Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 287 



Medusa, was born in Libya, where he had sprung from the 

 body of his mother, when that monster fell to the sword of 

 Perseus \ Thus, then, this most famous of stories shows clearly 

 that the early Greeks held that not only the best of all horses 

 were bred in North Africa, but also that the Greeks knew not 

 how to ride on horseback until they had borrowed that practice 

 along with the Libyan horse, which was a little taller and 

 infinitely superior in speed to the little dun horses of Europe. 

 So great a feat was the mounting on horseback considered that 

 Athena herself, according to the myth, had to bridle and subdue 

 Pegasus for her favourite Bellerophon of Corinth^ 



In each case Poseidon — who was the chief deity of Libya, 

 as well as of the indigenous population of Greece — is repre- 

 sented as the sire of these, the most famous horses of early 

 Greece. The evidence of the myths, as far as it goes, taken 

 along with that of the chariot-wheels, points to North Africa as 

 the region from which the Greeks of Peloponnesus first heard 

 of the horse and the chariot, and later on learned the art of 

 mounting the horse itself 



This view is confirmed by certain pieces of evidence derived 

 from recent discoveries in Crete and Cyprus. Even if the 

 Libyan horse had never been seen on the mainland of Greece 

 by Homeric times it is not at all improbable that it was known 

 in Crete and Cyprus, which were not only in close communica- 

 tion with Egypt for many centuries before the Achean conquest 

 of Greece, but had also constant intercourse for trading purposes 

 in Homeric days with the coast of Libya, as is proved by more 

 than one passage in the Odyssey '\ We have seen that the 

 Mycenean chariot (Fig. 47), like the Libyan and the earliest 

 Egyptian chariot (pp. 224-5), had only four spokes. It is 

 therefore interesting to find that not only are the chariots in 

 the pictographs found by Mr A. J. Evans in the palace of 

 Cnossus furnished with four-spoked wheels, but that similar 

 chariot-wheels appear on the vases of the late Mycenean period 

 found at Enkomi (Figs. 81-2) and Curium in Cyprus^ We 



1 Apollocl. II. 3. 2. 2 paus jj 4 i 



3 IV. 85, XIV. 295, XVII. 442 sqq. 



* Excavations in Cyprus, by A. S. Murray, A. H. Smith, and H. B. Walters 



