Ill] AND HISTOKIC TIMES 291 



rout. Them could we seize we should win us great renown ^" 

 Diomede accomplished his desire, and the horses of Aeneas 

 became his. One of them is described "as bay all the rest of 

 him, but in the forehead marked with a white star round like 

 the moon^" In the chariot-race at the funeral games held in 

 honour of Patroclus Diomede drove these horses and they 

 easily carried off the first prize ^ from the other Achean chiefs, 

 whose horses had all been bred in Greece* and, as we have seen, 

 were all dun-coloured {xanthos). As this is the only bay horse 

 mentioned in Homer, and as it stands in strong contrast to the 

 dun-coloured horses of Achilles and the other Acheans, and to 

 the white horses of Rhesus from Thrace, we may reasonably 

 infer that in this rare strain declared to be sprung from the 

 gods we have the earliest mention of the bay horses of North 

 Africa. But as Pegasus, the winged horse of Libya, was the 

 offspring of Poseidon himself, the poet's reason for ascribing 

 a divine origin to the dark-bay steeds is now obvious. 



In the determination of Anchises to obtain by fair means or 

 foul the services of a first-rate sire for his mares we see the 

 same anxiety as is now evinced by Arabs of other tribes to 

 obtain the use of Anazah stallions, and by Turcomans and Kurds 

 to secure the use of Arab sires for their mares. 



We have thus important indications in the Homeric poems 

 that the best horses known to the inhabitants of Greece at the 

 end of the second millennium B.C. were those of Northern Africa ; 

 we have also adduced evidence to show that a like belief was 

 held at a later period, and coupled with a further belief that 

 the first horse that was ridden came from the same region. 

 This belief, taken together with the fact that the race with 

 ridden horses was only added to the list of contests at Olympia 

 at a time when not only had the Greeks become well acquainted 

 with North Africa but were already establishing themselves in 

 the Cyrenaica, leads us to conclude that the Greeks not only 



^ Iliad, V. 265 sqq. 



2 Iliad, xxin. 454-5, (potvt^ = 'date-palm,' hence 'date-coloured' like Arab. 

 ku-mait (p. 177), and Lat. spadix (borrowed from Sicily) = ' date-ijalm ' and Lat. 

 hadius (whence It. haio, Fr. bale, Eng. hay) from Gr. /3dt's (from Coptic hai) 

 =:' palm-branch,' and must therefore mean either bay or chestnut (of. irvppos). 



^ Iliad, XXIII. 512 sqq. * Iliad, xxiii. 287 sqq. 



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