Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 203 



Some years later Aulus Plotius\ one of Pomi^ey's lieutenants 

 in his campaign in Judaea (B.C. 67), placed a similar type (the 

 camel also being one-humped) on a coin 

 which he struck to commemorate his victory 

 over some Jewish chieftain, as is shown by 

 the legend Ivdaevs Bacchivs (Fig. 66). 



It is now plain from the statements of 

 the profane writers that the tribes of north 

 and south Arabia did not breed horses before 

 the Christian era, though they had asses and p^^ gg ^^^^ ^^ 

 camels in abundance, and the same writers Aulus Plotius. 

 make it clear that whilst there were no wild 

 horses in Arabia, there were both wild asses and wild camels, 

 facts which may explain the early domestication of the ass and 

 camel and the late appearance of the horse in that region. 



Nor was this condition of things of recent date in Arabia 

 Petraea and Arabia Felix, for the evidence of the Semites 

 themselves set forth in the Old Testament puts it beyond 

 doubt that neither the tribes of Arabia Proper nor those 

 of Mesopotamia possessed horses until a comparatively late 

 period. 



Thus Job, who dwelt in the land of Uz^ which is identified 

 with Arabia Petraea, though he was "the greatest of all the 

 men of the east," and possessed seven thousand sheep, three 

 thousand camels, and five hundred voke of oxen, did not own a 

 single horse, his only equine possessions being five hundred she- 

 asses. If so great a sheikh as Job did not possess horses, we 

 may reasonably infer that these were as little bred or used in 

 Arabia, when the Book of Job was composed, as they were in 

 the days of Strabo. Nor is there any more reason for believing 

 that the Sabaeans, who fell upon Job's oxen as they were plough- 

 ing, and his she-asses as they were feeding beside the oxen, 

 were any better provided with horses than they were at the 

 later date. 



Of course it is clear that the author of the Book of Job 

 wa^ well acquainted with the war-horse, " who paweth in the 



1 Mommsen, op. cit., Vol. ii. p. 495. 

 - Job i. 1; Jer. xxv. 20; Lam. iv. 21. 



