ANCIENT HISTORY. 15 



That shoeing was not known to Old Testament people, 

 no one has yet, so far as I am aware, offered a doubt. 

 Deborah' (b.c. 1296) sings, 'Then were the horse-hoofs 

 broken by the means of their prancings, the prancings of 

 their mighty ones ; ' or, as it might perhaps more cor- 

 rectly be rendered, 'Then did the horses' hoojs smite the 

 ground, and were broken from the haste of their riders.' 

 Isaiah^ (b.c. 760), in the grandly prophetic language in 

 which he foreshadov/s the downfall of Jerusalem by the 

 armies of Rome, mentions the hoofs of their horses and 

 what was esteemed their best quality. He says, ' Whose 

 arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses' 

 hoofs shall be counted lihe Jlint, and their wheels like a 

 whirlwind.' And Jeremiah ^ (b.c 607), when foretelling 

 the punishment of the Philistines, says : ' At the noise 

 of the stamping of the hoofs of his strong horses, at the 

 rushing of his chariots.' 



It is in Homer (b.c iooo) that we find some investi- 

 gators contending for the first notice of a metallic foot- 

 defence. Among these appear Fabretti, Bourgelat, Mont- 

 fau^on, Cuming, and a few others. In reality, however, 

 it was Eustathius, who lived in the 12th century, who, in 

 his Commentaries on Homer, first speaks of that poet 

 mentioning horses as shod. In the 'Iliad' (Book xi., 

 lines 150-2) occurs the passage noted by Eustathius : 



TTt^ot fiey Tre^ovQ oXekoj' (pevyovTac didyKri 

 tTTTTEtc 2' iTnrrjae — vtto Si ircjiiuiy wpro Kovir} 

 tK mdiuv, Tt)y ihpcrap epiydovrroi Trocet; 'imruji'. 



' Judges V. 22. ' Isaiah v 28. 



3 Jeremiah xlvii. 



