FOOT DEFENCES. 6i 



scription, to enable them to traverse the roads with their 

 heavy burthens. 



There is nothing, however, to show that the 'Embattai' 

 of Xenophon, or the ' Carbatinai ' of Aristotle and Pliny, 

 were employed for solipedes. Nevertheless, now and 

 again a curious passage occurs in the writings of some of 

 the authorities we have just quoted, and in historical 

 descriptions, which acquaints us that on certain occasions, 

 contrivances, which would appear to have been only of 

 a temporary character, were put on the feet of horses, 

 mules, or oxen, to prevent injury to the horn, or to assist 

 in remedying disease. As with the camel, the foot- 

 defences of these creatures seems to have been suggested 

 by that worn by man himself, and improvement in 

 material, according to the ingenuity or wealth of indi- 

 viduals, would, of course, from time to time appear. But 

 there is no description of these improved defences, and 

 their form and means of attachment to the limb have 

 given rise to endless surmises and disputes. 



Catullus (B.C. 50) speaks of some kind of shoe, when 

 he is desirous of throwing one of his too solid townsmen 

 off a bridge into the river, so that he might shake him 

 out of his lethargy, as a mule leaves its shoe in a stiff bog : 

 'And leave your sluggish mind sunk in thick mire, as the 

 mule his iron shoe in a tenacious bog.' ' 



Joseph Scaliger,^ in a note on this passage from 



' Carm. xvii. 20. 



Nunc eum volo de tuo ponte mittere pronum. 

 Si pote stolidum repente excitare veternum, 

 Et supinum animum in gravi derelinquere cceno, 

 Ferream ut soleam tenaci in voragine mula.' 



' Encyclopedie Methodique, vol. ii. p. 651. Art. Antiquites. 



