14 HISTORY OF THE 



regulated all matters at Olympia, exercising a 



« 



power which would not be relished at the pre- 

 sent day ; for we find them not only excluding 

 from the games, and imposing fines upon, such 

 as were convicted of fraud, but even inflicting 

 upon them bodily correction. 



Having sufficiently shown the origin and pro- 

 gress of horsemanship and racing among the 

 ancients, at least as far as we are borne out by 

 creditable authorities, and as the limits of this 

 work will allow, we w^ill now conclude this in- 

 troductory chapter by a glance at Zenophon's 

 IIEPI inniKHS, CDe EquitatuJ the earliest known 

 work among the Greeks, or in fact, among the 

 ancients ; for although the breeding and training 

 of horses must have been cultivated, both by the 

 Romans, and by those warlike nations of the 

 north of Europe who at length subverted the 

 Roman empire, no waiters on these subjects, if 

 any did exist, have descended to us ; whatever 

 knowledge was attained in those days has pe- 

 rished with them ; and after Zenophon we have 

 no writers on horsemanship until the beginning 

 of the sixteenth century. 



Not only is the work of Zenophon deserving 

 of attention on account of its antiquity, but the 

 reader will be surprised to find how superior it 

 is, in almost every respect, to nearly all the 



