Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 251 



and as we have now shown that grey horses and black horses 

 with white feet result from crossing the Upper Asiatic and the 

 so-called Arab, it follows that the breed of Dongola is not 

 a primeval stock (E. c. africanus) as was held by Sanson, but 

 only a blend of comparatively modern origin. 



It is now clear that Egypt could have obtained from the 

 Libyans the horses which she exported into anterior Asia in the 

 tenth century B.C., and it is likewise certain that when the 

 Greeks planted Gyrene in B.C. 632, they found the Libyans 

 not only employing the two-horse and four-horse chariot, but 

 also generally riding on horseback. Herodotus explicitly tells 

 us that "the Greeks learned from the Libyans to yoke four 

 horses to a chariot 1 ." It is therefore not without significance 

 that the four-horse chariot and the ridden horse (keles) were 

 only given places in the Olympic contests (the former in 

 B.C. 680, the latter in B.C. 648) in the same century that saw the 

 founding of Gyrene. The four-horse chariot does not seem to 

 have been ever employed by any of the peoples of Upper Europe, 

 by Vedic Aryans, Persians, Assyrians, Canaanites or Egyptians 

 or by the Homeric Acheans. For although in two passages of 

 Homer mention is made 2 of "four male horses yoked together," 

 these only refer to the occasional practice of attaching one 

 trace-horse or two to the regular pair, under special circum- 

 stances, either in war or for racing, an idea which may very 

 well have been borrowed from Libya long before the foundation of 

 Gyrene, for it is plain from Homer that the Homeric Greeks 

 were well acquainted with that country. Moreover, it is very 

 significant that one of the passages from Homer where mention 

 is made of a four-horse chariot is a simile, whilst the other does 

 not refer to a contemporary event, but is in a tale of a bygone 

 age when king Augeas reigned in Elis before Pelops and his 

 Acheans came and conquered the old Pelasgian inhabitants. 

 Nestor relates how Neleus, the Pelasgian king of Pylus, had sent 

 a four-horse chariot to Elis to race for a tripod and how Augeas 

 had kept the horses and sent back the charioteer without them. 

 But as the legends of the Bronze Age of Greece have frequent 



1 iv. 189. 2 IL xi. 699-702; Odyss. xm. 81. 



