46 THE HORSE IN HISTORY 



Attempts have repeatedly been made to trace 

 the life of Xenophon prior to the time when, 

 in 401 B.C., he first joined the army of Cyrus, 

 but in vain. He is, however, known to have 

 been a close friend of Socrates from a very 

 early age, and probably when he wrote the 

 " Anabasis" he was a little over thirty. But 

 when he died, about the year 355 B.C., he was 

 quite an old man. 



Historians are almost unanimous in declaring 

 that at Marathon, in 490 B.C., the Athenians were 

 without cavalry, though by that time many of 

 the wealthy citizens undoubtedly owned horses, 

 some of which they most likely used for racing. 

 When, however, the Athenians came to realise 

 what an amount of execution could be done, 

 and to see the execution that was done by the 

 Persians, with the help of cavalry, they set to 

 work to organise in Athens, as quickly as possible, 

 a powerful body of mounted warriors. 



How formidable that cavalry later on proved 

 itself to be is well known to all classical scholars, 

 and the more surprising it therefore is that 

 the Greek cavalry should not afterwards have 

 risen to the level of that organised by Mace- 

 donians. Indeed, according to more than one 

 historian, the Greek cavalry was employed chiefly 

 to harass an enemy when marching, or to pursue 

 a vanquished and retreating regiment, while one 

 writer at least maintains that the Greek cavalry 



