110 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



This inference is fully borne out by the evidence touching the 

 colour of horses supplied by the poems themselves. 



The Iliad and the Odyssey, which present us with immortal 

 pictures of the fair-haired Acheans, who in the early Iron age 

 became the masters of the Pelasgians of upper Greece and the 

 Peloponnesus, represent those heroes as breeders and drivers 

 of horses. The warrior goes to battle in a two-horse chariot 

 with his charioteer beside him, as was the practice of the Celts 

 of Gaul down to the century before Christ. We have also 

 clear evidence respecting the type and colour of their horses. 



The evidence of the Iliad amply suffices to show that the 

 horses bred and used by the Acheans were almost uniformly 

 dun-coloured, for the epithet xanthos, commonly applied to 

 them, was used by the Greeks to describe the colour of gold 

 and golden-coloured hair. In two passages at least this epithet 

 is applied generically to Achean horses. Achilles when he 

 rejects in scorn the gifts proffered by Agamemnon, exclaims, 

 " Kine and goodly flocks are to be had for the lifting, and 

 tripods and yellow-dun (xanthos) horses can be bought ; but to 

 bring back man's life neither harrying nor earning avail eth 

 when once it hath passed the barrier of his lips 1 ." Again, 

 'Nestor relates how once he headed a foray into the land of 

 the Eleans the land in which Pelops and the Acheans had 

 especially established themselves " and a prey exceeding abun- 

 dant did we drive together out of the plain, fifty herds of kine, 

 and as many flocks of sheep, and as many droves of swine, and 

 as many wide flocks of goats, and yellow-dun (xanthos) horses 

 a hundred and fifty, all mares, and many with their foals at 

 their feet 2 ." 



The horses of Achilles which had been given to his father 

 Peleus by Poseidon himself were named Xanthos (Dun) and 

 Balios (Dapple), " swift horses that flew as swift as the winds, 

 the horses that the harpy Podarge bare to the West W T ind, 

 as she grazed on the meadow by the stream of OceanusV 

 Here we have the earliest reference to the belief so common 

 in classical times that the fleetest horse came from the West 



1 II. ix. 407 sqq. 2 II. xi. 680 sqq. 3 II. xvi. 149 sqq. 



