Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 105 



steeds and their progeny. This practice, which was not fol- 

 lowed by either Hiero or his son Gelon, was revived by the 

 foolish Hieronymus, who clad in purple and wearing a diadem 

 used to drive forth from the palace in a quadriga drawn by 

 white horses, like a second Dionysius\ White horses were 

 apparently in favour with the Sicilian aristocrats at the close 

 of the fifth century B.C. According to Diodorus Siculus^, 

 Exaenetus of Agrigentum, on returning home after his victory 

 with his chariot at the Olympic games in 412 B.C., was brought 

 into the town escorted by 300 bigae drawn by white horses. 



The statement that white horses were sacrificed by the 

 Illyrian Veneti in a shrine called after Diomedes by the 

 Greeks has every stamp of truth, for we know that it was a 

 general practice amongst the Illyrians to sacrifice horses to 

 a deity identified with Cronus by the Greeks. Moreover, we 

 shall jjresently see that white horses were held in special 

 esteem by the tribes of Germany, and we shall find that the 

 sacrifice of horses was a characteristic of the religion of the 

 Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples. The value set on white 

 horses by the Sicilian Greeks and by various other peoples both 

 ancient and modern was due not to any superiority in speed or 

 other qualities, but rather to the sanctity attached to animals 

 of a white colour, as for instance to white elephants in Further 

 India, and to white asses in Persia. 



At the dawn of history all the peoples of the Balkan penin- 

 sula like those of the Italian seem to have kept horses, but 

 they all appear to have used the chariot and never mounted 

 the steed. The Upper Balkan was occupied almost wholly by | 

 the closely related Illyrian and Thracian tribes on whom the \ 

 fair-haired people known as Celts to the Greek writers of the | 

 classical period, were constantly pressing down. These Celts / 

 were distinguished from the indigenous tribes, not only by 

 their xanthochrous complexion, but by the fact that whilst 

 all the Illyrian and Thracian tribes tattooed, the Celts never j 

 followed this custom. The Thracians tattooed themselves with 

 figures of animals such as deer, which were probably their 



^ Livy, XXIV. 5. ^ xm. 82. 



