104 THE HORSE IN HISTORY 



famous for what must be described as their gentle- 

 ness and their intelligence, characteristics which 

 apparently marked some of the Libyan races. 



The horses of Europe, on the other hand, were 

 vicious in various ways, and less tractable, but 

 also they were less timid than the Libyan horses. 



It is curious to read, then, that the European 

 races that owned these horses had several char- 

 acteristics in common. In addition it is well 

 known that in the melde of a battle the horses of 

 the contending armies quite commonly bit savagely 

 one at another, and some of the early writers 

 whose utterances can be relied upon maintain 

 that even in the thick of the fight such horses 

 but rarely bit or savaged horses other than the 

 enemy's, and the enemy themselves. 



Another point worth noting is that though 

 often in the early ages horses were immolated, 

 yet deliberate cruelty to a horse upon other 

 occasions was almost universally condemned by 

 law. No precautions, however, were taken for the 

 prevention of cruelty to any other sort of animal. 



This is, in itself, significant, for it can hardly 

 be supposed that unnecessary cruelty to horses was 

 condemned from the standpoint of the humani- 

 tarian. Probably it was the horse's usefulness 

 to mankind that served to guard him against 

 ill-usage, and, as we shall see presently, it was 

 this same usefulness that protected him from ill- 

 treatment in centuries long after the Conquest. 



