FEGETIUS RENATUS FLAllUS. 59 



wonderful with so much fire and spirit, with the greatest 

 care do they maintain their graceful carriage, the neck 

 being bent into a bow, so that the chin appears to lean 

 upon the breast.' ' 



A writer who thus carefully describes the varieties of 

 foreign horses, and enters into such details with each, 

 would surely have mentioned the practice of preserving 

 the feet of these useful creatures had it been known to 

 him ; but nowhere in his writings does he allude to it. 



Vegetius Renatus Flavius, who flourished towards the 

 end of the fourth century, in the reign of the Emperor 

 Valentine, has often been confounded with the preceding 

 writer, and his ' De Re Militari' has been, by Bracy Clark 

 and many others, ascribed to Publius Vegetius. In this 

 much-valued and classical military treatise, there is a par- 

 ticular enumeration of everything pertaining to an army 

 forge ; yet there is no mention made of workmen to shoe 

 horses, nor yet of any implement or article intended for 

 such a purpose. 



For examples of the losses sustained during war 

 through horses' feet being unprotected, we are not so well 

 supplied as in Greek history. One marked instance, 

 however, would appear to be shown in Polybius, when 

 that writer informs us that the horses of Hannibal's army 

 (b.c. 216) lost their hoofs in the marshes of Etruria : 

 ' Equorum etiam multis, ob longum per paludes iter, un- 

 gulas exciderunt.' 



That a defence for the feet of some of the larger 

 domestic animals was in use, there can be no doubt. 

 Aristotle for the Greeks, and Pliny for the Romans, state 



' Lib. iv. cap. 6. 



