XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP 19 



where a horse seizes a rigid bit he has the whole 

 of it fast between his teeth . . . but the other sort 

 is similar to a chain, for whatever part of it be 

 taken hold of, that part alone remains unbent — 

 the rest hangs." 



So that apparently bits single- and double- 

 jointed, and therefore flexible, were used in the 

 early Iron Age by the people of North- Western 

 Europe. 



By the beginning of the fourth century B.C. 

 many, though not all, of the Greek and the 

 Macedonian mounted soldiers had come to con- 

 sider some sort of covering for the horse's back 

 to be necessary to their equipment ; and so long 

 previously as the eighth century B.C. horse cloths 

 had been adopted by the Assyrians, a people 

 sufficiently wise to realise from the first that a 

 horse with something on his back is more com- 

 fortable to sit upon than one without. 



These early races probably would have em- 

 ployed cavalry several centuries sooner than they 

 eventually did, but for the difficulty they 

 experienced in arming themselves to their com- 

 plete satisfaction when mounted.^ Such peoples, 

 for instance, as the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and 

 the Greeks of the Mycenean or Bronze Age, 

 habitually protected themselves with the aid of 



