ii6 ACHAEAN HORSEMEN 



The Ocean God gave Peleus a chariot team 

 " Dapple " and " Dun " by name, both with 

 great flowing manes, " swift as the winds, the 

 horses that the harp}^, Podarge bare to the 

 West Wind as she w^as grazing on the meadow 

 beside the stream of Oceanus " Peleus lent the 

 teami to his son Achilles. Then Achilles' 

 charioteer was killed in battle, and the horses 

 mourned. '* Hot tears," says Homer, " flowed 

 from their eyes to the ground as they mourned 

 for their charioteer." The fellow used to oil 

 their manes, poor dears. They wept from the 

 eyes, and not, as modern horses do, from the 

 nostrils. But then you see they were not 

 ordinary horses, because their mother was a 

 harpy {vide books on Unnatural History), and 

 their sire was the West Wind. They were 

 foaled on the shores of the Western ocean : 

 Dapple of the woods. Dun of the grass lands. 

 And Pegasus was a Bay from Africa. So one 

 finds in the oldest myths of the Hellenes record 

 of the three primary stocks from whom all 

 modern breeds are descended. 



To these Hellenes the hearth, the log cabin 

 and the mother were sacred, the bases of all 

 religion. The hearth became an altar, the 

 cabin a glorious temple of white marble, the 

 mother a goddess whose statue was ivory and 



