COURAGE OF CESAR'S HORSES 105 



Indeed there are parts of the world where to 

 this day horses are well treated because to ill- 

 use them is deemed unwise policy. Thus in no 

 part of the Western States of America have I 

 ever seen a horse flogged unmercifully, and upon 

 several occasions when attention has been drawn 

 to this the reply has been practically the same : 

 " If we served them badly we should get less 

 work out of them," an observation that some 

 Englishmen, plenty of Frenchmen, and very 

 many Italians, who have to do with horses, 

 might with advantage bear in mind. 



The physical strength of horses in the very 

 early centuries must have been prodigious. If 

 the details we have of the way in which the early 

 war chariots were constructed are accurate, then 

 at least three of our twentieth-century horses 

 would be needed to accomplish the work, one 

 might almost say perform the feats, that a pair of 

 horses could do twelve or thirteen centuries ago. 



Even as late in the world's history as the period 

 of Julius Caesar the staying power of some of the 

 war horses in Britain was amazing. Men who 

 have been in action in our own times will tell 

 you that a wounded horse gives in at once, 

 that he seems to have no heart. Yet in Julius 

 Caesar's time, and in earlier epochs, an arrow 



