CAVALRY IN GREECE. 31 



Greoce was of small numerical use and of inferior consideration, 

 in the daj of battle ; although, according to Xenophon's direc- 

 tions for the armament and equipment of a trooper, they were 

 certainly formidably accoutred and well drilled for active ser- 

 vice. So soon, however, as the Macedonians, whose kings were 

 of the old heroic stock of Hellas, though the people were not 

 esteemed Greeks — in proof of which assertion, it may be stated 

 that the kings had always been allowed, on proving their pedi- 

 grees, to contend in the Olympic games, to which none but 

 Greeks were admitted — so soon, I say, as the Macedonian kings 

 came into the shock of battle, whether Greek to Greek, or Greek 

 to Barbarian, the Thessalian, Acarnanian and Thracian horses, 

 the latter bred on the boundless plains between the Archipelago 

 and the Danube, were brought into play ; and cavalry at once 

 became an important part of armies, and, often from this time, 

 the arm which turned the balanced scale of victory. 



In all Alexander's battles, he himself charged at the head 

 of his splendid cavalry, having a good deal of the paladin of 

 chivalry in his temper and constitution, and for the most part 

 made the final impression by that irresistible onset. 



From this time forward, the cavalry was a favorite and suc- 

 cessful arm with the Greeks. Philopoemen, the general of the 

 Achaean league, was the best cavalry officer of the world, the 

 Murat of his day. Pyrrhus of Epirus, the successor of Alex- 

 ander, and descendant, as he claimed it, of Achilles, relied 

 much on the charge of his barded cuirassiers, in his wars against 

 the Komans — who never, to the end of their marvellous history 

 of universal conquest, did any thing with Italian native horse, 

 or indeed with cavalry at all, until they had Numidian, Span- 

 ish, Gallic and German troopers in their armies. 



Tlie same was the case with the latter Philip of Macedon, 

 and his son Perseus, against whose superior horse the Eoman 

 consuls could make head only by the assistance of their ^tolian 

 and Acarnanian allies, the blood of the Greek horses of that 

 day, coming from the extreme east of Europe, being incompar- 

 ably superior to that of the west, which probably had then re- 

 ceived no further mixture of the oriental strain, since their first 

 introduction frem their native land; whence by a course of 

 continued breeding-in-and-in they had seriously deteriorated — a 



