480 THE DEVELOPMENT OF EQUITATION [CH. 



The Bit. It has been shown that the Libyan horse, 

 whether driven under the chariots of Egyptian kings in the 

 second millennium B.C., or ridden by the native Libyans in the 

 centuries before Christ, or in the present day when ridden by 

 Arabs or driven under the Neapolitan carrozzella, was and is 

 controlled by a noseband without any bit, and the evidence is 

 equally clear that from the earliest times the Asiatic-European 

 horses have had to be controlled by a bit at first made of horn 

 and bone and later of copper, bronze and iron, whilst in at 

 least one case it was found necessary in ancient days to muzzle 

 the horses of North-western India. The primitive bits found 

 in Asia, Russia, and in the Swiss Lake-dwellings consist of 

 two side pieces and a cross piece, a type which survived in 

 the bits brought by the Huns into Europe. The earliest 

 literary evidence for the use of bits is furnished by the Iliad, 

 for in one passage the bronze bits are placed between the jaws 

 of the horses. As regards the shape of those bits we have no 

 means of judging, but as they were used to control the dun- 

 coloured horses of Upper Europe brought down by the Acheans 

 into Greece, there is a prima facie probability that they were of 

 the type found in Central Europe. Bits of this type were pro- 

 bably known to Xenophon 1 , for though he holds that it was 

 necessary for a horseman to have two kinds of bits one with 

 smooth and moderate-sized links, the other with heavy links, 

 with sharp points (in order that when the horse takes the latter 

 into his mouth he may be offended with its roughness and con- 

 sequently let it go), and after he has been trained with the 

 rough bit, he may be ridden with the smooth, yet he emphati- 

 cally urges "that whatever sorts of bits may be used, they should 

 all be flexible, for wherever a horse seizes a rigid bit, he has the 

 whole of it fast between his teeth, as a person when he takes up 

 a stick wherever he lays hold of it, raises up the whole. But 

 the other sort of bit is similar to a chain, for of whatever part of 

 it a person takes hold, that part alone remains unbent, but the 

 rest hangs." The bits used in North-western Europe in the 

 early Iron Age (pp. 96, 98) were more or less flexible, for in the 

 middle they were either single jointed or double jointed (Fig. 45). 



1 De re equestri, 10. 6. 



