822 



THE MODERN SYSTEM 



(4' Persia, by which ever afterwards their 

 country became known, was taken from Pe- 

 KESH, a word in Chaldee and Hebrew, signi- 

 fvinsr a Horseman. Immense numbers of these 

 animals were reared in the plains of Assyria 

 and Persia. We read in some author of no 

 less than 150,000 feeding on one vast plain 

 near the Caspian Gates. The Nysaean Horses, 

 which the kings of Persia used in their expe- 

 liitions, were celebrated as the finest in the 

 world. In Greece, the art of riding Horses, 

 and most probably the arrival of the Horse 

 himself, did not long precede the Trojan war. 

 The story of the Centajirs, semi-human Horses 

 and semi-equine men, as Ovid calls them, 

 warrants the inference that Horses then first 

 made their appearance in Thessaly, if not in 

 Greece. These people lived about a century 

 before the Trojan war ; for Chiron, wiio was 

 their chief, was the preceptor of Achilles. As 

 the poor Mexicans at the first appearance of 

 the Spanish cavalry ran off in a fright, con- 

 ceiving that man and Horse were but one 

 animal, so the people of Thessaly fled, panic- 

 struck, at the sight of the double-shaped, in- 

 comprehensible monster that charged them. 

 It is almost certain that these Centaurs were 

 a tribe of Pelasgi, or emigrants from Phrygia, 

 and the southern shores of the Euxine Sea, 

 which were occupied at an early period by a 

 colony of Egyptians, planted there by Sesostris 

 in his Phrygian and Scythian expedition. 

 Confirmatory of this derivation is the Grecian 

 tradition, as recorded by her antiquaries, that 

 Phylere, the mother of the Centaurs, co- 

 habited with Saturn in the Philyreis, an island 

 near the southern shore of the Euxine ; and 

 that from that island she emigrated to Thes- 

 saly, and the mountains of the Pelasgi. In 

 this way one might amnse himself by attempt- 



ing to trace, even from the few data afforded 

 by history, the circuit by which Horses, with 

 the consequent art of equestrian exercise, 

 passed from Egypt, the original and central 

 riding-school of the world, into Greece and 

 into Europe. From Egypt they passed into 

 Assyria and Persia ; from Assyria to Cappa- 

 docia, Ammazonia, and Pontus, countries 

 where Horses were most reared and most ad- 

 mired •, and, as the most admirable objects rn 

 animated nature, offered up as sacrifices to the 

 sun ; from Pontus they passed with the streams 

 of westward-rushing population, to Phrygia 

 and the southern banks of the Propontis ; and 

 from thence, with " Horse-taming" Pelops 

 and the Pelasgi, they migrated into Thessaly, 

 and confounded with their novel and terrifying 

 appearance, the simple and aboriginal inhabit- 

 ants, to whom " the Horse and his rider" 

 seemed a monster outlandish and inscrutable 1 

 it was not customary in these ancient times to 

 shoe Horses with iron, according to modem 

 practice ; so that a strong hoof, " hard as 

 brass" and solid " as the flint," was reckoned 

 one of the good qualities of a steed. In ori- 

 ental countries, the dryness of the roads 

 rendered this fortification of the hoofs less 

 necessary ; the muddy ways and miriness ot 

 the ground's surface in the north of Europe, 

 we suppose first caused and confirmed the 

 practice. Hannibal's cavalry, which were 

 principally Numidian, lost all their hoofs ia 

 the miry and embarrassing march through tha 

 marshy ground between Irebia and Fesulffi. 

 The Horses of the ancients had no saddles, 

 no stirrups ; and the Numidian Horses had 

 even no bridles ; but their armour and their 

 trappings must have compensated for those 

 deficiencies by their gorgeous and extran*'- 

 dinary splendour. 



