INTRODUCTION. 127 



long as the stirrup to mount them remained un- 

 known. In vain Xenophon instructs riders how to 

 reach the saddle without lying across the horse in 

 an unseemly attitude ; men loaded with armour al- 

 ways found it difficult to gain their seats, they 

 wanted a lift of the left leg to rise ; stepped upon 

 the right calf of an attendant ; had an inconvenient 

 cross-bar near the bottom of their spear to place the 

 foot on, or strained the horse in making it rise after 

 lying down to receive the rider ; or finally, Oriental 

 servitude induced the principal officers of state to 

 grovel on all-fours, while the sovereign mounted 

 upon their backs and thence across his saddle, as is 

 still, we believe, the practice with the grand vizir 

 when the sultan goes and returns in state to and 

 from the mosque. 



The stapes, or stirrup, is asserted to be known 

 only since the eleventh century, Avicenna, who 

 died in 1030, being the first who mentions it * ; but 

 we have evidence, even in Saxon England, that the 

 instrument in question was known at a much 

 earlier period, for there is an outline drawing of a 

 horseman riding in stirrups in a MS. Aurelius Pru- 

 dentius, with Saxon annotations, in the Cotton 

 library of the British Museum, marked Cleopatra, 

 C. S., and engraved in Strutt's Horda Angelcynnan ; 



* The Persian bas-reliefs represent riders without stirrups 

 although all the barrows on the plains of Tahtary, where 

 horse-bones and saddlery are detected, produce them of metal ; 

 and we have not observed a single illuminated Oriental MS., 

 Japanese. Chinese. Tahtar, Persian, Turkish, and Arabic, when 

 horsemen are rigured, where they do not ride in stirrups. 



