308 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



white horses^ The Romans so firmly believed in the superior 

 fleetness of horses of that colour that "to outstrip with white 

 horses" became a proverbial expression for an easy victory^, and 

 Virgil' represents Turnus, king of the Rutuli, as drawn by 

 horses " which surpassed in whiteness the snow, in fleetness 

 the wind." 



At what time the Romans began to ride on horseback it is 

 impossible to say, but apparently they had begun to do so early 

 in the regal period. The original legion was said to have been 

 supplemented by three centuries of horsemen — the Ramnenses, 

 the Titienses, and the Lucres each supplying one hundred men. 

 In the constitution of Servius Tullius eighteen centuries of 

 horsemen were included amongst the ninety-eight centuries of 

 the First Class. The Romans owed little to their cavalry in their 

 conquests in Central Italy and at no time in their history did 

 their strength lie in their horsemen. The conquest of Tarentum 

 and the rest of Southern Italy furnished the Romans with 

 horses of a better quality for cavalry purposes, and as I have 

 already mentioned, it is very significant that the best horses of 

 Italy in Varro's day were the horses of Apulia, no doubt de- 

 scended from the famous breeds developed 

 by the Greeks of Southern Italy from 

 constant importation of Sicilian and Libyan 

 horses. It is not without significance that 

 when the Romans for the first time issued 

 silver money in 268 B.C. — four years after 

 the conquest of Southern Italy — they placed 



on their coins Castor and Pollux (Fio-. 89), 

 Fig. 89. Roman , , „ . n n^ 



Denarius ^ ^JP^ borrowed from coins oi larentum or 



Bruttii. It was but natural that the Romans 



should keep bringing up the good horses of Apulia to improve 



^ Dio Cassius, xliii. 14: evl re \€vkQp 'iinrojv Kal fiera pa^dovx<^>' kt\. 



^ Hor. Sat. i. 7. 7-8: Sisennas, Barros, ut equis praecurreret albis; cf. 

 Plant. Asin. ii. 2. 12: nam si se huic occasioni tempus subterduxerit, nunquam 

 edepol quadrigis albis indipiscet postea. 



' Aen. XII. 84: qui candore nives anteirent, cursibus auras. These white 

 horses are said to have been the gift of Orithyia, the wife of Boreas, the North 

 Wind. But Virgil as the practical farmer (p. 282) knows that white and dun 

 horses are inferior to bay. 



I 



