INTRODUCTION. 87 



rioteers, with institutions akin to those of Indian 

 nations. * 



Both events synchronise with the heroic age of 

 Greece, and are sufficiently near the periods of the 

 expulsion of the shepherds, the invasion of Asia by 

 Sesostris or Remses II. and III., and the Indian 

 epic legends, to establish the epoch of great move- 

 ments through all the regions in question, and fix 

 the period when horse, chariot, and rider first make 

 their appearance : the northern nations exclusively 

 as riders ; at Nineveh, t in Asia Minor, and in 



* If the half-civilized Centaurs divided at the foot of the 

 Carpathians and pushed onwards to the Baltic, traces of which 

 might be pointed out in their peculiar horses, we would have 

 a clue to the arrival of the first Asa race in Northern Europe, 

 and account for their riding gods, their Indian divinities, their 

 horse sacrifices, and their language approximating to the San- 

 scrit, and the mythical legends of Sagara and Asa-manga. 



f Mr. Rich mentions a bas-relief of a man on horseback, 

 carved in stone, being found at Nineveh, but destroyed for 

 building purposes before his visit to that city ; and he repre- 

 sents a cylinder having the figure of a riding sportsman catch- 

 ing a deer with a casting-net, found at the same place. 



Sesonchosis first mounted a horse according to Apoll. in 

 natalis comes. 



Bellerophon on the winged Pegasus in Pliny, the Amazons 

 in Lysias Rhetor , and, lastly, Mareo, a person half-man half- 

 horse, first taught riding to the Italian people ; his name is the 

 same as Maron^ a horse^ in the Thracian tongue, and shows, as 

 Centaur or Lapitha, that he was of the race of mounted in- 

 vaders from Asia. There is even an older evidence that riding 

 was not unknown in the days of Jacob, in Genesis xlix. 17, — 

 " An adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that 

 his rider falleth backward." 



