8 THE CONDITION OF HUNTERS 



and, strange to say, many grave writers contend for 

 the actual existence of the monster. Plutarch 

 mentions one as having been seen at Corinth ; and 

 Pliny, who ought to have known better, says he him- 

 self saw one embalmed in honey, which had been 

 brought from Egypt to Rome by the Emperor Claudius. 

 This, however, is not the last upon record ; for St 

 Jerome mentions, in the life of Paul the Hermit, that 

 a centaur had been seen by St Anthony. Now, as 

 one good father could not, with propriety, doubt the 

 veracity of another good father, it seems he only 

 doubted the eye-sight of the Saint, and suspected the 

 object to have been an illusion of the devil. I think 

 we may fairly conclude that these monsters never 

 existed but in the imagination of a madman, or a poet, 

 or of some outlandish Greek who first saw a man upon 

 a horse's back, which is not altogether an unnatural 

 conclusion. Few stories, however, are more famous 

 in historical fable than the battle of the centaurs with 

 the Lapithae, when they all got drunk at a wedding. 

 Authors are divided as to the time when men first 

 mounted horses ; but from passages in the Bible, it 

 appears that we are indebted to Egypt for the 

 equestrian art. That it was cultivated in Homer's 

 time is certain ; and it seems the Greeks transmitted 

 it to the Romans, who soon excelled their masters. 

 Herodotus, in Thalia, speaks of hunting on horses in 

 the time of Darius : also, in Melpomene, that the 

 Amazons hunted on horseback with their husbands. 

 Xenophon teUs us Cyrus did so when he exercised 

 himself and his horses. Ovid speaks of Castor and 



