ANCIENT CHARIOT. 29! 



jeJl it at firft fight, from the nature of the thing itfelf. 

 But this attempt of running foul on one another, and 

 crofTmg upon each other, is contrary to faB, is con- 

 trary to the laws of the courfe, which forbad all fraud, 

 all croffing or joftling, as our modern racers term it. 

 And we find in the 23d book of Homer's Iliad, that 

 Antilochiis was deprived of the prize he claimed (which 

 prize was given to Menelaus) becaufe he (Antilochus) 

 had crofTed upon, and attempted to run foul of the 

 chariot of Menelaus. 



All this perplexity is relieved, and the difficulty 

 cleared up, by the explication which I have given 

 above : for by that route of the race, he that was outer- 

 moft at the fetting oif, returning to the fame gi'ound 

 with the ftarting-poll upon the right, would be inner- 

 moft at the coming in ; and if the race confilled of 

 more circuits than one, the competitors would be al- 

 ternately outermoft and innermoft at each alternate 

 wheeling. So that he who ran the largell circle in the 

 firfl circuit, would run the leifer in the fecond, and 

 vice verfa. 



Whoever will read the account of the chariot race 

 in the Elecira of Sophocles, and will particularly attend 

 to the nature of the accident which happened between 

 the Thracian and Lybian cars j and to the fatal one 

 which befel Orejles at the clofe of the race, will be con- 

 firmed in this opinion. The narrative tells us, That 

 the chariots having finiflied the third iiratit, and run- 

 ning the fourth, fome of them had made the feventh 



P p 2 wheeling, 



