128 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



prefer mares' milk to that of the cow naturally suggests that 

 the Turko-Tartaric peoples 1 had domesticated the horse before 

 they possessed the ox, and that they tamed the former not for 

 locomotion, but rather as a means of subsistence. The treeless 

 steppes of Asia probably at no time produced wild cattle which 

 always haunt wooded regions, and accordingly when at a later 

 date the Scythians and cognate peoples acquired domestic 

 cattle a taste for mares' milk had already been long engrained 

 in the race. 



They used in ordinary sacrifices ' all kinds of animals as 

 victims, but most commonly horses 2 . When a Scythian king 

 died, his horse, as well as one of his concubines, his cook, his 

 cupbearer, and several other chief members of his household, 

 were buried with him, as we learn from Herodotus 3 , the ac- 

 curacy of whose statement has been amply confirmed by the 

 evidence of the great tumuli opened in Russia during the last 

 half-century. After the lapse of a year further ceremonies took 

 place at the king's grave. Fifty of the best youths from amongst 

 his attendants, all native Scythians, were strangled, with fifty 

 of the best horses. All the bodies were disembowelled and 

 stuffed with chaff. The bodies of the youths were then 

 fixed upright on those of the horses, which previously had 

 been set up on posts in a circle round the grave, each horse 

 being furnished with a bit and bridle 4 . Doubtless this 

 ghastly squadron was intended to keep watch and ward around 

 the last resting-place of their lord. We shall presently find 

 a survival of these horrid practices in full operation among 

 the Tartars in the thirteenth century of our era. 



Away to the north of the Sauromatae' dwelt a tribe called 



1 All these peoples have a common name (at) for the horse, just as all the 

 Indo-European peoples have had a common term which appears, in Sanskrit 

 acvas, Lat. equus, Irish ech, Welsh eb, Gaulish epona, Greek I'TTTTOS etc. 



2 Herod, iv. 62. 



3 rv. 72. In 1341 a Couman prince named Jonach died at Constantinople, 

 and when he was buried in a tumulus near that city, eight warriors and twenty- 

 six horses were slain (Jirecek, Geschichte Bulgariens, p. 172, cited by Seure, 

 Bui. Corresp. Hellen. xxv. p. 204). As late as 1781 at the funeral of Frederic 

 Casimir, Commander of Lorraine, a horse was killed and buried with his master. 



4 Herod, iv. 72. 



