498 THE DEVELOPMENT OF EQUITATION [CH. 



bare-backed, to attack any number of cavalry so equipped 

 (ephippiati l ). 



The Saddle. It seems certain that attempts to make the 

 horse-cloth more comfortable for the rider were made from 

 time to time, and that it was gradually turned into a sort of 

 pad. This is the stage in which the Arab who rides on a 

 cotton pad and without stirrups still remains. Although there 

 is a well-known representation of a Scythian saddle closely 

 resembling the modern type, there is no evidence for the 

 existence in the Roman empire of a saddle with a regular 

 tree until the fourth century A.D., when on the column of 

 Theodosius (A.D. 380) the true saddle with bow behind and 

 before appears for the first time, and it is seen placed over 

 the old horse-cloth from which it had been itself evolved. 

 Henceforth it is known as the chair (Latin sella, whence 

 French selle). 



The Stirrup. Although objects which might be taken 

 for stirrup-leathers are seen attached to the Scythian saddle 

 mentioned above and to a Roman ephippium on a coin of 

 Labienus, stirrups (staffae, stapides) are not mentioned in 

 literature till about A.D. 600. It is significant that there is 

 no native word in either Greek or Latin for the stirrup, and 

 the names for it in French as well as in English are of 

 Teutonic origin. 



The English stirrup is simply a contracted form of Early 

 English, stige-rap (from stigan = ' to mount/ and rap = ' rope'), 

 i.e. ' mounting-rope.' Again, the French etrier is from the 

 Old High German estrifa (modern Germ. streif= Engl. strip), 

 a strap of leather. The original form was estrivier, the v of 

 which survives in etriviere, the stirrup-leather. This evidence, 

 taken in combination with that of the Scythian saddle and 

 the coin of Labienus, makes it fairly clear that the first stage 

 in the development of the stirrup was the attachment of 

 a rope or a strap of leather to the riding-pad to assist the 



1 Ephippium is glossed by Nonius as " tegimen equi ad mollem vecturam 

 paratum"; cf. Horace, Ep. i. 14, 43, "optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare 

 caballus." In the Digest stragula is used for a horse-cloth (cf. Martial, xiv. 86 : 

 ' stragulum veredi '). 



