EARLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES. 45 



strong military force that was, made up very largely of slaves and 

 the nomadic tribes of the country, but always commanded by 

 prominent and influential Phoenicians. It is impossible to tell 

 what the very early experiences of the colonists may have been 

 with regard to horses; nor do we know whether they found horses 

 already there when they arrived at their new plantations. My 

 belief is, however, that they were not only the first to carry 

 horses to Egypt, but they were the first to carry them to the 

 western extremities of the Mediterranean. It will be remembered 

 that the early trade of the Armenians with the Phoenician mer- 

 chants was not only in horses, but in horsemen, and it is probable 

 that these "horsemen" were slaves, expert and skillful in managing 

 the horse. It has been said by historians that certain classes of 

 their ships were ornamented with a carved horse's head, at the 

 prow; and it has been inferred that the ships so designated vere 

 specially constructed and fitted up for the safe carrying of horses. 

 It is true that in the course of the centuries horses may have 

 found their way from Egypt westward to Algeria, and by crossing 

 the Bosphorus they might have found their "way from Asia 

 Minor to Spain, but it is also true that from small beginnings at 

 the plantation of the colonies there was ample time for them to 

 increase to almost countless herds before the period when the 

 colonists became a mighty military power in the earth. 



Historians tell us that the military establishment of the city 

 of Carthage alone, when on a peace footing, consisted of three 

 hundred elephants, four thousand horses and forty thousand foot 

 soldiers. When Hannibal started out to fight Rome, in the second 

 Punic war, say B.C. 218, he had with him eighty thousand foot- 

 men and twelve thousand horsemen; and he left thirty -two thou- 

 sand soldiers at home to guard his Spanish and his African 

 dominions. With a proportional division of the home troops, he 

 then had about seventeen thousand mounted men in his army. 

 These were not war levies, but hardened and trained soldiers, and 

 it is, therefore, not remarkable that he held nearly the whole of 

 Spain in subjection, and practically all of Northwestern Africa. 

 Polybius, the soldier historian, tells us that "his Numidian 

 cavalry formed the strongest part of his army, and to their quick 

 evolutions, their sudden retreat, and their rapid return to the 

 charge, may be attributed the success of Hannibal in his great 

 victories." At an earlier period, we learn that in the organiza- 

 tion of the Phoenician armies the numerous nomadic tribes were 



