Ill] 



AND HISTORIC TIMES 



285 



Greek colonies of Southern Italy, and for Greece itself, we shall 

 now resume the history of the horse in Greece proper, and then 

 take up the story of that animal in Central and Upper Italy. 



We saw that the horses of the Acheans bred in Thessaly 

 and Elis were dun coloured, and that they were not ridden, but 

 driven in pairs under chariots. But the horse and the chariot 

 had already been known in the Bronze Age (Mycenean period), 

 before ever the sons of the Acheans had come. This is proved 

 by the grave-stones found on the acropolis of Mycenae over the 



Fig. 80. The Neapolitan Courser. 



famous shaft-graves which contained the rich treasures buried 

 with the royal Perseid house, which had reigned in the Bronze 

 Age in Argolis. Several of their stelae (Fig. 47, p. 107) show in 

 low relief a two-horse chariot in which is seated some personage, 

 not unlikely the ancient chief whose mouldering bones were 

 uncovered by Schliemann. Moreover the Homeric poems have 

 at least one reference to the horses kept by the men of the 

 pre-Achean time. The Iliad^ speaks thus of one steed of that 

 bygone age: "Not even if he drove at thy back divine Arion, 



1 XXIII. 346. 



