ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE PACING HORSE. 15T 



It consists of a series of white marble slabs, something over four 

 feet wide, upon which are sculptured, in high relief, the heroes 

 and defenders of Athens, mounted on horses, and some of these 

 horses are pacing, while others are trotting and cantering. This 

 is the first undoubted record we have of the pacer, and it is now 

 over two thousand three hundred and thirty years old. 



Britain became a Koman province in the reign of Claudius, in 

 the first part of the first century of the Christian era, and it con- 

 tinued under the Roman yoke until A!D. 426, when the troops 

 were withdrawn to help Valentinian against the Huns, and never 

 returned. When Julius Cassar first invaded Britain, in the year 

 B.C. 55, he found the inhabitants fierce and warlike and abun- 

 dantly supplied with horses and war chariots. These chariots 

 were driven with great daring and skill, and the fact was thus 

 demonstrated that this kind of warfare was not a new thing to 

 the Britons, and that they were not to be easily subdued. The 

 next year he returned again, but the second seems to have been 

 no more successful than the first expedition. But little is known 

 of the extent of territory overrun or the result of these invasions 

 beyond the fact that no setttlement was made then, and none till 

 about ninety years afterward, when under the reign of Claudius, 

 a strong military colony was planted there and Britain became a 

 Roman province. During these centuries of bondage we know 

 practically nothing of the lives of the slaves and but little of 

 their masters, except the remnants of military works for aggression 

 and defence, and the magnificent roads they constructed where- 

 ever they moved their armies. In relation to their horses, I will 

 make a few extracts from a work published about the beginning of 

 this century, by Mr. John Lawrence, a man of great research and in- 

 telligence, besides of a wide acquaintance with the practical affairs 

 of the horse, and, I may add, altogether the most reliable writer 

 of his period. He says: 



" In forming the paces, if the colt was not naturally of a proud and lofty 

 action, like the Spanish or Persian horses, wooden rollers and weights were 

 i ound to their pastern joints, which gave them the habit of lifting up their 

 feet. This method, also, was practiced in teaching them the ambulatura, or 

 amble (pace), perhaps universally t e common traveling pace of the Romans. 



"That natural and most excellent pace, the trot, seems to have been very 

 little prized or attended to by the ancients, and was, indeed, by the Romans 

 held in a kind of contempt, or aversion, as is demonstrated by the terms which 

 served to describe it. A trotting horse was called by them succussator, o: 

 shaker, and sometimes cruciator, or tormentor, which bad terms, it may be pre- 



