VALUE OF CHARIOTS IN WAR 71 



"Thus in battle they afforded the mobility of 

 cavalry, and the steadiness of infantry. 



" Daily practice enabled them to pull up their 

 horses when in full speed on a slope or steep 

 declivity, to check or turn them in a narrow 

 space, to run out on the pole and stand on the 

 yoke, and to get nimbly back again into the 

 chariot." 



All of which sounds simple and delightful. In 

 practice, however, it did not often "work out." 

 For too frequently the wheels of the chariots be- 

 came clogged, sometimes they jammed in the 

 wheels of other chariots — not necessarily the 

 enemy's — and frequently the horses, driven to 

 frenzy by pain and terror, stampeded on all sides. 



Therefore the "steadiness of infantry," of 

 which Caesar talks so glibly, must in many 

 instances have existed purely in his imagination, 

 and there can be little doubt that the warriors, 

 carried away nolens volens by their frenzied 

 horses, often "retreated readily to their own 

 side " long before the enemy pressed them to do 

 so, a regrettable incident which Caesar passes 

 over with perfunctory comment. And perhaps he 

 is not to be found fault with for doing this, seeing 

 that similar tactics have been indulged in by many 

 of the most successful of our military strategists 

 of modern times. 



Probably by Caesar's time the practice of 

 placing a covering of some sort upon the backs 



