76 THE HORSE IN HISTORY 



The meeting was held at Netherby, in York- 

 shire. 



These races were run apparently not long be- 

 fore the assassination of the ill-starred emperor 

 in 222 by the soldiers whom Maximus had cor- 

 rupted. At other stations as well horse races took 

 place during the Roman occupation, and Carleon, 

 Silchester, Rushborough and Dorchester are men- 

 tioned as being among the localities which had to 

 do with the very primitive " Turf " of that period. 



Perhaps the undeniable superiority of the 

 British thoroughbred over the horses of other 

 nations to-day may in a measure be due to the 

 time and attention the Romans of that era devoted 

 to the importation of horses of Eastern blood. 

 This seems more likely still to be the case 

 when we remember that the majority of the best 

 of the English mares were crossed with Arabian 

 stallions in the years that followed, and that a 

 succession of such stallions was imported through- 

 out the early and the Middle Ages, and from that 

 time onward right down through the sixteenth, 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as we shall 

 see presently. 



By the beginning of the era of the Saxon kings 

 an Arab steed had come to be looked upon as a 

 recognised royal gift. According to one authority, 

 indeed, Boadicea, the intrepid queen who led the 

 Iceni against the Roman invaders, was greatly 

 attached to her horses. 



