VIRGIL, whose famous “Georgics” was published about the year 29 B.C., incidentally shows how close the connection was that in his time existed between men and their horses—that is, in so far as the former would probably have gained comparatively few victories and made but little headway in civilisation had they not been materially helped by “man's friend and ally, the horse.”

According to Virgil, in the years just before Christ the colour least liked in horses intended for work was white. “Yellow” also was objected to, the prevalent belief being that white or dun horses must ipso facto be of weak constitution. White markings were not disliked, however, and we read that Virgil's Roman youth rode “a Thracian steed of two colours,” it had a white fore foot and a forehead with a white patch. The charger ridden by Turnus was also a Thracian horse, with markings somewhat similar.

The following description in the third book of Virgil's “Georgics” gives us most likely an approximate idea of some points that were looked for in a good horse in the last century B.C.:—

Though chariots were still in use among the Belgic tribes who inhabited the south-eastern portion of the island when, in 55 B.C., CÆsar invaded Britain, cavalry must have been coming into vogue with them, for we read that “no sooner were these tribes warned to be prepared for CÆsar's contemplated invasion than they sent forward cavalry and charioteers, which formed their chief arm in warfare.”

The people of North Britain, however, still paid but little attention to the advice of the more intelligent among their chiefs that cavalry ought to be adopted and chariots entirely discarded, the principle of ultra-conservatism which remains one of the most marked characteristics of the British nation at the present day being apparently in force even in CÆsar's time.

By this period the Gauls, as CÆsar soon found out, had become a nation composed almost wholly of knights. Yet whether the aboriginal horse of the first yeomanry of Kent that met CÆsar upon his landing belonged to the breed believed to have been imported by the Celts or Germans, or whether they were descendants of the horses known to have been largely bred when Hannibal's warlike expeditions into Spain, Gaul and Italy were over, is not known.

Of interest it is to be told that the men who invaded this country under the banner of the White Horse greatly valued the particular breed of horses they found here, and that in consequence their descendants in later centuries cut upon the chalk cliffs of the Berkshire downs near Ilsley and Wantage the rough figures of horses that remain there to this day.

We have it on the authority of several of the most trustworthy of our early historians that by about the end of the third century B.C., at latest, the Gauls of northern Italy had become a race of horsemen; that by about the middle of the second century B.C. the majority of the Transalpine Gauls had done the same; and that by CÆsar's time even the Belgic tribes of the Continent had practically abandoned the war chariot that the Romans had deemed so helpful.

Apparently the horses employed by the Roman warriors were of a better stamp than those which belonged to the Gauls of Northern Italy.

It is well known that CÆsar's opinion of the value of chariots in war was, to say the least, rather inflated. His description of the action of war chariots during an engagement is of itself almost sufficient to prove this.

“At the first onset,” he writes, “they [the warriors] drove the cars in all directions, hurled their javelins, and by the din and clatter of horses and wheels commonly threw the ranks of the enemy into disorder.

“Then, making their way amongst the squadrons of the enemy's cavalry, they leaped down from the chariots and fought on foot.

“Little by little the charioteers withdrew out of the fight and placed their chariots in such a way that if they were hard pressed by the enemy they could readily retreat to their own side.

“Thus in battle they afforded the mobility of cavalry, and the steadiness of infantry.

“Daily practice enabled them to pull up their horses when in full speed on a slope or steep declivity, to check or turn them in a narrow space, to run out on the pole and stand on the yoke, and to get nimbly back again into the chariot.”

All of which sounds simple and delightful. In practice, however, it did not often “work out.” For too frequently the wheels of the chariots became clogged, sometimes they jammed in the wheels of other chariots—not necessarily the enemy's—and frequently the horses, driven to frenzy by pain and terror, stampeded on all sides.

Therefore the “steadiness of infantry,” of which CÆsar talks so glibly, must in many instances have existed purely in his imagination, and there can be little doubt that the warriors, carried away nolens volens by their frenzied horses, often “retreated readily to their own side” long before the enemy pressed them to do so, a regrettable incident which CÆsar passes over with perfunctory comment. And perhaps he is not to be found fault with for doing this, seeing that similar tactics have been indulged in by many of the most successful of our military strategists of modern times.

Probably by CÆsar's time the practice of placing a covering of some sort upon the backs of “saddle” horses had become quite common, at least amongst the Romans. Among German tribes the use of any sort of covering was still not merely laughed to scorn, but deemed to be actually effeminate, disgraceful and a mark of laziness.

To do the Germans justice, they thoroughly acted up to their theory in this connection, for never, when riding bareback, did they fear to attack cavalry equipped with the horsecloth termed an ephippion, which means literally a horse cover.

Referring again to war chariots, Diodorus tells us almost in so many words that the Celts of Gaul and of Northern Italy went to war in two-horse chariots down to quite a late date, after the manner of the Homeric Acheans. These chariots held each two warriors, or a warrior and a charioteer. One of the occupants first hurled a spear at the enemy and then quickly alighted to finish the attack on foot; the other occupant managed the car.

Though Horace himself was not a practical horseman, the views which he expressed upon the subject of horses and of horsemanship are for the most part admirable. In common with Xenophon he deemed good hoofs to be an essential. Listen to the following rather amusing though at the same time quite sensible observations uttered by Horace in one of his famous “Satires”:—

“Swells,” he writes, “when they buy horses, have a way of covering them up when they look over them, for fear that a handsome shape set upon tender feet, as often happens, may take in the buyer as he hangs open-mouthed over fine haunches, small head, and stately neck. And they are right.”

At this time the ancients did not shoe their horses, though it is generally believed that the Romans often covered the hoofs of their mules with a sort of cap made of leather, which they then tied about the fetlock.

These caps or coverings were named soleÆ, and in the majority of cases had a thin plate or sole made of iron. Nero is said to have used for his 2000 mules plates made of silver instead of iron, and Pliny declares in his famous “Natural History” that Nero's ridiculous wife, PoppÆa, used plates of gold for the same purpose.

It seems more than likely that caps of this pattern may have been worn by some at least of the horses of the immortal Ten Thousand, for it is recorded that during the great retreat an Armenian explained to a group of Greeks how best to protect their horses' feet when snow lay thick upon the ground, and the way he recommended was to wrap them up as described.

In the early history of Ireland we find references. There is an Irish epic cycle said to be quite one of the oldest known—the cycle of Cuchulainn—in which the warriors all fight from chariots and do terrible things. In this respect the poems of the Ossianic cycle are different, from which it has been inferred that the latter were written later.

If this was so it helps to bear out the argument that chariots went steadily out of use as cavalry came more and more into vogue. Various dates have been assigned to the “Cuchulainn Saga,” but from the records that exist it seems safe to say that the original poem must have been written in Pagan times—the events referred to in it are supposed to have occurred about the first century B.C.—though probably it was revised and added to in later years.

Indeed it is beyond dispute that as early as the seventh century A.D. some of these poems were already deemed to be of great antiquity.

Cuchulainn's horses are described at length in “The Wooing of Emer.” They were “alike in size, beauty, fierceness and speed. Their manes were long and curly, and they had curling tails. The right-hand horse was a grey horse, broad in the haunches, fierce, swift and wild; the other was jet-black, his head firmly knit, and he was broad-hoofed and slender; long and curly were his mane and tail. Down his broad forehead hung heavy curls of hair.”

We are further told “that was the one chariot which the host of the horses of the chariots of Ulster could not follow on account of the swiftness and speed of the chariot and of the chariot chief who sat in it.”

These peerless animals were guided by “two firm-plaited yellow reins,” and presumably the black with “long and curly mane and tail” was of Spanish or Gaulish blood.

Soon after the coming of Christ, or probably about the year 60 A.D., a tribe referred to as the Iceni is known to have lived on what is now called Newmarket Heath, and to have owned horses, apparently in great numbers.

Tacitus speaks of the Iceni, who must have been a greater and more powerful people than the majority of modern historians lead us to infer. Again, it is interesting to note that nearly all the gold and silver coins of the Iceni bear upon one side the impression of a horse. CÆsar refers to the Iceni as a race that dwelt in Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and Tacitus wrote practically to the same effect.

Though horse racing is spoken of incidentally as having been indulged in early in the Anglo-Saxon era, quite the earliest bonÂ-fide horse races that took place in England, of which we have authentic record, were those organised about the time of the Emperor Severus Alexander, or towards the beginning of the third century A.D. The meeting was held at Netherby, in Yorkshire.

These races were run apparently not long before the assassination of the ill-starred emperor in 222 by the soldiers whom Maximus had corrupted. At other stations as well horse races took place during the Roman occupation, and Carleon, Silchester, Rushborough and Dorchester are mentioned as being among the localities which had to do with the very primitive “Turf” of that period.

Perhaps the undeniable superiority of the British thoroughbred over the horses of other nations to-day may in a measure be due to the time and attention the Romans of that era devoted to the importation of horses of Eastern blood. This seems more likely still to be the case when we remember that the majority of the best of the English mares were crossed with Arabian stallions in the years that followed, and that a succession of such stallions was imported throughout the early and the Middle Ages, and from that time onward right down through the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as we shall see presently.

By the beginning of the era of the Saxon kings an Arab steed had come to be looked upon as a recognised royal gift. According to one authority, indeed, Boadicea, the intrepid queen who led the Iceni against the Roman invaders, was greatly attached to her horses.

Most likely she was attached to them, however, only because they helped her so materially in her raids upon her enemies. To pretend that “the sturdy queen,” as one historian nicknames her, harboured anything in the least approaching a sympathetic or a sentimental affection for any particular horse would be the acme of all that is grotesque.

Haydn has the misplaced gallantry to allude to Boadicea as “the heroic queen.” That her good fortune in possessing horses with considerable staying power enabled her to win her great victory at Verulam is now common history. Therefore we read with the more interest that “this relentless queen destroyed London and other places, slaughtering many Romans, but at last she was overcome near London, by Suetonius, and she ended by committing suicide.”

In the second century A.D. the Arabs probably had not begun to breed horses, for at that time we do not hear of Arab horses being held in the high esteem with which they later came to be regarded by the British nation.

Yet even before this, or towards the middle of the first century A.D., the sport of chariot racing had become immensely popular, and the sums spent upon organising the races, training the horses that were to be entered for competition, and in purchasing prizes to be bestowed upon the victors, may justly be said to have been enormous if we bear in mind the purchasing value of the coinage of the period.

That the Romans were given to sacrificing horses to their gods, Pliny the elder has made plain to us. He is said to have written an exhaustive work upon steeds of a certain stamp, but unfortunately the book must have been destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried, and some 200,000 human beings killed, among them Pliny.

As he points out in his “Natural History,” however, the sacrifices of horses took place frequently, especially upon occasions of public solemnity, and he mentions that horses to be immolated were not allowed to be touched even by the Flamen.

Whether or no the Romans habitually sacrificed white horses, after the manner of the Greeks, Illyrians and Persians, is not stated. They did, however, harness white horses to their chariots upon these and other state occasions, and thus we read that when Julius CÆsar returned from Africa the quadriga in which he drove was, by order of the Senate, drawn by milk-white steeds.

Tacitus tells us that on some occasions when a distinguished chief died the dead man's horse was cremated on the funeral pyre beside its master's body, and we know that the superstitious beliefs of the Persians were upon a par with those of their Germanic kinsmen in so far as the immolation of horses was concerned.

In some instances alleged divination of the future was brought about by the aid of horses. Tacitus himself remarks that it was peculiar to this people (the Germans) “to seek from horses omens and monitions.”

“Kept at the public expense in these same woods and groves,” he continues, “are white horses, pure from the taint of earthly labour. These are yoked to a sacred chariot and accompanied by the priests and the king, or chief of the tribe, who note their neighings and snortings. No species of divination is more to be trusted, not only by the people and by the nobility, but also by the priests, who regard themselves as the ministers of the gods, and the horses as acquainted with their will.”

Amusing, but probably more or less fictitious, stories of Incitatus, the notorious horse of the Roman emperor, Caligula, have been handed down to us. That this beast had the absurd honour conferred upon it of being elected priest and consul we must believe, and there probably is truth in the statement that it ate regularly out of an ivory manger and drank from a golden pail.

But we must accept with reservation the story that the horse alone had eighteen attendants in gorgeous apparel or livery to attend to it. Almost equally fantastic are the tales told of the famous horse that belonged to the Roman emperor, Verus, in the second century A.D. Celer by name, it ate nothing but almonds and raisins, and its stable was a suite of apartments in the emperor's principal palace. In place of horse clothing it wore a garment of royal purple.

I need hardly repeat that these and similar stories that have been handed down to us must be received with considerable scepticism.

A description, probably true, of what were deemed in the first century A.D. to be the best points about a horse, is to be found in the “Eclogues.” The lines, translated, run somewhat as follows:—

Towards the middle of the fourth century A.D. the popularity of what must be described as circus riding would seem to have increased rather suddenly, and we read that at about this time the Sicilian horses were nearly as much in demand for public performances and processions as the Cappadocian and the Spanish. Though such performances must have been primitive indeed by comparison with even the simpler of the feats we see performed to-day, they were then deemed marvellous in the extreme, and people came from far and near to witness them.

This probably was in a measure due to the general love of riding that prevailed amongst the wealthier classes at that period. Indeed the possession of a large stud of horses was in many parts of Greece, and especially in Athens, considered the hall-mark of what we should term to-day a man of culture, in the same way that the possession of horses, hounds and hawks was supposed to mark the aristocrat in MediÆval times.

Thus a man often would be named after the class of horse he owned. Xanthippus meant “He of the dun horses”; Leucippus, “He of the white horses”; and Melanippus, “He of the black horses.”

By the close of the fourth century A.D. the Romans apparently had outgrown their prejudice against the use of saddles, for at about that time the saddle is referred to with some frequency. Certain it is that in 380 A.D. the famous cavalrymen of Theodosius were mounted on horses provided with true saddles—that is to say saddles with a tree, also with a bow in front and behind.

Generally a cloth or numner was worn beneath saddles, but it is known that at one time Roman horses suffered from sore backs owing probably to the way the Roman soldiers sat their horses when saddles first came into vogue. Soon after this it was that the saddle came to be known as “the chair,” presumably because of the Latin word sella, from which we have the French noun, selle, meaning saddle.

Some famous horses are referred to in the records of the sixth century, but little is said of their history. Thus we have the Persian steed of Chosroes, called Shibdiz, a name signifying “fleeter than the wind.” Apparently he was a famous charger, for we read that he carried his master safely through several important engagements. Yet he was used for other purposes.

The story of King Arthur is so closely bound up with fable and fiction that the truth is difficult to get at. He must have owned many good horses, however, of which Spumador—a word signifying “the foaming one”—and the mare Lamri were perhaps the most renowned. There are, nevertheless, historians who maintain that these horses never actually existed.

Sir Tristram's charger, Passe Brewell, mentioned in the “History of King Arthur,” and elsewhere, is another animal around which “a web of imaginative description,” as one writer terms it has been woven. Consequently we shall be well advised to pass these fables by without comment.

In the first half of the sixth century the practice of regularly shoeing horses apparently came into vogue, for shoes are referred to in the records of the ways and customs of the famous Emperor Justinian. It seems certain, however, that the shoes fashioned at about that period were clumsy in design, also needlessly heavy. Specimens of them have from time to time been discovered, and it is said one was found in the tomb of King Childeric, the date of whose death is placed so far back as 460 A.D.

Though Tacitus, who wrote between 80 and 116 A.D., does not allude to the horses of the Swedes, it is certain that about the sixth century A.D. the Swedes had become not only a race of fine horsemen, but owners of magnificent horses. Indeed in 550 A.D., or thereabouts, Jornandes went so far as to compare them favourably with the race of Thuringians.

Probably it was in a measure owing to the intense devotion of the Swedish king, Adhils, to horses and to all that appertained to them that the Swedish nation became so renowned for their horses and their horsemanship. Then, though the Arabs had no horses at the beginning of the Christian era, they probably were breeding them in great numbers by the beginning of the sixth century A.D., for it was due mainly to a quarrel at about that time over a famous horse named Dahis that two formidable tribes entered into a deadly and long-drawn-out struggle.

At about this period the Romans began to pay almost fastidious attention to the colour of their horses. The colour most preferred for a war horse was dark brown, chestnut, or bay, with a white blaze up the face, or a white patch or star upon the forehead. Light-coloured horses were avoided as much as possible, except when the animals were needed for processions, and so forth.

A graphic description is given of a fierce combat between approximately 1000 of Justinian's cavalry, led by the renowned general, Belisarius, and an equal number of Goths.

The latter, determined to enter Rome, had crossed the Tiber, when the column of Belisarius came upon them suddenly.

The engagement began at once.

We are told that “Belisarius himself fought like a common soldier,” as the bravest of the chiefs of that period sometimes did. He was astride one of his favourite and best-trained chargers, a horse described as having “all his body dark-coloured, but his face pure white from the top of the head to the nose.”

An animal so marked was termed by the Greeks phalios, and by the barbarians balas, words signifying “bald.” While the battle was in progress a number of Belisarius' soldiers left his ranks and joined the Goths'. Thus it came about that suddenly Belisarius heard shouts from the enemy's lines, and the cries distinctly audible:

“Belisarius rides the bald-faced horse! Strike him! Slay it!”

And most likely the bald-faced horse and his gallant rider would have been slaughtered had Belisarius' bodyguard not hastened to rally round him and eventually succeeded in beating off his assailants, many of whom, earlier in the day, had fought beside him.