IV] THE ORIGIN OF THE LIBYAN HORSE 473 



dance to music and to perform tricks. On the other hand 

 Prejvalsky's horse is remarkable for its indomitable temper, 

 and the Mongolian pony is famous for its bad manners ; as 

 the horses of Libya were proverbial for their gentleness before 

 the Christian era, so on the contrary the horses of North- 

 western India are specially mentioned by Aelian on account of 

 their violent tempers and the difficulty of riding them, which 

 necessitated the use not merely of bits but of muzzles to 

 control them (p. 153), a fact in itself sufficient to disprove 

 Mr Lydekker's theory of the Indian origin of the Arab horse ; 

 that the horses of Eastern Europe were of a similar tempera- 

 ment is rendered highly probable by the statement of Strabo 

 that the Scythians and Sarmatians were the only peoples 

 who habitually castrated their horses, which they did to make 

 them more easy to manage (p. 25), and we have seen that 

 the term kadish applied to common Turcoman horses seems 

 primarily to have meant a gelding. The legend of the flesh- 

 eating mares of Diomede of Thrace points to a general belief 

 in the savage nature of the ancient horses of that region, 

 whilst in Roman times the horses of Dalmatia and Epirus, 

 which were heavy horses fit for war, were noted for their bad 

 tempers^ and the cross-bred horses of Persia descended from 

 the Upper Asiatic stock were noted for their intractability-. 

 Finally we have seen that cantherius, the Roman term for a 

 gelding, meant originally a pack-horse, and therefore an inferior 

 animal of the Upper European type. We have seen the 

 Libyans, Egyptians, medieval Irish and modern Arabs all 

 riding and driving the Libyan horse without a bit, but on 

 the other hand the Homeric Acheans were using bronze 

 bits to control their dun-coloured horses before 1000 B.C., 

 and bits of a primitive kind made not only of bronze or 

 copper but also of horn and bone are found in the Lake- 

 dwellings of Switzerland and in the pre-historic graves of 

 Russia and Central Asia, whilst the Massagetae in the fifth 

 century B.C. rode their horses with copper bits (p. 130), and 



1 Vegetius, Ars Veterin., iv. 6. 6: postea Epirotas, Sainaricos, ac Dalmatas, 

 licet contumaces ad frena. 



- Ibid., nisi labore subigetur assiduo, adversum equitem contumax. 



