that hang beneath it. Ornamental metal discs mask the junction of the straps. References to "wolves" on bits abound in Latin literature, and suggest that the mouthpiece was often furnished with sharp spikes. A second type of mouthpiece used in the Roman empire is

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77

illustrated in Plate 3 j b . It is designed to dig into the roof of the horse's mouth; at the same time the psalion (shown on the same plate; these two examples were found together) prevented him from obtaining relief by throwing up his head and opening his mouth. The reins were fastened to metal arms which hung free from the ends of the mouthpiece. The bar that connects these arms did not act as a curb, as it did not rest in the horse's chin groove, but hung well below it. To sum up, it would seem that riding was not made possible by the invention of severe bits, but that as men took to riding instead of driving in battle the extra control given by severe bits was found to be necessary, at least to men mounted on the fiery breeds of horses that had been developed in southwestern Asia and parts of southern Europe. (And here we may acknowledge that the horses that men rode to battle in the seventh century B.C. were larger, more powerful, and harder to hold than those that their ancestors drove a thousand years earlier, though, as was shown in the first two chapters, the improvement was not the result of the sudden appearance of some hitherto unknown strain.) The Scythians on their patient ponies generally used smooth bits, and the peoples of North Africa managed without bits at all (though their example was not copied by their Roman conquerors). But the rough mouthpiece, the cavesson, and (after it had been invented) the curb were all used by the regular cavalry forces of the civilized powers, and were essential to their development, even though they did not have to be used on every horse the whole time. Even with these devices, the danger of being bolted with was far greater than it would have been to riders provided with stirrups. The fate of Aulus Atticus at the battle of the Grampian Mount, juvenili ardore et ferocia equi hostibus tnlatus, is well known,33 and still more famous is that of the younger Cyrus, whose charger Pasacas bore him, still calling out "beggars, make way," to his death amid the ranks of his brother's army.34 It had been the great advantage of the chariot over the

j8

Historical Development of the Bit

mounted man that the fighter did not have to occupy himself with the control of the horses. "Come therefore, take the lash and shining reins, and I will stand upon the car to fight," says Aeneas to Pandarus, "or else withstand thou him, and to the horses will I look." 35 One is reminded of the infantry captain in Punch, who, being required to "mount and drill the battalion," replied that he would "drill the battalion first, and mount afterwards." Even after mounted men had begun to replace the chariot, riding and fighting were still often two men's work. Layard has noted that in the ninth century B.C. Assyrian horse archers were often accompanied by assistants holding leading reins 36 (Plate 3 b ) , and we shall see later that heavy dragoons, if we may so call them, who dismounted to fight, leaving their horses to be held by youthful squires, formed a part of the armies of at least some of the Greek states in the late seventh and early sixth centuries B.C. (Plate 29). This arrangement had the advantage of introducing young men to battle without exposing them to its full hazards. Perhaps some memory of it survived until the fourth century B.C. In Plato's Republic the children were to be given "wings" to convey them out of danger—mounted, that is, on fast but quiet horses—and led to watch their elders fighting.37 But in general any system by which the fighting man did not control his own horse wasted both man and horse power.

VI SADDLE-CLOTHS, AND OTHER

DRESS,

ACCESSORIES

Ak,

The Assyrian cavalry used saddle-cloths, which sometimes covered a large part of their horses' flanks and sides and so served to protect them in battle as well as to give the rider a more secure and comfortable seat (Plates 4a, 5, 6 ) . Since the Greeks seem to have been indebted to Assyria for the most effective form of bit in use from the middle of the seventh century B.C. onwards, it might have been expected that they would also copy the Assyrian saddle-cloth, even supposing that nothing of the sort was in use earlier.1 But in fact all the horsemen who appear on vase paintings and other monuments from Corinth, Athens, Sparta, and elsewhere in mainland Greece ride bareback, until the fourth century B.C. Only from the coast of Asia Minor and the neighbouring islands are pictures of saddle-cloths known. These date from the second half of the sixth century B.C., long after the destruction of the Assyrian empire, when the new Persian power was at its height. Persian influence is suggested by the scalloped edges of saddlecloths on vases made in Clazomenae, near Smyrna, and Camirus in Rhodes (Plates 17a, 26^), which are comparable with those worn by Persian horses on seal stones of the Achaemenid period, and on the Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii (Plates 26b, 28 Some saddle-cloths on Assyrian reliefs have tasselled fringes, but none are scalloped. Saddle-cloths with plain

80

Saddle-cloths, Dress, Accessories

edges appear on Clazomenian clay sarcophagi of about 500 B.C., 2 and on the coins of Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, in the middle of the fourth century (Plate 26a), as well as on an earlier relief in the British Museum from the half-Hellenized town of Xanthus in Lycia (Plate 13b), which may, however, have had a painted border, now lost. Animal skins seem sometimes to have been used, as well as saddle-cloths in the strict sense of the word. Assyrian reliefs of the seventh century B.c sometimes show what may be sheep skins, with the legs dangling down, thrown over the large cloth that covers the horse's body to act as extra padding for the rider's seat (Plate 6a, b). In Greek art skins of large animals, such as lions and panthers, are used as saddle-cloths by Amazons and other legendary figures, even in the fifth century B.C.3 And lion skins are thrown over the backs of horses on wall paintings from Macedonian tombs of the Hellenistic age, in which the dead man, shown as a victorious horseman, may be deliberately endowed with heroic attributes. Certainly Aeneas's horse, quem fttlva leonis pellis obit totum praefulgens unguibus aureis, seems more proper to the epic hero than to the ordinary gentleman rider. A mixing bowl of the first half of the fourth century B.C., now in the Louvre, shows a battle between Arimaspians and griffins. Some of the Arimaspians are mounted, and one loose horse, galloping away riderless, has a panther's skin fastened round its neck by a breastband. The skin, with neither girth nor crupper to secure it, flies out high above the horse's back, with its long tail (certainly that of a panther, not a fawn) trailing behind. On the other hand, all the riders are seated bareback, so that it seems that the panther skin is only put in when it can be shown clear of the horse's body 4 (Plate 31 a, This suggests that Greek artists deliberately chose to represent their riders bareback in order to avoid spoiling the lines

Saddle-cloths,

Dress, Accessories

81

of their horses' bodies. W e are not, however, to suppose an "artistic convention" like that which seats the kings and heroes of the age of Louis XIV, in full-bottomed wigs and Roman togas, bare-legged upon their barebacked Great Horses. Xenophon's remarks on the horseman's seat are to apply whether the rider is mounted bareback or on a saddle-cloth. He instructs the groom in bridling the horse but not in saddling him, and frequently talks of horses being bridled where a modern author might rather speak of saddling. Admittedly he says that the Persian cavalry has to unhobble its horses and saddle and bridle them, and so is helpless in a night alarm, but he also rebukes the Persians for "putting more coverlets on their horses than on their beds, for they think of sitting softly rather than securely." 8 Though I have used the word "saddling," there is no evidence for the use of the true saddles with a rigid tree either in Greece or Persia at this period. Xenophon's saddle-cloth is to be padded where the rider sits, so as to make his seat more secure and avoid hurting the horse's back, but this does not imply the use of a rigid tree. The edge of a piece of stiff cloth can easily cut into the flesh, especially just behind the withers.6 Perhaps the fact that Xenophon barely mentions the saddlecloth except in his discussion of cavalry armour indicates that he looked on it more as a form of protection for the horse than as an aid to the rider. And as the armour that he recommends is exceptionally complete and elaborate, we may suppose that the ancient Greeks usually rode bareback, as they appear on the monuments, except perhaps in luxurious Ionia. Meanwhile the nomads of Central Asia had begun to use saddles, of a rather primitive kind. Excavations of the frozen graves at Pazyryk have produced actual examples of two types, the simpler consisting merely of two felt cushions designed to lie on each side of the horse's backbone, and the later and more elaborate having padded wooden frames to act as pommel and cantle. They were used on top of large gaily decorated

82

Saddle-cloths, Dress, Accessaries

saddle-cloths, and secured by breastband, girth, and crupper. These saddle-cloths, square cut and ending in tasselled fringes, recall the Persian monuments, and one, decorated with processions of lions, may actually be a Persian import.7 It is possible that, if the nomads used Persian saddle-cloths, the Persians copied the nomad saddles, and this might account for Xenophon's scornful comments. But he speaks definitely of "coverlets," not "pillows" or "cushions," and it therefore seems more probable that he is speaking of extra cloths, perhaps quilted. It has been suggested that straps seen dangling from saddles or saddle-cloths in fourth-century pictures of Scythians (for example, Plate may have served as stirrups, but the evidence is very doubtful, and certainly no true stirrup appears for nearly a thousand years afterwards. Moreover no picture shows a rider actually using these supposed stirrup straps. Besides, it is hard to explain why such a valuable invention should have been neglected by its discoverers, let alone by neighbouring nations.8 The difficulty of holding a pulling horse without stirrups against which to brace the feet has already been mentioned. The difficulty of mounting without stirrups is more obvious, though it has been exaggerated by some modern scholars. As was pointed out in the first two chapters, the horses of classical antiquity were not very big, even the Nisaean breed being massive rather than tall. I believe that few young or middleaged people would find much difficulty in mounting a fifteenhand horse bareback, if they tried, though certainly to vault up from the ground in a single movement is a different matter. Xenophon recommends that the groom should "know how to give a leg up in the Persian manner, so that his master may himself have someone to help him mount easily if he ever falls sick or when he grows old, or may do a favour to someone else, if he wants to, by providing someone to help him up." The younger Athenian knights were also to help their older com-

Saddle-cloths, Dress, Accessories

83

rades to mount in "the Persian manner," 9 so probably the grooms were not simply to kneel down and act as mounting blocks, as the captured enemies of Persian monarchs are compelled to do on the later monuments. W e hear surprisingly little about mounting blocks, though Plutarch notes, as one of the features of the beautiful new roads built in Italy by Gaius Gracchus, "stones at small distances from one another, on both sides of the way, by the help of which travellers might get easily on horseback without wanting " 10 a groom. Xenophon also recommends that the groom should "know how to make the horse lower himself" (probably by bending the front legs: sitting on the haunches, as Pollux 11 took it, is most inconvenient) "so as to make mounting easy. But we consider that the knight ought to practice so as to be able to mount even when the horse does not offer himself. For sometimes a different sort of horse falls to his lot, and the same horse is not always submissive in the same way." 12 This mildly worded advice to the Athenian amateur cavalry may be compared with Arrian's instructions to the disciplined professionals of the Roman army, who had to practice mounting in all sorts of ways, and eventually to vault in full armour onto a galloping horse. That these instructions were more than theoretical appears from an address of the Emperor Hadrian to a cavalry unit which he had been inspecting. 13 Detailed advice on how to mount without the help of a groom is given at the beginning of the seventh chapter of Xenophon's treatise on equitation. T h e rider was to take the reins in his right hand at the withers, holding on to the mane so as not to jerk the horse's mouth, and in his left hand the lead rope, which was attached to the cavesson or to the chin strap of the bridle, leaving it slack so as not to jerk the horse with it either. His left hand would either grasp the mane behind the horse's ears or hold his spear if he was armed; in this case the butt would be resting on the ground so as to support

8¿f

Saddle-cloths, Dress, Accessories

the left hand when the rider vaulted up. It was useful to practice mounting from the off side too, as the rider would then have the spear in his right hand to begin with, and not need to change it over once he was up. Pole vaulting onto the horse's back with the help of the spear is illustrated on a cup in Munich, painted about 500 B.C., 1 4 but this can hardly have been more than a riding-school exercise. It requires a quiet horse, and probably someone to hold him, as the vaulter approaches from a distance with both hands on the pole and neither on the reins. The suggestion that the spear might be rested against the horse's side at an angle, so as to provide a support for the foot, has no evidence to back it, and the spear certainly was not provided with a step half-way up the shaft. 15 It is not hard for a grown man (even an unathletic one) to mount a small horse bareback (though the boy in Plate 18a is evidently in difficulties; he has missed his spring and is hanging on by the reins, to the horse's evident discomfort. Unless his master pulls him onto the horse's back he will fall back to the ground) . 18 Dismounting, for which Xenophon gives no instructions, is often illustrated on the monuments. 17 Nearly all the pictures show the rider sliding down with his back to the horse; that is, he must have swung his right leg (when dismounting on the near side) over the horse's neck. In turning his back and dropping the reins he loses control of his horse; he may moreover strike the horse's neck with his heel (perhaps spurred) as he brings his leg over. But this way of dismounting has the advantage, from the artist's point of view, of showing his subject from the front. Moreover a warrior, springing down to confront an enemy in this way, keeps his face towards his adversary and his back protected by his horse, if only for the vital moment while he finds his feet. If he is carrying a shield on his left arm, this is swung clear of the horse. Dismounting in the manner now generally approved, by swinging the leg over the horse's rump, is seldom shown in

Saddle-cloths, Dress, Accessories 18

85

ancient pictures, but this does not mean that it was seldom practised. Greek horses were sometimes decorated with large collars, hung with ornamental metal discs, tassels, or even teeth.19 These may have been intended to keep off the Evil Eye. They are worn by the Clazomenian horses, and must be distinguished from the breast straps securing the saddle cloths, and from the poitrail, a piece of armour designed to protect the breast. They also appear on Attic horses, ridden bareback, most notably the horse of Castor on Exekias's great amphora in the Vatican (Plate 20). That they served no useful purpose is shown by Xenophon's story of the exchange of courtesies between King Agesilaus and the son of the Persian satrap Pharnabazus, who, as the Persians were withdrawing after a parley, suddenly turned back and running up to Agesilaus presented him with a richly wrought javelin, at the same time claiming to bind him with ties of formal friendship. The king acknowledged the claim, and, evidently taken by surprise, gave as a return present the beautiful medallions (pbalara) round the neck of his secretary's horse,20 which he could not have done if they had been attached to some necessary part of the harness. Ornamental medallions, whether round the necks of horses or used to decorate the headstalls of their bridles, seem to have been more popular in Asia Minor than in mainland Greece. They are uncommon in vase painting before the fourth century B.C., and it is to this late period that extant examples must be assigned.21 Turning now from the horse to the rider, we note the absence of any definite riding dress—that is, of any dress functionally adapted to riding and worn only by horsemen.22 Greece is hot enough for most of the year to make trousers or breeches in any form unnecessary.23 The Greeks knew of them from their barbarian neighbours, and frequently represented them in their art; young men of fashion may occasionally have worn them, in the same way that they sometimes wore gaily pat-

86

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terned Thradan cloaks (Plate 1 8 o r hats or boots, and since the rich young men, at Athens and elsewhere, owned horses and served in the cavalry, these foreign clothes were worn for riding, when they were worn at all. But they were not generally adopted. Nor do I consider that, by refusing to wear trousers, the Greek horsemen placed themselves at a disadvantage, except perhaps in the matter of protection in battle. Had they dressed in long trailing robes they would of course have found themselves in difficulties (and indeed it was probably because feminine modesty required such robes that horsewomen were practically unknown), but they normally wore short tunics, girded at the waist and pinned over the shoulders, which came down only to the middle of the thighs. So the rider could seat himself with the bare skin of his legs in direct contact with the horse's bare back, and this, as I have verified when swimming horses, gives a much better grip than trousers or breeches. W e may compare Carlyle's remarks on Bolivar's "wild cavalry clad in blankets." " M a n y a liberative cavalier has ridden, in these hot climates, without further dress at all; and fought handsomely too, wrapping the blanket round his arm, when it came to the charge." Xenophon warns against "providing an unseemly spectacle from behind" while mounting, but once the rider was seated he was respectably covered by the tunic. He must be careful that no loose folds were caught under him, as these might rub and cause sores.24 Over the tunic (chiton) might be worn a short cloak (chlamys), pinned over one shoulder, or both, by a large brooch. A soft, shallow-crowned, wide-brimmed sun hat was worn on the head, or pushed back to hang by the chin strap over the back of the shoulders (Plate 2 5 ) . Boots of various sorts were worn to protect the lower leg; the vase paintings show two kinds, either narrow thongs closely wound round feet and shins, or high boots, lacing up the front, with elegant scalloped tops. Shepherds, hunters, and other countrymen often wear the first; the second, which is of Thracian origin, is more often

Saddle-cloths, Dress, Accessories

8y

worn by horsemen, but not confined to them. Both sorts are flat-soled, heels being unnecessary before the invention of stirrups. Not only the boots, but the whole costume—chiton, chlamys, and hat—was commonly worn by hunters, shepherds, travellers, or anybody else whose occupation called him to vigorous outdoor activity. It was in no sense a uniform, though worn by the young men of the Athenian cavalry.25 In its developed form it seems to be no older than the late sixth century; seventh- and sixth-century vases generally show an apparently closer-fitting chiton and no chlamys (Plates 26b, 29,30). Many naked riders are represented in sculpture and painting. Certainly many young men did ride naked, especially when racing their horses or schooling them in the training grounds, but for ordinary purposes some sort of dress was needed, if only as a protection against the sun and the weather. If by no other article of dress, the horseman might be definitely distinguished by his spurs. Theophrastus, at the end of the fourth century B.C., characterized the Man of Petty Ambition as follows: "When he has taken part in a procession of the knights, he will give the rest of his accoutrements to his slave to carry home; but after putting on his cloak will walk about the market place in his spurs." 26 The ancients used a simple prick spur, with a short but sharp point, fastened either to the bare heel or to a boot. Single spurs have been found in graves,27 perhaps to be worn on the left leg, so that the horse could be held between the spur and a stick in the right hand.28 But two spurs would be less likely to make the horse run off to one side, and were no doubt usual by Theophrastus's time. Spurs were in use at Athens in the late fifth century B.C., for Pollux quotes the comic poets Pherecrates and Crates for riders binding "goads round their feet at the heels" and using "a whip on the ankle bones." 29 They may be making fun of a novelty; at all events the absence of earlier literary or archaeo-

88

Saddle-cloths, Dress, Accessories

logical evidence suggests that spurs were unknown before the fifth century B.C. Xenophon says that the rider who is teaching his horse to jump should strike him with "the gadfly" in order to make him collect himself, that is, to bring his hind legs and quarters well under his body. In the context, this must be a spur, though Pollux notes "gadfly" among several synonyms for goads used by charioteers.80 A goad is not really appropriate for a mounted man, and a blow from one is perhaps more likely to make a horse extend himself and jump big than to collect himself and jump off his hocks, which Xenophon recommends as safer for both horse and rider. (Compare the story of Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, the assassin of the Regent Murray, who, being hard pressed by his pursuers, struck his horse with his dagger and so drove him to take a tremendous leap, which none of the others would face, and escaped) .81 The use of the word kentron or goad for the large sticks with which boys on race horses and other riders are often equipped is not appropriate. In my opinion, their action is always to be explained as whacking rather than jabbing; if one must jab, a short-handled implement, like Bothwellhaugh's dagger, is more convenient for a mounted man. Whips with several short thongs were also used. I have not noted any Greek examples earlier than the early fifth century,82 but as the Assyrians had them (Plate 6a) I think it likely that the Greeks did too.

VII STABLE

MANAGEMENT Afe,

Brood mares and their foals were normally left running free in the meadows. But security, as well as convenience, required that the working horse or cavalry charger should be stabled near his master's home. Xenophon expects the typical Athenian knight of the fourth century B.C., for whom he writes, to live in town, but to possess a small estate in Attica, from which most of his income would be derived, and which he would visit, probably on horseback, almost every day. Naturally the horse (which served as hack in peace time and charger in time of war) would be stabled near the town house, usually indeed in some outbuilding attached to it. 1 No plan of a classical Greek stable has been recovered. But Xenophon appears to distinguish between the stable as a whole (stathmos) including an "outer stable" or yard, and the stall (bippon), where the horse's manger was. 2 It was very important that the stable should be well drained and cobbled; the yard too should be cobbled with "four or five waggon loads of rounded oval stones of about a pound's weight, thrown down at random and surrounded by an iron rim to prevent their scattering." 3 The object was to keep the horse's hooves hard and in good shape. Standing on a damp floor would soften them; washing the legs in grooming was to be avoided for the same reason.4 And the round stones, on which "both when

po

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Management

he is groomed and when he is troubled by flies, he has to make use of his hooves just as when he is walking," would not only harden the hooves and their frogs but serve to keep them rounded. 5 This was necessary, for the Greeks neither shod nor trimmed their horses' hooves. T h e horse's foot corresponds anatomically to the human toe or finger, the "fingernail" being developed into a horny covering or wall, which covers the front and sides of the hoof. Like the human nail, this wall is insensitive and grows continuously. It is higher, and grows faster, at the toe than at the heel. If the horse is unshod, the lower edge of the wall, which rests upon the ground, is continually being worn away. But if the ground is soft, so that the wear is slight, the hoof grows faster than it is worn and becomes so long that it not merely looks ugly but impedes the horse's movements. Large pieces of the hoof (especially if it is softened by excessive damp) may now break away and injure the foot; moreover, as the toe grows faster than the heel, an excessive strain is thrown on the back tendon of the leg. Nowadays we avoid all these troubles by trimming and rasping the hooves.6 T h e underside of the foot is protected by a thick horny insensitive sole, in the middle of which is the frog, a triangular horny pad, not as hard as the wall or sole, whose apex points towards the toe and whose base lies between the heels. It is divided at the back by a deep cleft, which gives it somewhat the shape of a swallow's tail (hence its Greek name, "swall o w " ) . It is insensitive, and acts as a shock absorber, besides helping to give the horse a grip. Xenophon justly says that the examination of the body should begin with the feet. "For just as a house would be useless, even if the upper parts were in excellent condition, if the foundation were not properly laid, so too a war horse, even if all his other parts were good, would be valueless if he had bad feet." 7

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91

The art of nailing on horseshoes was unknown to the ancient Greeks, though some sort of covering for the feet might have been improvised in emergencies. Thus Xenophon's ten thousand mercenaries, on their retreat through Armenia, tied sacking round the feet of their horses and baggage animals to stop them from sinking in the snow.8 Aristotle notes the use of boots to protect the feet of camels on military service, and they are recommended in treating the injured feet of draught animals by Roman writers on agriculture.9 Detachable metal shoes of Roman date are known to modern antiquaries as "hipposandals." Experiments conducted in 1901 by Lefebvre des Noettes suggest that they were only suitable for use at a walk and were therefore probably designed to protect injured feet. 10 From the first century B . C . 1 1 Roman writers speak of metal shoes for draught animals in a manner that suggests that they were too familiar to need explanation. They were apparently not nailed to the hoof but fitted to boots which could be put on for difficult stretches of road and taken off again. Thus Suetonius says that the Emperor Vespasian (69—79 A.D.) was once on a journey when his muleteer got down "to shoe the mules," giving time for a petitioner to approach. The emperor, suspecting that the muleteer had prearranged the scene in return for a consideration, demanded to go halves in his profit. 12 But iron horseshoes for nailing to the feet, not differing greatly from those in use at the present time, have long been known from Roman sites in southern Germany and elsewhere. These have been suspect, and casual finds supposed to be "Roman" still more so, because Roman ruins were often used as quarries for building material in the Middle Ages, and the technique of excavation in the nineteenth century was not sufficiently refined to make certain that these shoes did not come from the feet of mediaeval draught horses.13 However, within the present generation horseshoes have been found clearly stratified in scientifically excavated sites.

Stable Management Some, from Maiden Castle in Dorset, were lost on a road which seems to have gone out of use after the Roman occupation of Britain, and were associated with coins of the late fourth century after Christ. Others from Camulodunum (Colchester) were sealed in a deposit which is dated shortly after the Roman conquest.14 It seems therefore that nailed-on horseshoes have in fact been known since the beginning of the present era. But their absence from such sites as the cavalry barracks at Newstead in Scotland suggests that their use was not universal and may have been confined to draught or pack animals. The surviving specimens are small, and must have come from ponies. It is notable that the finds of Roman (or supposedly Roman) horseshoes were made in the northwestern provinces of the empire, where the wet climate would tend to produce hooves naturally soft and quick-growing. The classical Greeks and their ancestors started with a climate and soil that would help to make hard, well-formed hooves,15 which, provided they were not spoiled by unsuitable stabling, could be left in the main to care for themselves. J. B. Ward Perkins suggests that it was the extension of Roman metalled roads to the north that led to the invention of the horseshoe; 16 this makes its absence from Italy and Greece the more remarkable. So much for the hooves and the building of the stable. The daily care of the horse, at least at Athens in the fourth century B.C., was the work of a groom, generally a slave, and the master's part was limited to careful supervision. Xenophon is the first author to tell us that a horse is fattened most quickly by "the eye of the master." 17 The groom would give the horse his grain—apparently two feeds a day. Xenophon speaks of the horse's "breakfast," or rather "lunch," and "dinner" or evening meal, using the words given to the ordinary Athenian's daily meals,18 between which he was to be led out from his stall and groomed. Before "breakfast" his master probably rode him out to the farm; the after-

Stable

Management

noon and evening would be the time for political, business, and social activities in the city, and the horse would not normally be wanted. The groom's responsibilities included, of course, the proper fitting of halter, bridle, or muzzle. Xenophon gives instructions on how to bridle the horse, and tells the groom to do so not only when the horse is going to work but when he is being led back home or taken to his manger, so that he may come, not merely to accept the bit readily, but to "seize it of his own accord when it is held out to him." (He is not, of course, to be led by the bridle, but by the halter, which he would be wearing as well. The bit would be removed before he started to eat.) Two meals a day, and nothing else, is not enough for a horse, whose stomach is small in proportion to his body and holds comparatively little at a time. (The Roman veterinary authority Vegetius recommends that barley be issued not once or twice a day, but more frequently. "For horses digest regularly what they have received little by little. But what they have devoured all at once and grossly they pass out whole and undigested with the dung.") Probably at "lunch" and "dinner" Xenophon's horse received his grain ration (generally barley), and for part of the rest of the day the groom would take him out to graze. Thus Plutarch, describing the ruin to which the great city of Syracuse had been reduced by its tyrants and their wars, says that the army of Timoleon the liberator pastured its horses in the market place, the grooms lying down in the grass while the horses fed.19 Again, the overthrow of the Lydian kingdom by Cyrus of Persia was foreshadowed when the Lydian horses, being led out to pasture by their grooms, attacked and devoured a great swarm of serpents that had appeared in the suburbs of the capital, thus portending the destruction of the children of the soil by a foreigner and invader.20 We may suppose that the horse also received a ration of hay

Stable

Management

at night. Lucerne, or "Median hay," was known in Athens at least as early as 424 B.C., when it was mentioned by Aristophanes in his Knights. Later writers say that it was introduced by King Darius at the beginning of the fifth century B.C. 2 1

The horse's diet must depend upon many variable factors, such as the state of his health and the amount of work that he is doing, so Xenophon lays down no rules. (Roman cavalry horses in the second century B.C. received a ration of 3% Attic medimni of barley each per month, that is, more than five bushels, while on active service) . 22 Pollux gives the following list of food for horses: "Barley, spelt, oats, grass (chortos), hay (chilos), and, in Homer, wheat too. A n d if we believe him, even wine to drink, and lotus (clover) and marsh parsley." 23 The last items, at which Pollux seems surprised, are proof of the poet's superior knowledge. They are given to the horses of Achilles and his men instead of the usual hard feed of grain when Achilles has withdrawn from the war and the animals are therefore being rested. Xenophon gives no directions for exercising the horse, apart from saying that "his food and exercise must be regulated to maintain his bodily health." But he makes Cyrus, the hero of his romance, "neither take dinner himself before he had sweated, nor feed his horses unexercised." 24 Compare Eumenes of Cardia, the secretary of Alexander the Great, who after his master's death attempted to maintain an army in Asia Minor. He was besieged in a small fortress within whose walls there was no room to exercise his cavalry horses, and therefore used to raise their forefeet by means of a pulley and then whip them till by their kicking and curvetting they had worked themselves into a sweat. After their exercise they were fed crushed grain. By these means they were kept fit until the end of the siege.26 Seven centuries later Vegetius gave excellent advice on exercising stabled horses. "Near the stable there should be a

Stable

Management

place covered with dry stable manure or soft straw, where the beasts can roll before they are watered. This exercise not only helps to keep them fit but reveals the early stages of sickness. For whenever an animal does not roll right over as it is used to or altogether refuses to lie down, you may know that it is suffering from stateness and so should be singled out for treatment. For this end it is of great assistance if the beasts are ridden fairly often, and with discretion. For their paces and their temper are both spoiled by lack of skill in the rider, especially by the recklessness of servants who when their masters are away urge their horses violently to gallop, plying both whip and spur, either in trials of speed with their stable companions or in hotly contested matches against outsiders. T h e y think nothing of their master's loss, being delighted that it falls on him. T h e careful master will forbid such doings with the greatest strictness and allow his beasts to be handled by suitable men of prudence and understanding." 26 It is surprising that Xenophon says nothing about watering. Aristotle justly observes that though horses, mules, and asses feed on grain and grass it is their drink that chiefly fattens them. Their enjoyment of food is proportionate to their enjoyment of water, and the quality of the feeding in any place depends upon that of the water. H e adds that whereas cattle like clear water, the horse and camel prefer it muddy and will never drink from a stream until they have trampled it into muddiness.27 This last observation I believe to be incorrect, at least as far as it concerns the horse. It may have been suggested by his habit of pawing suspiciously at strange water. I am informed, however, that it has sometimes been found necessary to add a handful of soil to the drinking water of race horses whose artificial diet and piped water supply lacked some unknown but essential element. T h e duties of the groom included, of course, the cleaning of the stable 28 and the actual grooming of the horse, for which Xenophon gives instructions in the fifth chapter of his treatise

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Management

on horsemanship. Xenophon expected the groom to make far more use of his bare hands than is done today, especially along the ridge of the spine and on the legs.29 Pollux gives the following list of grooming instruments: 30 "The spat he, the piece of wood [shaped?] like a feather, for cleaning the coat." (See Plate 12a, from an Assyrian relief of the ninth century B.C. in the British Museum. It is possible that the groom is using a brush, as we would expect him to do today, rather than a wooden bat.) "The psektra, the toothed, saw-like iron tool for combing." 3 1 (In the first century B.C. successful racehorse owners dedicated to Poseidon "the sawn [saw-like?] scraping iron-bound psketra" and "the horses' psektra that drags the hair." 32 "The sorakis, the instrument woven from the fibre of the date palm, hollow and empty to fit around the hand, which smooths down the coat and puts a shine on it." The modern reader will be surprised to find no mention of brushes, but will note that Xenophon's insistence that the horse's head must not be touched with wood or iron 33 suggests the use of some sort of scraper rather than a brush. The ancients seem always to have paid particular attention to their horses' manes. In the art of the Bronze A g e manes are carefully arranged in regularly spaced tufts, and the ideograms of the Linear-B writing distinguish foals from horses by omitting the mane.34 Homer describes how Patroclus used to wash the manes of Achilles's horses with clear water, and anoint them with smooth oil.86 In the sixth century B.C. the poet Semonides, in an uncomplimentary poem in which he derives the characteristics of different sorts of women from sows, bitches, and other animals, speaks of the girl descended from a pampered long-maned mare, who disdains to work, won't lay a finger to quern or sieve, or empty the chamber pots, or bake, but brings her dear husband to beggary. Every day she washes off the dirt twice, or sometimes three times, and anoints herself with myrrh, and always wears her hair combed out long and wreathed with flowers. A girl like this is nice to look at, for

Stable Management

6 i 4- x Yalouris (op. cit., p. 44) wrongly interprets the halter as a ring snaffle. 17 Carter and Newberry, The Tomb of Thoutmosis IV, p. 25. Nor were any bits found in the mass of decayed leather harness in the tomb of Tut-ankh-amen (Carter, Tomb of Tut-ankh-amen, I, 232). 18 Hermes, Anthropos, XXXI (1936), 379 fï. 19 Arrian, Indica xvi 10 ff.; Strabo, xv 1.66 (the source for both may be Eratosthenes). For further references to the Egyptian bar bits, Yalouris, op. cit., p. 31, nn. 83—84; cf. Hancar, Das Pferd, fig. 19, on p. 496. 20 Rodenwaldt, Tiryns, II, Pl. XIV; p. 110, fig. 47, and pp. 103104; Evans, Palace of Minos, IV, part ii, fig. 811, on p. 827. 21 On the Luristan bronzes I follow Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, p. 207 ff.; Ghirshman, Iran, p. 99 ff.; Herzfeld, Iran in the Ancient East, p. 210. Further illustrations are given in Godard's Bronzes du Luristan. 22 Athens, National Museum, Inventory no. 2553; Reichel, Homerische Waffen, p. 142, fig. 90; Potratz, Archiv für Orientforschung, XIV (1941), fig. 11, on p. 9; Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments, p. 327, n. 1; Yalouris, op. cit., pp. 30—31. 23 1 am unable to understand why Potratz in Archiv für Orient8

ig6

Notes

forschung, X I V ( 1 9 4 1 ) , 1—39, believes that the Assyrians used dropped nosebands of the Egyptian type. His own illustrations disprove this. He is followed by Hancar, op. cit., pp. 495, 533. 24

1 am glad to find myself in agreement with Wiesner, Der Alte Orient, X X X V I I I (1940), 3 0 - 3 1 . He also (pp. 76-77) notes the resemblance between the Luristan and "Hyksos" bits. He believes that the former were intended as grave offerings, and not for practical use. 25

This arrangement, with slight variations, is illustrated by most of the pictures in this book. Modern reconstructions which suspend the bit from one end of the cheekpiece only (e.g., those of Flinders Petrie, Tools and Weapons, text to Pl. L X X and LXXI—with curb— and Delebecque, Xénophon, De l'Art Équestre, pp. 173 ff.—without curb—are made in open defiance of the evidence. 26 27

Flinders Petrie, op. cit., Pl. L X X I , no. 40. Wiesner, op. cit., Pl. II, 4; Yalouris, op. cit., p. 31 and nn. 83-84.

N O T E S T O C H A P T E R IV (Pp. 50-63.) 1

Xenophon, Eq. vii 10. Ibid, x 1 - 2 , and 12. I am particularly indebted to M r . Wynmalen for his discussion of this passage; I hope that I have not misrepresented his views. 2

3

Cambridge Ancient History, Plates Vol. Ill, p. 83c. Of about the same date are the curb bits with high port mouthpieces from the grave of a mercenary commander at Canosa (Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art, PI. 258d, and pp. 150 f i . ) . For milder, later examples see Zschille and Forrer, Die Pferdetrense in ihrer Formen-Entwicklung, p. 19, PI. VII (from Alesia); Curie, A Roman Frontier Post and Its People (The Fort of Newstead}, PI. L X X I , nos. 1, 2; Gozzadini, Mors de cheval Italiques, Pl. Ill, 2 and p. 24 (from Pompeii) . Compare also my comments on Xenophon, Eq. vi 1, in JHS. 4

Besides the examples more fully described below, I have noted three bits of the "rough flexible" type with pointed rollers round their

Notes

lyj

mouthpieces. (A. de Ridder, Les Bronzes Antiques du Louvre, nos. 1524, 1525; Flinders Petrie, Tools and Weapons, Pl. LXXI, no. 41. This last is particularly open to suspicion. But the three-pointed rollers on the mouthpiece must be the triboli of the lexicographers (Pollux, i 148). Hollow bronze rollers, studded with sharp spikes, have been found at Corinth and its dependency Perachora and are represented in museum collections. None of the examples known to me can be closely dated. For references, Yalouris, Museum Helveticum, VII (1950), 32; add Davidson, Corinth, XII (The Minor Objects) nos. 2887— 2889. 6

Xenophon, Eq. x 6 ff. 1 have discussed this sentence in JHS. It has given trouble ever since Pollux in the late second century after Christ, not knowing Xenophon's bits or understanding his meaning, rewrote it as "It is possible to make rough bits gentle too, by wrapping them round and covering them with wax" (i 208). 6

7

Weiske's emendation, "Of whatever sorts your bits may be," is very tempting. 8 Xenophon, Eq. vi 9. 9 Pernice, Griechisches Pferdegeschirr, Pl. II, and p. 17 f.; Yalouris, op. cit., pp. 33—34 (Type B, no. 2 ) . I do not think that the evidence allows us to split hairs over the date. 10

British Museum, Guide to the Exhibition Illustrating Greek and Roman Life, fig. 206 (no. 508). 11 Kunze and Schleif, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, L V I ( 1 9 4 1 ) , 133 ff. 12 Xenophon, Eq. vi 9. 13 Stephani, C. R. de la Commission Archéologique de Saint Pétersbourg, 1876, p. 125, no. 56 ( = L a f a y e , in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités, s.v. Frenum, fig. 3293) ; Minns, Scythians and Greeks, p. 214, fig. 115, top left. 14

Von Bothmer has already called attention to these "complicated" bits in his Amazons in Greek Art (chap, x, nos. 7, 80; p. 183). Lafaye (op. cit., p. 1337) thought that the dotted rectangle was a

ig8

Notes

plaque with openwork ornament, like the circular discs sometimes worn in this position on Celtic ring snaffles (c£. Jacobsthal, op. cit., PI. 251 ff.; pp. 121—122). I have noted in JHS a few more examples, taken at random from Pfuhl's Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen. They are quite common in Attic red-figure vases. 15

For actual examples of ornamental metalwork for decorating bridles, see Lamb, Greek and Roman Bronzes, pp. 181—182, and JHS, X X I X (1909), 157—159 (figs. 9—12). I owe this last reference to M r . D. E. L. Haynes. 16

Pernice, op. cit., p. 27; Carapanos, Dodone et ses Ruines, p. 52, nos. 18, 19. Walters, British Museum Catalogue of Bronzes, nos. 357—358 (on two Italian bridles, dating from about the seventh century B.C., of which the metal parts have survived complete). 17

1 am indebted to Mr. D. E. L. Haynes for calling my attention to the following examples in the British Museum: ( 1 ) B M 1907/ 12.2/19. Ivory goat from Ephesus. Hogarth, Excavations at Ephesus, PI. XXI.5 and no. 23a on p. 163. Probably not Greek, cf. Barnett, JHS LXVIII (1948), 18 and PL XL* and b. (2) B M 8 8 / 5 . 1 2 / 1 2 . Bronze ibex from the Troad. Hogarth, op. cit., p. 177, fig. 33. (3) B M 9 1 / 5 . 1 3 / 1 2 . Bronze boar. Provenance unknown. Hogarth, ibid. These last two examples are hard to date, but are probably not later than the archaic period, and, like the first, may be Asiatic rather than Greek. Scythian "beak-shaped" ornaments are illustrated by Barnett and Watson, Iraq, X I V (1952), 143. For Persian examples and sculptured representations, see Herzfeld, Iran in the Ancient East, p. 271, fig. 3744. 18 Leather bridles found at Pazyryk (Hancar, Das Pferd, p. 531, fig. 20) have the junctions of the various straps sewn. Throat lash and cheek strap were fastened by knots on the near side, which could be undone when the bridle was taken off. For "pre-Herodean" buckles from Samaria, see Reisner, Fisher and Lyon, Harvard Excavations at Samaria, I, 357. Slightly later examples from Palmyra and Halma, Mackay, Iraq, XI (1949), 182.

Notes

i (¿y

19

CVA Great Britain, VIII, Pl. 375, 1. This is perhaps the phimos of Aeschylus, Seven against Thebes, 463, since Strabo uses the word of the Indian nosebands. 20

1 have discussed the meaning of this word in JHS. The most important passages are perhaps Aristophanes, Peace 154—155 (made of metal) ; Pausanias, v 20.8 (separate from the bit) ; Pollux, i 148; v 99; x 54 (ring-shaped); cf. scholiasts on Euripides, Phoenissae 733; Aeschylus, Prometheus 54. It is unfortunate that Stephani's guess that the word means "cheekpiece" should have been followed by the prehistorians, few of whom seem to have examined the ancient evidence. For the true meaning we are indebted to Courier (cf. Lafaye, op. cit.). Where the word is used metaphorically (Plato, Laws iii 692a; Plutarch, Lycurgus 7; Dio Chrysostom, xxxii 27; xxxv 3 ) "curb" is of course the appropriate English translation. 21 Anatolian Studies, IV (1954), Pl. VIII, fig. 4. 22

Curie, A Roman Frontier Post and Its People (The Fort of Newstead) Pl. LXXI.4 (with further references on p. 297). Gozzadini (op. cit., p. 25) notes the use of similar cavessons on Italian cart horses in the nineteenth century. 23

Cf. Xenophon, Eq. vii 1. The cavesson from Newstead (Curie, ibid.) was found together with a bit. 24 Palatine Anthology vi 233. 25

Xenophon, Eq. vii x. Cf. Hancar, op. cit., p. 531, for bridles from Pazyryk. 27 Xenophon, Eq. vii 9. 28 Cf. Xenophon, Eq. ix 8; x 3. Modern translators who talk about "light hands" in these passages miss the point. 29 1 am indebted to my father, Sir James Anderson, K.C.I.E., I.C.S. (retired) for this information. 26

30 31

Dio Chrysostom, Ixiii 5.

Des Ormeaux, Revue Archéologique, 1888 ( 1 ) , p. 55; compare Richter, Archaic Greek Art, fig. 126. 32 Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria, Pl. I, and pp. 144—145 and 237.

200

Notes NOTES TO CHAPTER V (Pp. 64-78.)

1

Thus cheekpieces in the form of three rings arranged at the corners of an equilateral triangle—two for the divided check strap and one for the end of the mouthpiece—are found both in Italy (Gozzadini, Mors de Cheval Italiques, p. 25; Wiesner, Der A lie Orient, X X X V I I I (1540), 50) and in Hungary (Ashmolean Museum inventory no. 1939.54) > anc^ a r e foreign to Greece, though one possible example is illustrated on a Boeotian vase of the second half of the seventh century B.C. (Yalouris, Museum Helveticum, V I I (1950), 38 and fig. 5 (with further references) ; Lefebvre des Noettes, op. cit., fig. 234. They belong, like the better-known zoomorphic cheekpieces (also known from Central Europe), to smooth jointed snaffles, which being generally found in pairs may have been used for driving rather than riding. (Cf. Gozzadini, op. cit., PI. II, no. 1 1 ; Walters, British Museum Catalogue of Bronzes, nos. 357—358; Randall-Maclver, Villanovans and Early Etruscans, PI. 4.1.) A curious example, with a bar mouthpiece, whose cheekpieces have rings linked by human figurines with outstretched arms, is illustrated by Hanfmann, Critica d'Arte, V I I (1937), PI. 122, fig. 10. 2

Blinkenberg, Fouilles de Lindos, p. 199 and Pi. 24, fig. 613 (seventh century B.C.; Italian?); Homolle, Fouilles de Delphes, V , 118, nos. 627—628 (compare examples from Luristan; Pope, A Survey of Persian Art, IV, PI. 38 D, H ; Godard, Bronzes du Luristan, PI. X L V , no. 175). 3

Gadd, The Stones of Assyria, p. 165 and fig. 16; Potratz, Archiv fiir Orientforschung, X I V ( 1 9 4 1 ) , fig. 50 on page 32. A n actual specimen, made of electrum, has been found at Nimrud; Mallowan, Iraq, X V (1953), 22 f.; Illustrated London News, Aug. 16, 1952, fig. 4. 4

Yalouris, Museum Helveticum, Anthropos, X X X I (1936), 379 EE.

VII

(1950), 36 ft.; Hermes,

Notes

20 t

5

Barnett, Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories, no. S.i (PI. X V I I I ) . Compare the reins of Apollo's chariot horses on the Melian amphora, Pfuhl, Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen, fig. 108. A vase from Megara Hyblaea in Sicily, dating from the early seventh century B.C., shows crossing cheek straps which might be intended to represent a bridle of the Assyrian form (cf. PL 6), but I am not certain that the artist intended to show a bit. Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, LXIX (1954), 259, fig. 35 on p. 531. 6 Iliad xix 393; (compare Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments, p. 3 2 7)7 Beazley, Development of Attic Black-Figure, pp. 88—89, on the Burgon Panathenaic Amphora, where it is allowed that this vase may be earlier than 566 B.C. but "the style shows that it cannot be much earlier" (CVA Great Britain, I, PL 25.1; cf. ibid., nos. 2, 3 for racing carts managed with reins). Compare also Lorimer, JHS, XXIII (1903), 132 ff. For the date of the first "race called synoris" at Olympia cf. Pausanias, v 8.10. Olympia had also experimented with a mule-race, but this was soon given up, as undignified. 8 Potratz, Archiv für Orientforschung, XIV (1941)» 2 ff. and fig. 2; Hancar, Das Pferd, fig. 18, on p. 495. The holes at the ends of the cheekpieces are, I believe, for the attachment of the branches of the cheek straps of the bridle, not for nose- and chin-straps; compare Pis. 3a, 44, 3 8a. 9 Yalouris, op. cit., p. 41, citing Smith, Assyrian Sculpture in the British Museum, PL 17. 10 Horn cheekpieces were still in use in Britain ca. 800-600 B.C. (Brailsford, Later Prehistoric Antiquities of the British Isles, p. 22 and PL VI, 4), and perhaps even at the beginning of the Roman era, though metal bits, especially the ring snaffle, were by then common (Wheeler, Maiden Castle, p. 308 and fig. 105, no. 4). Central European specimens noted by Childe in The Danube in Prehistory are supposedly much older (cf. chap, i, n. 2 1 ) . None have as yet been found in Greece or Egypt, but the Knossos tablets (ca. 1400 B.C.) list bits (?) of horn among the chariot harness, and as there seem

202

Notes

to be two for each horse they may be separate cheekpieces rather than complete bits. One bit ( ? ) of bronze is also recorded. (Ventris and Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek, pp. 365 ff.) 11

Rudenko, Der zweite Kurgan von Pazyryk, Pl. I. Hancar, op. cit., p. 135; also from the Altai, ca. 700-600 B.C., p. 141, where the method of combining mouthpiece and cheekpieces by means of the straps of the bridle is illustrated. Compare Ghirshman, Iran, p. 81 (fig. 3 1 , bottom), from Necropolis B at Siyalk. 12

13

There is in fact some justification for Potratz (op. cit., pp. 28 fi.) in regarding the bits of Assurbanipal's reliefs as more primitive than those of Shalmaneser and Esarhaddon, especially if he is right in supposing that their mouthpieces were made of some perishable material, not of metal. But this last point cannot be proved. 14

Woolley, Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and VII ( 1 9 1 4 ) , 122 and Pl. X X I V .

Anthropology,

18

1 owe this observation to the label on a bit from Persepolis in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, N e w York (inventory no. 48.98.19). 16 Hancar, op. cit., pp. 183—184, following Potratz, op. cit., pp. 23 ff. Compare Flinders Petrie, Tools and Weapons, Pl. L X X no. 38; Des Ormeaux, Revue Archéologique, 1888 ( 1 ) p. 59 (fig. 7 ) . 17

Schmidt, Persepolis, II, PI. 78 and p. 100. (Here the date of some at least of the Caucasian bits is lowered considerably. I am not sufficiently informed to present an independent opinion.) See also Barnett, The Aegean and the Near East: Studies Presented to Hetty Goldman, pp. 226 ff., on contacts between Greece and Urartu. 18

A . de Ridder, Catalogue des Bronzes de l'Acropole d'Athènes, no. 506; frequently republished; cf. Schmidt, op. cit., p. 100. 19

Robinson, Excavations at Olynthus, Part X, no. 2554. Potratz, op. cit., p. 18, in the British Museum and the Louvre (Pottier, Musée du Louvre, Cat. des Antiquités Assyriennes, no. 165; Lefebvre des Noëttes, L'Attelage, fig. 34). 20

21

Perdrizet, Bronzes Grecques XXXIX. 22

de la Collection

Fouquet,

Pl.

Schmidt, op. cit., II, Pl. 78 and p. 100; Ghirshman, op. cit., fig. 71 on p. 180.

Notes

203

23

Edgar, Caire, Catalogue General, XIX, no. 27901, PI. XIX. Potratz, op. cit., figs. 36—37, 41, 44—46. 26 Yalouris, op. cit., passim. 20 Ibid., pp. 38 ff.; compare Payne, Necrocorinthia, pp. 53 ff. 27 Weber, in Kunze and Schleif, Olympische Forschungen, I (1944), p. 169 and PI. 75a, b, c, d. I am indebted to Dr. H. V . Hermann for sending me, and to the German Archaeological Institute for allowing me to publish, the photographs in Plate 33, which show additional details. 28 Thureau-Dangin, Arslan-Tash, PI. VII; Potratz, op. cit., p. 50 n. 1. 29 Rudenko, op. cit., PI. 2 and p. 17. 30 References, Yalouris, op. cit., p. 25. 31 Chap, iv, n. 4. 32 Yalouris, op. cit., pp. 19 ff., 30 ff., quoting Pindar, Olympian xiii. 33 Tacitus, Agricola 37.6. 34 Plutarch, Artoxerxes 11. 35 Iliad v 226-228 (tr. Lang, Leaf and Myers). 36 Layard, Ninevah and Its Remains, II, p. 274. 37 Plato, Republic v 467*. 24

N O T E S TO CHAPTER VI (Pp. 79-88.) 1

Quilted or padded covers for the protection of chariot horses are common from the Bronze Age on (e.g., Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments, PI. XI, 1; Barnett, The Nimmd Ivories, Pis. XVIII, X X X I V , etc.). Compare Xenophon, Cyropaedia vi 4.1. 2

CVA Great Britain, XIII, Pis. 613-614. E.g., CVA Great Britain, VIII, PI. 375.3. 4 CVA France, VIII, PI. 384.3. 5 Xenophon, Eq. vi 7—8, vii 5; Hellenica vii 2.21; Anabasis vii 2.21; iii 4.35; Cyropaedia viii 8.19. 3

2c>4 9

Notes

Xenophon, Eq. xii 9. Minns, Proceedings of the British Academy, X X V I (1942), 62 and Pl. V ; Talbot-Rice, The Scythians, pp. 129 ft.; Rudenko, Der zweite Kurgen von Pazyryk, p. 22. 8 On the origins of the stirrup, see Bivar, Oriental Art, New Series, 1:2 (1955), 3 ff. I am indebted to Miss Benton for knowledge of this important article. 9 Xenophon, Eq. vi 12; Hipparchicus i 17. 10 Plutarch, C. Gracchus 7. 11 Pollux, i 213. 12 Xenophon, Eq. vi 16. 13 Arrian, Tactica 43.3—4; Dessau, ILS, I, 2487. 14 Beazley, ARV, p. 220, no. 2 (Onesimos). 15 Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités, s.v. Equitatio, fig. 2713 is based on an old and unreliable drawing. I do not believe that the "Ephesian Amazons" are about to vault onto their horses with the help of their spears. 16 British Museum cat. no. E 485. The movements of the rider preparatory to mounting are shown on the west frieze of the Parthenon, and, more clearly, on a late fifth-century vase in Berlin (Pfuhl, Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen, fig. 577). 17 Haspels, Attic Black-Figured Lekythoi, p. 52, n. 2, collects numerous examples. 18 Perhaps on CVA USA, XI, Pl. X, 12b. 19 Palatine Anthology vi 246.2. 20 Xenophon, Hellenica iv 1.39. 21 Chap, iv, n. 16. Stephani (C. R. de la Commission Archéologique de Saint-Pétersbourg, 1865, pp. 164 ft.) collects references in ancient authors to horse trappings. Horse armour will be discussed below. 22 "Riding dress" is in fact mentioned by Aristophanes (Ecclesiazusae 846) but we would naturally assume that the ancients changed their clothes for outdoor exercise, and the monuments do not suggest that those worn for riding (apart from the foreign garments occasionally assumed by fashionable young men, as mentioned below) 7

Notes

205

were in fact different from those worn for Qther open-air activities. In Herodotus, i 80, the reference is to "cavalry equipment" rather than dress, and, besides, the passage describes barbarians. 28

North of the Black Sea it was a different matter; cf. Dio Chrysostom, xxxvi 7. 24 Xenophon, Eq. vii 1 and 8. 26 I cannot accept Michaelis's theory (Keil, Anonymous Argentinensis, p. 141 n. 1; Zimmern, Greek Commonwealth 4th ed., p. 176 n. 1 ) that the varying dresses of the riders on the parthenon frieze are the different uniforms of different squadrons. 28 Theophrastus, Characters 21 (Jebb's translation). 27 Lammert in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie s.v. Sporn, col. 1876. 28 Is the strap worn on the left ankle of some of the copies of the "Ephesian" Amazons (from originals of the fifth century B.C.) intended to fasten a spur? (Compare Richter, Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, figs. 620, 655; Von Bothmer, Amazons in Greek Art, pp. 216 ff.). I put no reliance in the old drawing, from an Attic redfigure vase of the late fifth century, of a dismounted Amazon with what may be a spur on her left heel, fighting two Greeks. Bulletin de l'Académie Royale de Belgique, XI: 1 (1844), facing p. 76; detail reproduced in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités s.v. Calcar. 29 Pollux x 53—54. The Greeks may have invented the spur. Déchelette, Manuel d'Archéologie, III, 1202—1203 notes spurs of the La Tène period in northern Europe, but these are all later than the earliest Greek evidence. Shortt—Antiquaries Journal, X X X I X (1959), 61 ff. —gives a list of spurs found within the limits of the Roman empire including undated examples from Dodona and Olympia. The spurs worn by the bronze jockey from Cape Artemisium (second century B.C., chap, ii, note 17) might also be noted. The frequent use of the word "calcar" by classical authors suggests that spurs were common in the Roman period, though comparatively few examples have survived. 30 Xenophon, Eq. viii 5. For "gadflies" in the plural in a context

206

Notes

where they can only mean spurs, see Theophrastus (n. 26 above). For "gadfly" as charioteer's goad, Pollux, op. cit. I believe that the instrument shown in Plate 16 and similar harnessing scenes is a goad, though it might more often be used to strike the horses than to prick them (compare Iliad xxxiii 384—390. Diomedes drops his whip, and his horses run poorly without a goad until Athena restores the whip). A whip is admittedly more suited to a charioteer, but I believe that the evidence is sufficient to show that the ancients really did goad their chariot horses as well as whipping them. Delebecque's belief (Le Cheval dans I'lliade, p. 232) that "goading" is proper only to mounted herdsmen riding around their herds and that where charioteers are said to "goad" their horses they really whip them—the word having survived from an earlier pastoral age—-I consider to be mistaken. Cf. Xenophon, Cyropaedia vii. 1.29. 31

Scott, Tales of a Grandfather, p. 122. On Panathenaic amphorae by, or close to, the Eucharides Painter. (CVA Great Britain, I, PL 27: Beazley ABV, p. 395, nos. 1 , 2 ) . 32

N O T E S T O C H A P T E R VII (Pp. 89-97.) 1

Ttygaeus's departure for heaven, mounted on his enormous beetle, at the beginning of Aristophanes's Peace, shows that this arrangement had been usual in the fifth century too. 2 Xenophon, Eq. iv 1 ff. A wooden manger fetched the surprisingly high price of 10 drachmae 1 obol in the sale of the goods of the Profaners of the Mysteries. Pritchett, Hesperia, XXII (1953). 225 ff., No. II, 39-40. 3 Xenophon, Eq. iv 4. I agree with Delebecque in following the manuscript reading rather than Pollux's emendation. The size of the stones is sufficiently indicated by their weight; some indication of shape is needed. 4 Xenophon, Eq. v 9. 5 Cf. Xenophon, Hipparchicus i 16. 6 Vegetius (i 26) talks of cutting the hooves back to the quick in

Notes

207

cases of laminitis—-not however of routine trimming to keep their shape. Perhaps I may here retract my error in JHS: Krithiasis (Xenophon, Eq. iv 2) is not, as I there supposed, colic, but laminitis. The late veterinary writers—Vegetius i 25 fi.; Mulomedicina Chironis, paragraph 655; Apsyrtus (CHG, I, 48-50) and Hierocles (CHG, I, 50—51)—make it clear that, after the immediate onset of this disease, when the first violent symptoms are pasty the inflammation settles in the feet, changing the shape of the hooves, making the frogs tender, and so forth. 7 Xenophon, Eq. ¡2. 8 Xenophon, Anabasis iv 5.36. 'Aristotle, Historia Animalwm ii 4994 30; Columella vi r2.z; vi 15.1. . " ' ' ' 10 Lefebvre ¿esNaettcs^L'Atteiage, p.'i^z ff. 11 Catullus xvii 25—26. 12 Suetonius, Vespasian 13. Stories are also told of Nero shoeing his mules with silver, and his wife Poppaea hers with gold. (Suetonius, Nero 30; Pliny, Natural History xxxiii 140.) 13 Cf. Lefebvre des Noettes, op. cit., pp. 136 ff. "Wheeler, Maiden Castle, Dorset, pp. J J , 120, 290^-291; Hawkes and Hull, Camulodunum, p. 342. 15 Thucydides, vii 27 makes no direct reference to the feet. 18 Ward Perkins, Antiquaries Journal, XXI (1942), 144—149. 17 Xenophon, Oeconomicits xii 26. 18 Xenophon, Eq. iv 4. For die bridling of the horse see ibid., vi 19

Plutarch, Timoleon 22.3; Vegetius, i 56.10. Herodotus i 78. - • ' ' ^/ . i v '. 21 Aristophanes, Knights 606. Pliny, Natural History mm 144.' 22 Polybius; vi 39.r2ff. v ' ' / ., / . . 23 Pollux, i 183. 24 Xenophon, Eq. iv 3; Cyropaedia viii 1.38.' ! 25 Plutarch, Eumenes 11.4; Diodorus S ¡cuius, xviii 42.3. Podhajsky (Die Spanische Hofreitschule, p. 19) suggests that this story shows that the ancients understood "work between the pillars" as practiced at 20

208

Notes

Vienna. I submit that it was because they had no notion of anything of the sort that the violent methods described by Plutarch were necessary. Diodorus describes Eumenes's device as "a strange and extraordinary exercise." 26 Vegetius, i 56.11—13. 27 Aristotle, Historia Animalium viii 595b 23 ff. The observation about muddy water is repeated at 6054 9. 28 Xenophon, Eq. v 2. 29 Compare Swindler, Ancient Painting, fig. 302. 30 Pollux, i 185. 31 Pernice, Griecbisches Pferdegeschirr, p. 15. 32 Palatine Anthology vi 233.6, 246.5. 33 Xenophon, Eq. v 6. 34 Ventris and Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek, p. 48. 35 Iliad xxiii 283. 38 Semonides fr. 7 (Diehl) 57 ff. 37 Aelian, Naturales Historiae xi 36 (compare xvi 24). 38 Xenophon, Eq. v 8. 39 Columella, vi 25. 40 Herodotus ix 24; Plutarch, Pelopidas 33.2-3; 34.1. 41 Propertius, iv 8.15.

N O T E S T O C H A P T E R VIII (Pp. 98-109.) 1

Xenophon, Eq. iii 1. Simon, paragraph 1 1 ; Aristotle, Historia Animalium vi 5j6a, b. 3 Xenophon, Eq. ii. 4 Xenophon, Oeconomicus xiii 7, compare Eq. viii 13—14. 5 Xenophon, Eq. ii 3. 6 Plutarch, Alexander 6. 7 Xenophon, Oeconomicus v 5 ff. Compare Sophocles, Trachiniae 3 1 - 3 3 for the absentee landlord in the fifth century. 8 Compare CVA Pologne, II, PI. 80.6; CVA France, IV, Pi. 163.3 2

Notes

209

(Attic; late sixth century B.C.). For the actual hunt, Trendall, Paestan Pottery, PL XXVIILi (South Italian, fourth century B.C.). 9

Xenophon, Eq. viii 10. But an epigram (Palatine Anthology vi 1 1 2 ) dating from about 300 B.C. celebrates the killing of three stags with javelins thrown from horseback among the Arcadian mountains. So Xenophon may have found more of this sort of hunting in his exile at Scillus than he would have done at home in Attica. 10

11

Plates 16, yzb, 31 c. Xenophon, Cyropaedia i 4.4 ff. (slightly abridged). 13 Richter, American Journal of Archaeology, LXI (1957), 264 and PL 81, fig. 6. Plutarch, Alexander 23.4. 12

14 15 18 17 18

Xenophon, Eq. viii 1 0 - 1 1 . Theophrastus, Characters 27. Xenophon, Oeconomicus ix 14 ff. Xenophon, Hipparchicus i 18. Xenophon, Memorabilia iii 3.6.

19

Cf. Lafaye in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiques, s.v. Equitatio, fig. 2717. 20 Xenophon, Eq. vii 5-6. 21 Ibid., vii 1 1 - 1 2 . Hermann's emendation at the beginning of vii 12 is to be rejected, as Delebecque points out. 22

Compare Iliad xxiii 334; Sophocles, Electra 722, 745.

23

Xenophon, Eq. xii 13. Wynmalen, Equitation, p. 138. 25 Xenophon, Eq. vii 13—19. 26 Xenophon, Hipparchicus i 26. 27 [Demosthenes], lxi 29. 28 Xenophon, Anabasis iv 8.28. 29 Xenophon, Eq. viii 8. 30 Ibid., i8. ai lbid.,x3-5. 24

32

Compare Podhajsky, Die Spanische Hofreitschule on the gradual training of the Lippizaner stallions. In this particular connection, see his Pis. X L VIII, XLIX, L and his remarks on Xenophon, pp. 1 4 - 1 6 .

2 zo

Notes

38

Pollux, i 206. Oppian, Cynegetica ¡83. 35 Cf. Polybius, xi 18; Plutarch, Philopoemen 10 (on the fate of the tyrant Machanidas). 36 Xenophon, Oeconomicus xi 17. 37 Xenophon, Eq. iii 7; Hipparchicus viii 3. 34

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX (Pp. 110-116.) 1

Xenophon, Symposium ix. . Aristophanes, Acharnians 1165 fi. 3 Xenophon, Hipparchicus viii 6; Cyropaedia iv 3.13 ff. 4 Xenophon, Hellenica v 3.20. 5 Plutarch, Agesilaus 25. 6 Xenophon, Memorabilia iii 13.5—6. 7 Aeschines, iii 76 and 255. 8 Lysias xxiv, especially chap. 12. 9 For the armchair saddle, cf. CVA USA, VI, PI. 281.1«, CVA France, II, P1-. $2.8; British .Museum, Guide to Exhibition Illustrating Greek and Roman Life, p. 54, fig. 45a (cf, p. 194, fig. 233). Compare also the representations.of the Gaulish goddess Epona (a valuable collection of references by Thevenot in Magnen, Epona). 10 Lucian, Lexiphanes 2; scholiast on Aristophanes, Wasps 191. 11 Relief from Dascylium in the Persian satrapy of Phrygia; Pope, Survey of Persian Art, IV, PI. 104*—but Persian women usually travelled in carefully closed litters (Plutarch, Themistocles 26.4). 12 Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus 311—313. 13 Xenophon, Oeconomicus x 11—12. 14 Compare Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1—3. 15 Demosthenes, xxi 158. 18 Plutarch, Solon 25. 17 CVA Danemark, IV, PI. 171 ,(cf. CVA Deutschland, I, PI. 28, and fig. 2 on p. 30 of the text). 2

Notes

2ii

18

Athenaeus, iv 139; Xenophon, Agesilaus viii 7; compare Odyssey vi 49ff.; Sappho, Fr. 44 (Page). 19 Propertius, iii 14.11, but this is not confirmed by any Greek classical author. 20 Xenophon, Cynegeticus xiii 18. Compare Sulpicia in Tibullus, iii 9, who makes it clear that she is not interested in the sport for its own sake. ' 21

Xenophon, Agesilaus ix 6; cf. Pausanias, iii 17.6, v 8.11 and numerous women named in inscriptions as race horse owners. 22 Berenice II, on the doubtful authority of Hyginus (Astronomica 2.24) who calls her an experienced horsewoman, besides mentioning her racing stud. 23 Aristophanes, Lysistrata 676 if. (compare Lysias i 4 ) . 24 Herodotus, iv 117. The earliest picture of mounted Amazons— von Bothmer, Amazons in Greek Art, p. 9, no. 34; and p. 103— dates from the second quarter of the sixth century p.c., but they are not common for another generation. Certain East Greek fragments (e.g., PI. 1 j a ) have been interpreted as showing naked girls on horseback, but I believe that this is a mistake. (Compare Cook, CVA Great Britain, XIII, text to PI. 585, 593.)

N O T E S TO CHAPTER X (Pp. 117—127.) 1

Xenophon, Eq. x 3—5. Wynmalen, Dressage, p. 190. 3 Podhajsky, Die Spanische Hofreitschule, p. 16. (Compare p. 40 for his description of the passage.) 4 Xenophon, Eq. x 12—16. 5 Wynmalen, Equitation, p. 54. 6 Podhajsky, op. cit., p. 43. 7 CIA, II, i, 444, 445. 8 Isaeus, xi 40. 9 Podhajsky, op. cit., p. 44 If. > , , . 2

212 10

Notes Herodotus, v 3 ff.

11

Charon in Athcnaeus xii 52od. Charon probably wrote early in the fifth century B.C., and Lampsacus is not so far from Cardia. I see no reason to doubt his story, though it was soon woven into the wondrous fabric of legends illustrating the foolish luxury of Sybaris (destroyed in 509 B.c.). (Aelian, Naturales Historiae xvi 23; Athenaeus ibid., quoting Aristotle's Constitution of Sybaris, which is now lost.) 12

Xenophon, Oeconomicus iii 8 fi.

13

Xenophon, Hipparchicus i 11—12.

N O T E S T O C H A P T E R XI (Pp. 1 2 8 - 1 3 9 . ) 1

Compare note 13 below.

2

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens 7, where evidence is given that holders of a "knight's fee" were originally required to keep horses, as they were not in the writer's own day (late fourth century B.C.) . 3

But the ancient evidence does not show that a cash income of 300 drachmae was accepted as the equivalent of land producing 300 medimni, as is sometimes suggested. 4

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens 47.

5

Ibid., 7.4. 6 Inferred from Herodotus, i 63. 7 8 9

Pollux, viii 108; Cleidemus in Photius, s.v. Naucraria. Plato, Menon 93d; Plutarch, Themistocles 32.

The muddled and biased account given by Andocides (iii 5—7) and repeated by Aeschines (ii 1 7 3 ) suggests that the cavalry may have been organized during the truce with Sparta after 451 B.C. But some Athenians may have fought as cavalry at Tanagra in 457 B.C., when the Thessalians played false (perhaps because they expected their aristocratic friends to go over to the Spartan side). (Pausanias, i 29.6; cf. Helbig, Les T7T7reîç Athéniens, putting the organization of the Athenian cavalry between 477 and 472 B.C.

Notes

2/3

10

Thucydides i 1 1 1 . Raubitschek, Dedications from the Athenian Acropolis, no. 135, with commentary. Dated by him probably soon after 457 B.C.; perhaps we may be allowed five or six years to bring it just after the truce with Sparta. 11

12

Pausanias, i 22.4. Lysias xv 6; Xenophon, Memorabilia iii 3. 14 A detailed account of the organization of the cavalry about 330 b.c. is given in the Constitution of Athens ascribed to Aristotle (49, 6 1 ) and Xenophon's Hipparchicus gives information about the situation a generation earlier. Perhaps not all of this is applicable to the fifth century. 13

15

But Cimon himself may have been one of the first Athenians to recognize the need for cavalry. The Thessalian connection was revived when the Athenians were besieging Eion under his command— compare Demosthenes xxiii 199, xiii 23; Raubitschek, Hesperia, X X I V (1955), 286 ff.—and his son Lacedaemonius was one of the first cavalry commanders. 16

Lysias, xxi 2, xxxii 26—27. Aristophanes, Knights 223 ff. 18 Compare Lysias, xxxii 4, for a man who had made a fortune in trade serving in the infantry. 19 Compare the account given of the family of Polystratus in Lysias, xx. 20 Compare Andocides, i 75; Lysias, xvi. 21 Xenophon, Hellenica ii 4. 22 If Xenophon was in Athens in 404-403 B.C. (and we have no reason to suppose that he was anywhere else), he can hardly have avoided serving under the tyrants, probably in the cavalry. As a friend of Socrates he must have been personally known to most of the Thirty. His account of these events in the Hellenica is full and vivid, and might well be based on his own experiences. 17

23

Mantitheus in Lysias, xvi 13. Lysias, xiv 5—6. 25 Isaeus, xi 40 ff. Compare Lysias, xxxii, for a fortune of some fif-

24

21 q

Notes

teen talents, mainly in commercial investments and so yielding a larger but more risky return. 26 Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 547. 27 Plutarch, Solon 23.3—4; De Tranquillitate Animi 470 f. (with a homily on the difference in cost between imported luxuries and homegrown necessities); Aristophanes, op. cit., Demosthenes, xxxiv 39, xlii 20, 31. 28 Plutarch, Cimon 10. 29 Xenophon, Oeconomicus ii 3. 80 Compare Lysias, xix 62-63. al To meet the emergency before the battle of Arginusae in 406 B.C. many of the cavalry embarked as marines (Xenophon, Hellenica i 6). This was obviously quite exceptional. 82 We may at least suppose that he was more typical than Meidias, Demosthenes's rich enemy. 83 Demosthenes, xlii. 84 Aristophanes, Clouds 1—21; Lysias viii 10if.; Xenophon, Anabasis vii 8.6; Isaeus v 43; Isaeus vi 33. Alexander the Great's Bucephalus is said to have cost thirteen talents (Aulus Gellius, v 2). 85 Cf. Xenophon, Hipparchicus iv 4, v 6; Polyaenus, ii 1 . 1 1 ; Thucydides, vii 75.5. 88 Demosthenes, xlii 24. For camp followers disguised as cavalry, see Xenophon, Hipparchicus v.6; Livy vii 14.6-10; Caesar, Bellum Gallicum vii 45.2; Frontinus, Stratagemata ii 4.5—6. 87 Polybius, vi 39.12 ff. 88 Lysias xvi 6 ff. The explanation is due to the scholiasts. The money paid to the supporters of the Thirty was repaid after the democracy was established. 89 Thucydides, v 4.9. 40 Aristophanes, Knights 578. 41 Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions, I, no. 83; with commentary. 42 See note 27, above. 48 Xenophon, Hipparchicus i 2. 44 Antiphanes, in Athenaeus, xi 503. 45 Aristophanes, Lysistratd 562.

Notes

215

40

Xenophon, Memorabilia

47

Aristophanes, Peace 1 2 2 4 ff.

48

Pritchett, Hesperia, X X I I ( 1 9 5 3 ) , 2 5 3 ; commentary in

iii 5 . 1 8 - 1 9 . Hesperia,

X X V (1956) ,307. 49

Aristotle, Constitution

50

Babrius, lxxvi. Phaenippus (Demosthenes, xlii) drew a large part

of Athens

49.

of his income from loads of wood brought to town b y donkeys.

A

large part of his estates was evidently scrub, not arable.

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

XII

(Pp. 1 4 0 - 1 5 4 . ) 1

Xenophon, Hipparchicus

iv 1 8 ff. For a recent discussion of the

functions of ancient cavalry, see A d c o c k , The Greek and

Macedonian

Art of War, pp. 47—53. 2

Xenophon, Hellenica

vii 1 . 2 0 - 2 2 .

^Diodorus Siculus, xiv 43.2—3. 4

See Lorimer, BSA,

XLII

( 1 9 4 7 ) , 79, on the appearance of the

plate cuirass in vase paintings of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. 5

Xenophon, Anabasis

6

T h e T e n Thousand could doubtless have executed successfully the

manoeuvre

12.16.

that A g i s ' s

army

bungled

at Mantinea

in 4 1 8

B.C.

(Thucydides, v 7 1 — 7 2 ) . 7

Palatine Anthology

xiv 7 3 . Compare Lorimer, BSA,

1 3 2 and Homer and the Monuments,

XLII (1947),

p. 2 1 0 . But our finest early plate

'cuirass (late eighth century B.C.) comes from A r g o s : JHS, ( 1 9 5 4 ) , 1 5 3 and PI. V I I I 6 . 8

*

9

- -

O n thigh guards, see Lorimer, BSA,XLII

I35>

' Xenophon, Anabasis iii 3.20.

LXXIV

'

7

( 1 9 4 7 ) , 8^-^89, 1 3 3 ,

. V.

.

'

10

Xenophon, Anabasis

iii 4 . 3 6 ff. Compare Hellenica

11

Xenophon, Anabasis

iv 2.20; compare Plutarch, Pelopidas

12

Sprockhoff in Ebert, Reallexicdrt der Vorgeichichte

iv 4 . 1 0 . s.v.

p. 3 3 , and PI. 13a. (Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art PL 2 5 8 ^ c.)

32.3. Panzer, '

216

Notes

13

Lorimer, BSA, XLII (1947), 79. Compare Xenophon, Memorabilia iii 10.9—15. 15 Xenophon, Eq. xii 4. 16 Xenophon, Eq. xii 2. Compare Lefebvre des Noëttes, L'Attelage, fig. 241. 17 Plutarch, Alexander 32.8 ff. 18 Notably Aristophanes, Peace 1224 £E., where the use to which the cuirass is put proves its rigid construction. 14

19

Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments, pp. 197—199. Herodotus ix 22; compare vii 61 and viii 113. 21 Rostovtzeff, Iranians and Greeks in South Russia Pl. XIX. Compare Minns, Scythians and Greeks, pp. 73—74; Talbot-Rice, The Scythians, p. 127. 30

22

Notable Attic examples; Pfuhl, Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen, figs. 418, 463. 23 Xenophon, Hellenica vii 2.21. 2i ABV, p. 81, no. i. 25 CVA France, XIV, PL 621 may be an exception, but the modern restorations and repaintings make it impossible to rely on the details of this vase. 26

This was established by Helbig in Les 'limeîç Athéniens, who makes the interesting suggestion that the "knights" at Sparta may once have been such a force of mounted heavy infantry. Perhaps riding in armour was less difficult than he suggests (op. cit., pp. 18, 107). Greaves are sometimes worn by these horsemen (cf. Pl. 29), but thighpieces never, to the best of my knowledge. His list of "knights" and "squires" can now be added to; see especially Kunze, Olympische Forschungen, II (1950), 183—184. 27 Beazley, ABV, p. 58, no. 119. 28 Payne, Necrocorinthia, no. 986. 29 CVA Great Britain, II, PL 66.2c. 30 E.g. Payne, op. cit., nos. 495-503 (actually earlier than the examples with led horses, for which compare nos. 996, 1399) • 31 E.g. Payne, op. cit., no. 1437; CVA Danemark, III, Pis. 1 3 9 140; CVA France, XIV, PL 617, 3 - 4 and 618.2.

Notes

21 j

32

Payne, op. cit., nos. 1169, ii8i I 34 _ I 3^; state subsidy, 137-138; inspections, 122, 131-132, 137, 139 Aulus Atticus, Roman officer, 77 Aura (mare's name), 14 Babylon, Babylonia, 2, 5, 33 Balbi, statues of, 76 Balios (horse's name), 16 Bannockburn, battle of, 129 Barb horse, origin of, 34 Barcaean horse, 27 Bareback riding, 12, 26, 62, 79, 81, 85 Bellerophon, epic hero, 35, 73, 75 Benton, Miss S., 47 Bits, 40-78; action explained (curb and snaffle), 50-52; classified by Xenophon, 53-59; Assyrian, 12, 48, 63, 65, 67-69, 71, 72, PL 38; Celtic, 16, 53, 76, Pis. 34 171 Kassites, 2, 5 Kikkuli of Mitanni, 5, 42 Knossos, 3 Kuban, bit from, 58 Kurdistan, 72, 143 Lasso, 30 Leuctra, battle of, 140 Levade, 124, 127 Lefebvre dcs Noettes: on Numidian horsemanship, 40; on "hipposandals," 9i Lhote, H : on horses of North Africa, 31-34 Libya, Libyans, 8, 32; horses of, 21, 25, 26, 27, 30, 3 1 - 3 5 , 40, 107. See also African horses Licinius, Roman emperor, 24 Livy: on Numidian cavalry, 34 Lucanian horses, 27 Lucerne, 94 Luristan, bits of, 47, 53, 65 Lusitania, 23, 38 Lycophori (horses), 37 Lycospades (horses), 37-38 Lydia, 1, 36, 93: horses of, 26 Lysias, 1 1 2 Macedonia, Macedonians, 22, 44, 53, 80, 148, 1 5 1 , 154; horses of, 20, 153 Machanidas, Spartan tyrant, 108-109 Maenads, 1 1 6 Magnesian horses, 21 Maiden Castle, horseshoes from, 92 Mane: grooming of, 96-97; cut as sign of mourning, 97; rider holds on to, 106 Manger, 43, 89, 93 Mantinea, battle of, 154 Marathon, battle of, 1 3 0 , 1 3 2 , 142 Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, 19, 76 Mark Antony, Roman triumvir, 31

3

Index

"Martingale," Assyrian, 12, Pis. i,b, 5, 6 Masistius, Persian general, 97 Mauretania, 34; horses of, 21, 27 Mausolus, King of Halicarnassus, 30 Mazaceans, horses of, 21 Media, Medes; horses of, in Assyria, 12, 18; in Persia, 18, 22; described, 27. See also Nisaean horses Median hay, 94 Medusa, 35 Meidias, Athenian knight, 114 Mesopotamia: horses introduced to, 1, 2, 3, 5, 12; carts in, 6; cavalry in, 15; bits in, 72. See also Assyria, Babylon Mezair, 124 Miletus, bits from, 49, 65 Mitanni, 2, 5, 42 Mounting, 82-84, I0 3> 167, PI. 180 Mouth, horse's: described, 50; contact with, 55, 62, 106, 118; mark of mouth, 98 Mule, 18, 19, PI. 10a; draught, 33, 66, 91, PI. 11; pack, 42, PL 5b, ridden, 42, 112, 116; shod, 91 Murray, Regent Earl of, Scottish tyrant, 88 Muzzle, 43, 46, 56, 93, Pis. 16, 31 c, 366 Mycenae: horses of, 2, 31-32; ridden, 6; roads, 4; bit from, 48, 49, 65 Nasamones, horses of, 20 Nausicaa, epic heroine, 66 Nemesianus: on breeds of horses, 19-20; on unbridled Libyan horses, 107 Neoptolemus, Macedonian general, 152-153 Newstead: horse bones from, 25; no horseshoes at, 92 Nineveh, 18 Nisaean horses, 18, 21, 22, 27, 31, 82, PI. 8 Noseband: horse controlled by, 45-46, 59, 64, 66, 68, Pis. 1, 2a; Greek, with spikes, 60, Pi. 23a Numidians, 34, 40 Odrysian horses, 27 Odysseus, epic hero, 17, 38; Odyssey, 66 Olympia: races at, 13-14; 37, 67, 115; bits from, 73-75, PI. 33; bronze horse from, 57, PI. 19; armour from, 148; journey to, 111 Olynthus, bit from, 71 Onesilus, Greek general, 125

Index Oppian: on breeds of horses, 21, 23; on jumping, 108 Orontes river, 12 Orynx horse, 21 Oxen, 6, 8, 33, 44

325

Pack horse, 6, 137, 139; pack saddle, 112, PI. 7 Pallene, batde of, 130 Pandarus, epic character, 78 Pannonia, 30 Parades of cavalry, 103, 122; parade horse, 117, 122 Parthenon frieze, 122, 132, 144 Parthians, 22; horses of, 20, 21, 22; trained as hackneys, 28-29 Passage, 1 1 7 - 1 2 1 Patroclus, epic hero, 96 Pazyryk: horses found at, 24; bits from, 69, 75; saddles from, 81-82 Pegasus (horse's name), 35 Pelopidas, Theban statesman, 97 Peloponnese, horses of, 30. See also Arcadia, Argos, Elis, Sparta Perachora, bit fragment from, 75 Persepolis: reliefs from, 18, 22, 70, 153, Pis. 8-10, 39; bits from, 71, 75, PI. 35 Persia, Persians, 17, 18, 19, 22, 97, 130; horses of, 18, 21, 22, 28, 36, 101, 149, 153, Pis. 8, 26b, 27, 28; bits of, 62, 69-72, 75, Pis. 27, 28, 35; bridle ornaments of, 59, PI. 8, 9, 39; saddlecloths of, 79, 81, 82, Pis. 8b, 26b; cavalry equipment and tactics, 81, 144, 149-150, 150-151; manner of mounting, 82; hunting in, 101 Pesade, 124 Phaedra, tragic heroine, 114 Phaenippus, Athenian knight, 136, 137 Phar Lap (horse's name), 36 Pharnabazus, Persian noble, 85 Pheidippides, comic hero, 136 Pherecrates: on spurs, 87 Phidolas of Corinth, race-horse owner, 14 Philip of Macedon, 71, 80, 1 1 2 Philopoemen, Greek general, 108-109 Phlius, 145 Phoenicia, 13 Piaffe, 124 Pindar: on horses of Cyrene, 36 Plato: on spectators at battles, 78

326

Index

Plutarch: on "wolf-torn" horses, 38; on mounting blocks, 83 Podarge the Harpy, 16 Podhajsky, A.: on the Passage, 118; on work "above the ground," 124 Pollux: on mounting, 83; on spurs, 87, 88; on fodder, 94; on grooming, 96 Poseidon, 35, 43 Posidonius: on Spanish horses, 28 Price of horses, 123, 136 Propertius: on clipped ponies, 97 Przewalski's horse, 1, 18, 24 Psalion. See Cavesson Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, 34 Pylos, 8 Races: racecourse turns to left, 104; point-to-point, 105-106. See also Olympia Rameses III, King of Egypt, 32 Rana Ghundai, horse bones from, 1 Reins: different types described, 61; position of hands on, 61-62 Rhesus, epic hero, 16, 17 Rhodes, 79 Ridgeway, W . : on origins of horse, 15, 22, 25 Riding: in prehistory, 3-4, 5, 6, 64; in epic legend, 7, 10, 17; in early Greek art, 10-11, 13; en journeys, 110-112; for pleasure, 111-112; severe bits used for, 64, 73, 76, 77, 107 Riding horse: not differentiated from chariot horse, 3, 11; raced at Olympia, 13-14 Riding schools, 103, PI. iSd Roads: Mycenaean, 4; Roman, and horseshoes, 92; provided with mounting blocks, 83; Athenian knights should avoid, 102-103; narrow, 32; stony, hi Romans, 24, 25, 34; horses of, i r , 19, 22-25, 3°> rations of, 94, 137; bits, 53, 76, PI. 37b; bridle, 76; cavesson, 60-61, PI. 37b; discipline, 83; gladiators' armour, 148; horseshoes, 91-92; ponies clipped, 97 Saddle: in Central Asia, 81-82, PI. 11b; mediaeval, 103, 129; sidesaddle (ancient), 112, 113; not used, 12, 46, 81, 106 Saddlecloth, 12, 62, 79-82, xoi, Pis. 3b, 4a, 5a, 6, 11 a, 13b, 17a, 26a,b,d, 28b, 31 a,b Sagartian horses, 18 Sahara, 31, 34 Sahure, King of Egypt, 32

Index

327

Salamis, battle of, 132 Saracens, 25 Sarmatia: horses of, 22, 24, 27; horsewomen in, 1 1 5 Sassanian dynasty, 22 Scythians: horses of, 18, 21, 24, 30, 36, 77, PI. \ibjc; bits, 47, 58, 69, 77, PI. 32^; reins, 61; saddles, 81-82, PI. 12b; armour, 144, 148-149 Seat on horse, 6, 12, 13, 68, 103 Seius, horse of, 16, 31 Semonides: on women, 96-97 Seneca: on different types of horses, 1 1 Sennacherib, King of Assyria, 65 Seti I, King of Egypt, 45 Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, 68 Sheba, Queen of, 18 Sicily: horses of, 20, 2 1 , 2 3 , 27, 37; Greek colonies in, 13; cavalry of, 140-141 Sicyonian horses, 16 Sigynnae, horses of, 15, 37 Simon, Athenian knight, 125 Snaffle. See Bit Socrates, 103, n o , i n , 127, 135 Sogdian horses, 18, PI. 9a Solomon, King of Israel, 5, 19 Solon, Athenian statesman, 114, 128-129, 135 Sophocles: on mounted heroine, 1 1 3 Spain, horses of, 20, 2 1 , 23, 28. See also Iberian horse Sparta, Spartan, 79, 1 2 9 , 1 3 3 , 140, 1 5 1 ; horses imported into, 36-37; infantry tactics, 1 4 1 - 1 4 2 ; women, 1 1 4 - 1 1 5 Spur, 22, 52, 84, 87-88, 108, 109, 1 1 7 Stable, 89-90, 94, h i , 137, 161-162 Stirrups: unknown in antiquity, 12, 76, 82, 87, 106; mediaeval, 103, 129 Strabo: on Arabia, 19; on Armenian horses, 22; on camels, 34; on Indian bridles, 46, 48, 60; on Spanish horses, 28; on Venetic horses, 37 Suetonius: on shoeing mules, 91 Sultantepe, cavesson from, 60 Surcoats, 150 Syene, horses of, 20 Syracuse, 93,140 Syria, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 15, 66 Teeth, horse's, 50; bit between, 55, 57-58; show age, 98 Tel el Amarna, bit from, 47, PI. 32«

j 28

Index

Tell Halaf, n Thebes, Thebans, 97, 134, 140-141, 151-152 Theognis: on breeding, 39 Theomnestus: on Gaulish horse, 24-25 Theophon, Athenian knight, 123, 134, 135, 137 Theophrastus: on spurs, 87; on elderly horsemen, 102 Theopompus, Athenian litigant, 122-123 Theseus, King of Athens, 45; Thesean games, 122 Thessaly, 113, 129, 130, 144, 152; horses of, 20, 22, 23, 27, 38 Thrace, Thracian, 16, 53, 86, 125; horses of, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23, 31 Thutmoses IV, King of Egypt, 45 Tiglath-Pileser III, King of Assyria, 68, 75 Timoleon, Corinthian statesman, 93 Timotheus of Gaza: on breeds of horses, 26-28 Tiryns, 46 Touareg, 33 Transcaucasia, bits from, 71 Troilus, epic hero, 10-11 Trot: hackneys trained to, 28-29; canter obtained from, 104-105; horse's action at, PL 26a; Passage, 117-121 Troy, Trojan, 9, 10, 16, 17, 146; horse bones from, 2 Tullius Maximus, Roman officer, 28 Tyrrhenian horses, 21 Urartu, 71 Vegetius: on horses of Huns, 24 Veneti, horses of, 36, 37-38 Vespasian, Roman emperor, 91 Vienna, 124 Virgil: on horse's conformation, 26 Walk, horse schooled at, 103, 120-121 Ward Perkins, J. B.: on Roman horseshoes, 92 Watering animals, 95 Weapons, recommended by Xenophon, 150-151, 179-180 Whip, 52, 66, 88, 117, PI. 6a Winds, sire horses, 16-17, 23> Wolf, 37, 140; part of bit, 38 Wynmalen, H.: on lead at the canter, 104-105; on Passage, 118; on carriage of head, 120

Index

j

2p

Xanthos (horse's name), 16 Xanthus (city), 27, 80 Xenophon ( 1 ) , Athenian general, 1 3 1 Xenophon (2), Athenian soldier and writer, passim; on bits, 42, 52, 53-55, 70, 93, 174-175; on breaking in, 98, 159-160; on buying and selling, 98, 127; on cavalry (tactics), 140-141, 1 5 0 - 1 5 1 , 1 7 1 - 1 7 2 ; (training), 172; (weapons and armour), 141-145, 147-151, 178-180; on cavesson, 60, 83, 167; on conformation of horse, 2 1 , 106-108, 156-159; on exercise, 94; on feeding, 92-94, 162; on fighting vehicles, 33; on grooming, 95-96, 1 6 3 165; on hooves, 89-90, 156, 162; on hunting, 100-101, 1 1 5 , 1 7 1 ; on jumping, 105, 106, 109, 170, 1 7 1 ; on schooling (elementary), 99, 103-105, 168-169; (advanced), 1 1 7 - 1 2 7 , 174-178; on stabling, 89-90, 1 6 1 - 1 6 2 ; on stamina of horse, 31 Xerxes, King of Persia, 17 Yalouris, N . : on "Corinthian" bit, 73, 75 Yarmuk river, battle of, 28 Zeus, 16