300 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



his hind legs well apart and will thus have a quicker and firmer 

 step, a better seat for a rider, and will be better in every 

 respect." 



The description of the head shows that Xenophon knew 

 what a well-bred horse was like, and indeed by his day it is 

 highly probable that the best horses in Greece were more and 

 more saturated with Libyan blood. We saw that various 

 shades of grey, then black, and finally chestnut and bay are 

 the sure tokens of the gradual increase in the amount of Libyan 

 blood in the horses of Asia, North Africa, and Spain. We 

 have had already clear evidence of grey and black horses in 

 Greece, but it is not until the fourth century B.C. that we have 

 undoubted mention of chestnut. That the Greeks of the fourth 

 century B.C. had chestnut horses with yellow manes is rendered 

 certain by a famous story told by Plutarch 1 , how on the eve 

 of the battle of Leuctra Pelopidas dreamed that he saw the 

 daughters of Scedaus lamenting round their graves, and that 

 their father urged him, if he wished for victory on the morrow, 

 to sacrifice a fair-haired (gavQtf) virgin to his daughters. Pelo- 

 pidas told his dream to the seers and chiefs, and they long 

 disputed, one party urging a human sacrifice, the other main- 

 taining that such acts found no favour in the sight of the Father 

 of all. At that moment a filly with bright yellow mane came 

 galloping up and stopped short before them. Theocritus the seer 

 cried out to Pelopidas, " Here is the victim you want. Let us 

 wait for no other virgin; take thou and use God's gift." Again, 

 Aristotle 2 when describing the colour of the bisons (bonasi), 

 which still survived in Paeonia down to his day, says that 

 the colour of their hair was a mixture of ash-colour and 

 red, not such as that of the horses termed paroai, that is, of 

 the colour of the paroas, a reddish-brown snake, sacred to 

 Aesculapius. As red (purros) is the term used for a bay 

 horse in Revelation, it is probable that the Greeks used paroas 

 to distinguish chestnut from bay. 



As in Homeric days Thessaly had excellent dun and 

 dappled-dun horses, so her horses and cavalry enjoyed great 



1 Pelop. 20-2. 



2 H. A. vin. 32 : TO d x/ow/xa rov r/3tx c ^A taros ^X ei Tt fltffov re^pou /cat irvppov. 



