Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 289 



in which the tail is set on and carried. As the myth of Pegasus 

 does not appear in Homer, and as the Cyprus paintings come 

 at the close of, or after, the Homeric period, the appearance 

 of the Libyan horse on such vases is quite in accord with the 

 literary data. 



Meanwhile the Acheans had come down from central Europe 

 with the dun-coloured horses of that region yoked to chariots 

 with wheels of eight spokes. In Homer only dun-coloured horses 

 are known in Greece itself; white horses, though known in 

 Thrace, apparently not yet having been imported into Greece, 

 while the one bay horse mentioned, of which we shall speak 

 at greater length, was bred in Asia. 



FIG. 82. Vase fragment from Enkomi, Cyprus. 



We have seen that by the tenth century B.C. Libyan horses 

 were being imported from Egypt into anterior Asia for the 

 kings of Syria and the Hittites, and we have found that bay or 

 chestnut colour, frequently accompanied by a white mark on the 

 forehead and white 'stockings,' is the characteristic colouring of 

 the Libyan horse and his purest derivatives down to the present 

 day, being thus clearly distinguished from the lighter colours 

 dun, rufous-grey, grey, and white which form the liveries of 

 horses either of pure Asiatic and European ancestry, or with 

 but a small infusion of Libyan blood. Now the Iliad yields at 

 least one piece of evidence that the Libyan horse had made its 

 way not only into Syria and the land of the Hittites, but even 

 as far as the north-western corner of Asia Minor before 1000 B.C., 

 R. H. 19 



