306 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



the latter secured possession not only of the best breeds of Asia, 

 but was able to add to his stud the best blood of Libya, for 

 instance when he marched into Egypt the Cyrenians sent him 

 a present of three hundred horses, doubtless the best that 

 their land could furnish. The effect of this may be traced in 

 the fact that Thrace and Macedonia continued to be famous 

 for their horses under the Roman domination, and, as we have 

 already seen (p. 282), the Thracian horses were noted for their 

 dark colour, with white feet and a white mark on the forehead \ 

 whilst in Byzantine times the emperors of the East kept large 

 studs of brood mares in that region^. 



In Alexander's time the best horses of Asia were strongly- 

 built animals, showing not much breeding, if we may judge from 

 a fragment of one of the horses (Fig. 88) from the famous chariot- 

 group that once surmounted the Mausoleum (built B.C. 351 — 

 341) at Halicarnassus. This with the other surviving fragments 

 of the sculptures is now in the British Museum. Thus the suc- 

 cessors of Alexander, whether in Egypt, Asia, or Europe, were 

 equipped with the best war-horses that the world had yet seen, 

 and the Seleucid kings of Syria, who had become the masters 

 of the famous Nisaean race (pp. 192-3), paid great attention 

 to the breeding of horses, a circumstance which probably led 

 them to place a mare suckling her foal as a favourite type on 

 their coins. In the struggle of Rome against the Macedonian 

 and Asiatic monarchs the superiority of the latter in cavalry was 

 one of the chief difficulties with which she had to contend. 



Let us now return to Italy and trace as far as we can from 

 the scanty records the history of the horse at Rome and in 

 Upper Italy. 



I have already shown that from the early Iron Age the 

 TJmbrians had been using chariots. Accordingly we would be 

 almost justified in assuming that the Romans had done the 



^ Virgil, Aen. v. 565 : 



quern Thracius albis 



poitat equus bicolor maculis, vestigia primi 



alba pedis, frontemque ostentans arduus albam. 



2 Procopius, de Bella Vandalico, i. 12: iirel jBaaiXevs 'iirvois otl /idXicrra 



irXflffTois Tov arpaTTjyoi' evravda iSupeiro ek tQv ^acriKiKujv 'nrirocpop^lwv, a ol 



viixovTOLi es ra eirl Qpq.K-rj's x<^p'^°- See also Bell. Goth. iv. 27. 



