102 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



silver, two caparisoned horses {equi phalerati) with their grooms, 

 cavalry armature, and cloaks, and gifts of apparel for the 

 members of their retinue, bond as well as free. These were the 

 voluntary gifts of the Senate. But at their own request each 

 of the two brothers was granted the right of buying ten horses, 

 and permission to export them out of Italy ^ 



Twenty stallions brought back by the Gallic chieftains to 

 their home beyond the Alps would in a very few years produce 

 a great effect on the quality of the little indigenous horses, 

 even if no fresh blood was imported. But Caesar himself, in a 

 passage shortly to be fully cited, points out that the Gauls were 

 always importing foreign horses and paying very long prices for 

 them. But as Caesar contrasts the excellence of the Gallic 

 horses with those of the German, it follows that the horses 

 imported by the Gauls must have been brought from the 

 countries lying south of the Alps and Pyrenees. 



It is very significant that on the series of silver Gaulish 

 coins, the earliest of which may be dated from about 150 B.C., 

 and which from the first commonly display native types and 

 not imitations of Greek or Roman issues, a horseman is one of 

 the most favourite types, whilst practically the chariot nowhere 

 appears, although it forms the regular type on the reverse of 

 the gold coins imitated from the gold stater of Philip II. of 

 Macedon, which bore on one side the head of Apollo, on the 

 other a two-horse chariot ^ 



It would appear that by Caesar's time the Belgic tribes, 

 who occupied all the region bounded by the Marne, the Seine 

 and the Rhine, had given up the use of chariots, although their 

 brethren who had crossed into south-eastern Britain continued 

 to employ them in warfare, for Caesar does not refer to the 

 use of war-chariots by the former in any of his campaigns 

 against them. Probably by his time they had obtained horses 

 of a kind fully suited for cavalry, and had therefore given up the 

 use of the chariot in war; their relations in Britain, though able 

 to put a considerable number of mounted men into the field, 



1 Livy, xLiii. 5, " Ilia petentibus data, ut denorum equorum eis commercium 

 esset, educendique ex Italia potestas fieret." 



2 Eidgeway, Origin of Metallic Currency, p. 90. 



