Xenophon disliked the “American” seat—Cavalry organised by the
Athenians—Cost of horses twenty-three centuries ago—Aristophanes;
Aristotle; Athenians' fondness for horse racing—Alexander the
Great; Bucephalus—Story of Bucephalus; his death—Famous painters
of horses: Apelles, Pauson, Micon—Mythical flesh-eating horses
of Diomed—Hannibal's cavalry of 12,000 horse—Coins—Posidonius;
horses of the Parthians, Iberians and Celtiberians
In spite of the derisive remarks often uttered concerning Xenophon's
advice to young riders, and his advice on horsemanship in general and
the care of horses, there is much sound sense in plenty of the hints
he gave to the Greek riders of three hundred years before Christ,
while many of the rules he laid down are as applicable to-day as they
probably were then.
His advice on the vexed question of bits and bitting, to take but a
single example, is very sound, while his strong objection to allowing
horses' legs to be washed frequently is shared by plenty of horse
owners at the present time.
Then, the old Athenian apparently disapproved of or disliked what we
have come to call the “American” seat on a horse, for he declares that
the legs of a man mounted should be almost straight, the body upright
and supple.
Attempts have repeatedly been made to trace the life of Xenophon prior
to the time when, in 401 B.C., he first joined the army of Cyrus, but
in vain. He is, however, known to have been a close friend of Socrates
from a very early age, and probably when he wrote the “Anabasis” he
was a little over thirty. But when he died, about the year 355 B.C.,
he was quite an old man.
Historians are almost unanimous in declaring that at Marathon, in 490
B.C., the Athenians were without cavalry, though by that time many of
the wealthy citizens undoubtedly owned horses, some of which they most
likely used for racing. When, however, the Athenians came to realise
what an amount of execution could be done, and to see the execution
that was done by the Persians, with the help of cavalry, they set to
work to organise in Athens, as quickly as possible, a powerful body of
mounted warriors.
How formidable that cavalry later on proved itself to be is well known
to all classical scholars, and the more surprising it therefore is
that the Greek cavalry should not afterwards have risen to the level
of that organised by Macedonians. Indeed, according to more than one
historian, the Greek cavalry was employed chiefly to harass an enemy
when marching, or to pursue a vanquished and retreating regiment,
while one writer at least maintains that the Greek cavalry at best
never approached within javelin range of an enemy's line of battle
during an attack.
The cost of horses at about this time varied almost as widely as it
does now. Thus it was not unusual to pay three minæ, the equivalent
of about fifteen guineas, for quite a common hack—an extraordinarily
high price when we bear in mind the purchasing value of money in those
days—while for trained war horses, or for race horses, any sum from
ten minæ upward was paid frequently.
Xenophon is known to have given approximately eleven minæ for a little
war horse that, so far as one can ascertain, did not afterwards fulfil
expectations, so perhaps it is hardly astonishing to read that some
years later the terms “horse owner” and “spendthrift” came to be
deemed more or less synonymous.
A list drawn up at about this time of the principal defects to be
guarded against when inspecting a horse with a view to purchase is
interesting, inasmuch as the points looked upon as faults three and
twenty centuries ago are with only a few exceptions deemed to be
egregious defects to-day.
The following is the list that was drawn up, so it is alleged, by
Pollux:
Hoofs with thin horn (_sic_); hoofs full, fat, soft and flat—or,
as Xenophon termed them, “low-lying”; heavy fetlocks; shanks with
varicose veins; flabby thighs; hollow shoulder-blades; projecting
neck; bald mane; narrow chest; fat and heavy head; large ears;
converging nostrils; sunken eyes; thin and meagre sides; sharp
back-bone; rough haunches; thin buttocks; stiff legs, stiff knees.
Though among the horses of the ancient Greeks the hogged mane must at
one time have been seen often enough, there does not appear to be in
the works of the early writers any direct allusion to the hogging of
horses as a regular practice.
Probably if the custom did exist it was on the wane by the time
Xenophon began to write. There is evidence to show that in ancient
Greece the horses at about this period were rather smaller than
those of most other countries of which we have authentic records, a
characteristic still noticeable amongst the horses in several parts of
modern Greece.
The Greeks almost always used entire horses for all purposes. Even
in war they did not employ geldings, a custom that has given rise to
the belief that in the centuries before Christ all horses, with the
exception of the Libyan steeds, were far more savage than the horses
of to-day.
Emphatically we have no reason to suppose that the Greeks made friends
and companions of their horses as the Arab race is known to do or to
have done, though the fable of Achilles' love for his horse named
Xanthus makes a pretty enough story. On the other hand, it is quite
possible that Xenophon may have been fond of horses not merely because
of the amusement they afforded him or the pleasure he derived from
riding and hunting.
For the rest the Greeks, in common with the people of most of the
warlike nations in those early days, enjoyed possessing horses mainly
because they served to enhance life's pleasure, and were of practical
use in war.
Certainly it may be said of Xenophon that he did not preach the
doctrine of kindness to horses without himself practising it
thoroughly, also that he was ever ready to rebuke severely all who
ill-treated their own horses or his.
Apparently the Greeks of about this era did not keep what we should
term to-day pleasure horses, though they affected pleasure horses in
the sense that they kept race horses. With the death of Xenophon we
lose touch, to some extent, with the progress of the horse in history,
but the thread is taken up again in the Roman period when Varro,
writing in 37 B.C., furnishes certain details that are of interest,
Virgil adding to them a little later in his “Georgics.”
After that we find instructive comment in the writings of Calpurnius
and Columella in the first century A.D.; in those of Oppian and
Nemesian in the third century; and in those of Apsyrtus, Pelagonius
and Palladius in the fourth century.
* * * * *
When all is said, Xenophon's information most likely is by far the
most trustworthy of any that has been handed down to us, in the same
way that his descriptions certainly are the most accurate. Only a few
fragments of the book by Simo, written probably about the year 460
B.C., remain; yet even those fragments contain peculiar statements.
Thus in addition to insinuating that Thessaly was the only region
famous for horses in the centuries before Christ—an assertion
indirectly gainsaid by Xenophon—he didactically remarks that the
colour of a horse ought not to be taken into consideration when the
animal's qualities are being summed up, a statement that the majority
of the early writers openly repudiated, and that, as most of us know,
is in every country deemed devoid of truth at the present day.
Though particulars are difficult to obtain, there is reason to believe
that the horse named after the Thracian river, Strymon—owing to its
having been bred in that vicinity—and that was immolated by Xerxes
before his invasion of Greece, was, as usual, a white horse.
By exactly what route horses were introduced into Greece has not
been ascertained for certain, but the fact that fossilised remains of
horses have not been found in Greece as they have been in many other
countries leads to the belief that the horse was not indigenous to the
country.
From a very remote period, however, we find horses represented on
vase paintings; and from these paintings too we are able practically
to prove that the Greeks had not rowels in their primitive spurs, but
that the spur consisted of a short goad attached to the heel of the
boot by means of a strap passing over the instep and another that
passed under the sole, almost as the modern hunting spur is strapped
on. Spurs of this kind have been discovered in Olympia, also in Magna
Græcia, and elsewhere.
With regard to the Greek bits and bridles of a later date, the former
apparently had no leverage—certainly they had no curb chain—while the
pattern of the bridle seems to have remained unaltered.
* * * * *
As we come nearer still to the time of Christ, we find the young men
of Athens growing fonder and fonder of horse racing and taking more
pains and spending much time and money in their attempts to improve
the breed of horses. And though the soil of Attica was by no means
adapted for purposes of horse rearing, it must in justice be said
that their attempts met with reward.
Thus it happened that about this time—that is to say towards the
close of the third or the beginning of the second century—the comic
poet, Aristophanes, who died in 380 B.C., began to inveigh against
the increasing popularity of horse racing, and against the spread of
gambling consequent thereon.
In his immortal comedy of _The Clouds_, it will be remembered, he
portrays a typical young spendthrift, Pheidippes, and an equally
typical indignant father, Strepsiades, both of whom would serve well
as latter-day types of men of the same stamp.
The son, when the comedy opens, has lost heavily on the turf and
incurred the displeasure, not to say roused the indignation, of his
father, in addition to burdening the old man heavily with his gambling
debts. Presently the son is sued by Pasion, a characteristic usurer of
that period, for the recovery of the entire sum of twelve minæ.
“For what with debts and duns and stablekeepers' bills,” Strepsiades
exclaims in exasperation in the opening lines, addressing his son
Pheidippes, who lies asleep before him—“what with debts and duns and
stablekeepers' bills which this fine spark heaps on my back, I lie
awake the whilst: and what cares he but to coil up his locks, ride,
drive his horses, dream of them all night....” And so on.
This gives us, to start with, an idea of the degree of popularity that
horse racing had attained in Greece at about this time, for Pheidippes
is meant to be a character drawn from life and typical of the young
punters of the period.
Later we learn that the money for which the father is being sued had,
in the first instance, been borrowed to pay for a “starling-coloured
horse”—whatever kind of weird creature that may have been. Possibly
“fleabitten” is intended, for the geographer, Strabo, speaks of “the
starling-coloured horses of the Parthians” and of the people of
Northern Spain, and it is known that plenty of those horses were of
the colour that we should term to-day “fleabitten.”
* * * * *
Aristotle is the next to enlighten us to some extent upon the growing
fondness of the Greeks for horses, especially for race horses and war
horses. He tells us too that about the average span the horses in
his time—the middle of the second century B.C., 384 to 322—lived was
eighteen to twenty years, though a few were said to have reached five
and twenty, and even thirty, and a very few indeed to have died at
fifty.
Whether the custom that then prevailed of feeding horses mostly
on barley proved beneficial or the reverse in the long run we are
not told. Finally we come to Alexander the Great and his renowned
Bucephalus, a horse bred, as we are told, by Philoneicus of Pharsalus,
a Thessalian.
Bucephalus, or rather Bucephal_os_, means ox head, or bull head, from
which we may conclude that whatever good points Bucephalus may have
had—and without doubt he had many—he certainly had not the fine head
of a modern hunter or the tapering muzzle of the thoroughbred that
nowadays we so much admire.
It has been stated that Bucephalus derived his name from a mark on the
left shoulder in the form more or less of a bull's head. As we know,
however, that many years before Alexander's Bucephalus was foaled
there existed a type of Thessalian horse upon which the same name had
been bestowed, the conjecture is probably a false one.
How great the fame of Bucephalus was may be gathered from the fact
that of all the horses possessed by the ancient Greeks down to this
date he alone is the animal over which they thoroughly “enthuse.” From
what we are told in the writings of Aristotle, indeed, and of later
historians, Bucephalus must have been quite a tall horse, well shaped,
coal-black, with a good shoulder and small ears. Also he had a white
star in the middle of his forehead, a mark characteristic of certain
Libyan breeds of old.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER THE GREAT ON HORSEBACK, ABOUT 338 B.C. THE
FIGURE IS BELIEVED TO REPRESENT BUCEPHALUS
_From a bronze in the British Museum_]
An unknown writer in the “Geoponics” avers that in the centuries
just before Christ many of the best horses had eyes of different
colour—what we sometimes term a wall eye, and Americans a China
eye—and from his own deductions he concludes that Bucephalus probably
had eyes that did not match. There does not, however, appear to be
direct evidence that this was so.
Plutarch sets the price paid for Bucephalus by Alexander's father,
King Philip, at thirteen talents, while Pliny is of opinion that the
price was higher still—namely, sixteen talents.
Now the sum that to-day would be the equivalent of thirteen talents
is approximately £3500, and when we bear in mind the prices that in
the second century frequently were paid even for the best horses
obtainable, and recollect, in addition, that at the time King Philip
bought Bucephalus the horse was probably aged—some writers aver that
he must have been quite fourteen when Philip bought him—it is not
possible to reconcile the statement that a fancy price in any way
approaching the sum named could have been paid.
The story of the trial and subsequent purchase of Bucephalus is both
pretty and picturesque. More, it would appear to be true in almost
every detail. According to Plutarch, whose account probably is the
most trustworthy, the horse was first brought before King Philip to
be given a public trial, when, to the discomfiture of its owner, it
showed itself to be apparently “a fierce and unmanageable beast that
would neither allow anybody to mount him, nor obey any of Philip's
attendants, but reared and plunged against them all, so that the king
in a rage bade them take him away for an utterly wild and unbroken
brute.”
At this juncture it was that Alexander—at the time a boy of twelve,
and Aristotle not yet his tutor—came upon the scene. We are told that
he “leapt suddenly forward and in an access of indignation cried out
before the king and everybody assembled that the men attempting to
ride the horse were 'clumsy clowns,'” adding, with the self-assurance
of precocious boyhood, that “if they were not careful they would spoil
the horse entirely.”
Philip at first paid no attention to his son's outburst, deeming it
to be childish spleen, but upon the lad's refusing to be quieted he
turned to him, suddenly nettled, and demanded in a sharp tone how he
dare be so insolent as to criticise his elders. In no way abashed,
Alexander retorted that in this instance he certainly did know much
better than his elders, and that if his father would allow him he
would prove it by himself mounting the horse at once and riding it
round the ring.
“And what will you forfeit for your rashness if you are thrown off?”
the king inquired, not troubling to conceal his anger.
To which young Alexander retorted with much spirit:
“The price of the horse, by Zeus!”
It is hardly likely that Alexander, rash though he undoubtedly was,
would have said this if the price at which Bucephalus was valued
amounted to a sum in talents equivalent to thousands of pounds, for
King Philip though a just ruler was a stern father, and Alexander must
have known that his father would extort the forfeit should he fail to
ride the horse.
The lad's reply, we are told, was received with shouts of laughter.
This public expression of ridicule it may have been that set the boy
upon his mettle, for without further parley he ran out into the arena,
ordered his father's attendants aside, and then, grasping the reins,
began to pat the horse's neck and “soothe him with soft words.”
For the boy had observed what apparently nobody else had
noticed—namely, that the horse grew restive at the sight of its own
shadow. Without waiting, therefore, he turned the horse to face
the sun, then at once “sprang up and bestrode him unharmed.” Next,
gradually and very gently, and using neither whip nor spur, he made
Bucephalus move round and round in a circle until the animal no longer
feared its shadow and then when it had, as we are told, “given up all
threatening behaviour, and was only hot for the course,” he gave the
horse its head, “urging him onward by raising his voice and using his
heel.”
At the sight of this fine display of horse breaking and horsemanship
the spectators, now somewhat abashed at the haste they had been in
to jeer, grew silent. But not for long. Presently, as Alexander came
galloping back, “full of just pride and pleasure,” the assembled
multitude, including the king's attendants, “of one accord raised a
great cheer, lifting up their hands from pure joy.”
Philip himself must have been of an emotional nature, for we read that
“he said nothing, but wept silently from pure joy.”
Possibly the lad too suffered from “pure joy” at that moment, for upon
his dismounting his father advanced with the remark that Macedonia was
“not big enough for such a son,” that he “must go look for a kingdom
to match him.”
Which shows that even in the centuries before Christ there was truth
in the popular platitude that nothing succeeds like success!
Then and there Bucephalus was bought for Alexander, and from that time
until its death, from wounds received in a battle fought against the
Indian king, Porus, the horse remained Alexander's favourite charger
and companion.
A remarkable peculiarity about this animal was that though
subsequently it came to allow the grooms to ride it bareback, yet
when it had on one of the cloths that at that period did duty for a
saddle it would allow only Alexander to mount it. As one writer neatly
says: “When others tried to mount the horse with the cloth on they
invariably had to take to their heels to save themselves from his.” It
is further recorded that when Alexander wished to mount, Bucephalus
would crouch of its own accord to enable its master to get on more
easily.
Alexander took Bucephalus with him on his famous expeditions into the
East, and on one occasion, in Hyrcania, the horse was stolen. The king
“thereupon became terrible to see, so great was his rage.” At once an
edict was issued that unless the horse were returned to him without
delay he would “carry fire and sword throughout the country—north and
south, east and west, sparing neither men nor women, nor, if need be,
even the smallest children.”
A chronicler of the period, commenting upon this, drily observes that
when Alexander's determination became known, “the horse was returned
in a hurry!”
“Thus,” remarks Arrian, the great historian, “the horse must have been
as dear to Alexander as Alexander was terrible to the barbarians.” As
he here employs the word “barbarian” in its offensive signification
he evidently despised the people of Hyrcania because they had sense
enough to return the stolen horse instead of waiting with their kith
and kin to be slain or tortured!
In the descriptions of almost all the great victories won by Alexander
the Great, allusion is made to his favourite steed. We are told by
Gellius that in the battle that practically witnessed the death of
Bucephalus the king had pressed forward recklessly into the thick of
the fight, and apparently right into the enemy's lines, and had thus
become “the mark for every spear”—a statement which, if literally
true, points to an enemy made up of singularly inept marksmen.
“More than one spear,” he goes on, “was buried in the neck and flanks
of the horse, but, though at the point of death, and almost drained
of blood, he succeeded with a bold dash in carrying the king from the
very midst of the foe, and then fell, breathing his last tranquilly
now that he knew his master was safe, and as comforted by the
knowledge as if he had had the feelings of a human being.”
There is something about the concluding sentence that leads to the
belief that Gellius must have been either remarkably imaginative, or
else of a more romantic nature than the majority of his contemporaries
have given him credit for being. The last line in particular is very
precious. After reading it can one feel astonished at Alexander's
enthusiasm having carried him to the length of causing him to build
a city to the memory of the noble steed, a city to which he gave the
name Bucephala?
The handsome bronze discovered in Herculaneum is popularly supposed
to represent the figures of Alexander and Bucephalus. The work
probably of Lysippus—whom Alexander himself ordered to produce a
scene representing a fight during the great battle of Granicus—it is
extremely interesting.
A pleasing anecdote told of Alexander and Bucephalus, and more likely
to be true than are the majority of the tales that are related of
this horse and its owner, is to the effect that upon one occasion the
king went to inspect a portrait of himself mounted on his favourite
charger, that the distinguished painter, Apelles, had just completed.
Nettled at Alexander's scant praise of his work—for we are told the
picture was so lifelike that even Bucephalus neighed when first he saw
it—Apelles turned to the king with the rebuke:
“I fear me, your Majesty, that your horse is a better judge of
painting than his noble master.”
What retort the king made is not recorded, but the story recalls one
of a similar nature related of the famous artist, Pauson, who when
ordered to produce a picture of a horse rolling on its back, sent to
his patron a picture of a horse galloping madly through a cloud of
dust.
In a great rage the patron sent for Pauson, and, upon his arrival,
“began to storm and rave,” at the same time demanding to know what
had made him commit a blunder so egregious. Without replying, Pauson
walked up to the picture and turned it upside down, when, to the vast
amusement of the hitherto irate patron, there appeared a perfect
picture of a horse rolling on its back on a dusty plain.
Of the famous artist, Micon, it is related that he once incurred
the criticism of the rider, Simon, who, upon looking at one of his
pictures, remarked drily that never in his life before had he seen a
horse that had eyelashes on its lower lids!
* * * * *
It seems certain that in the centuries before Christ the steeds bred
in Thessaly were among the most highly prized, though the horses of
several other breeds—such, for instance, as the Argive, the Arcadian,
the Epidaurian and the Arcananian—possessed great courage and
exceptional power of endurance.
[Illustration: PERSIANS FIGHTING WITH ELEPHANTS AGAINST THE ROMANS,
ABOUT THE TIME OF PYRRHUS, 280 B.C.
_This picture has been wrongly attributed to Raphael_]
In the very early times Thessalian horses were used largely for
charioteering. Allusion is made repeatedly in the classics to these
Thessalian animals, stress being laid upon their symmetry, or what
to-day we should term their make and shape. The mythical mares of King
Diomed of Thrace, the tyrant whose grim humour, we are told, led
him to feed his horses on the strangers who visited his kingdom, were
alleged to be of the breed of Thessaly, a statement made indirectly in
the description of Hercules' conquest of the tyrant and his subsequent
“casting of the tyrant's quivering carcass to his own horses to be
devoured.”
Spenser alludes to this incident in the fifth book of his “Faerie
Queene,” in the following lines:—
“Like to the Thracian tyrant who, they say,
Unto his horses gave his guests for meat,
Till he himself was made their greedy prey,
And torn to pieces by Alcides great.”
Other mythical horses of the Thessalian breed were those of Achilles,
of Rhesus, and of Orestes in Sophocles' stirring description of the
race in _Electra_.
It seems safe to say that until about the fourth century B.C. the
Romans also did not use saddles, at least saddles with trees. That
somewhere about this period, however, they began to adopt what we
should call to-day saddlecloths, and that these were kept in place by
a strap or bandage in the nature of a girth that passed beneath the
belly, appears to be certain.
For some unknown reason this girth is more often than not omitted on
the works of art that represent horses of that period. Some of the
animals of the Parthenon frieze lead us to believe that on occasions
horses were still made to crouch when about to be mounted, though it
is not probable they crouched voluntarily, as Bucephalus did. From
impressions on the Parthenon frieze we may also conclude that the
mounting block was not unknown in the centuries before Christ.
A good idea of the exact stamp of horse harnessed to the war chariots
of those centuries may be obtained by inspecting the bronze horse of
the quadriga from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the date of the
Mausoleum being 331-341 B.C.—the building took ten years to erect.
This bronze is to be seen in the British Museum.
Hannibal's must have been the army the best provided with cavalry
down to the year 218 B.C., for in that year Hannibal advanced into
Italy with no less than 90,000 foot and some 12,000 horse, many of the
latter being native horses mounted by Numidians who persisted still in
scorning to use either saddle or bridle, though the cavalry division,
which consisted of Spaniards, employed bridles of an elaborate pattern.
How wholly superior Hannibal's cavalry proved to be to the Gallic
horsemen placed by Scipio in the front line of his javelin throwers is
well known to students of history. Indeed it was said that Hannibal's
horsemen were superior even to the Italian and the Roman cavalry,
which was high praise.
* * * * *
Probably from about the year 200 B.C., possibly from an even earlier
period, the Romans used spurs, apparently the common prick spurs
which remained in vogue until towards the middle of the thirteenth
century A.D. Some half-a-century later, or about the year 150 B.C.,
there were issued in succession a series of Gaulish silver coins, the
majority of which bore upon one side the impression of a horseman,
though comparatively few showed the chariot at one time so generally
represented on coins.
This leads naturally to the inference that the popularity of the
chariot was already waning. Chariots, however, continued to appear
upon the gold coins made in imitation of the gold stater of Philip II.
of Macedon, coins that bore on the face Apollo's head, on the reverse
a two-horse chariot.
Exceptionally fine horses, probably with Liberian blood in them, must
have been owned by the Iberians and Celtiberians at about the period
the Stoic philosopher Posidonius was travelling in Western Europe, and
when he incidentally visited Spain—about the year 90 B.C. Posidonius
himself remarks that the cavalry of the Iberians was trained to travel
over mountains, adding that these horses too would crouch when told
to, in order that their riders might mount or dismount with greater
ease.
A method to which this cavalry sometimes had recourse consisted in
their mounting two men on one animal. Then, in the heat of action, one
of the men would fight on foot, the other remaining by to defend him
if hard pressed. The same philosopher tells us that the horses of the
Parthians and Celtiberians “indeed were superior to all other breeds
in fleetness and endurance.”