78 THE HORSE IN HISTORY 



if we bear in mind the purchasing value of the 

 coinage of the period. 



That the Romans were given to sacrificing 

 horses to their gods, Pliny the elder has made 

 plain to us. He is said to have written an ex- 

 haustive work upon steeds of a certain stamp, 

 but unfortunately the book must have been 

 destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., 

 when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried, and 

 some 200,000 human beings killed, among them 

 Pliny. 



As he points out in his " Natural History," 

 however, the sacrifices of horses took place 

 frequently, especially upon occasions of public 

 solemnity, and he mentions that horses to be 

 immolated were not allowed to be touched even 

 by the Flamen. 



Whether or no the Romans habitually sacrificed 

 white horses, after the manner of the Greeks, 

 Illyrians and Persians, is not stated. They did, 

 however, harness white horses to their chariots 

 upon these and other state occasions, and thus we 

 read that when Julius Caesar returned from Africa 

 the quadriga in which he drove was, by order of 

 the Senate, drawn by milk-white steeds. 



Tacitus tells us that on some occasions when 

 a distinguished chief died the dead man's horse 

 was cremated on the funeral pyre beside its 

 master's body, and we know that the superstitious 

 beliefs of the Persians were upon a par with those 



