ANCIENT HORSEMANSHIP. 21 5 



nius, and fought upon by the Centaurs of Thessalv. 

 But, quitting fiction, we learn from the Sacred 

 Writings, that to Egypt we are indebted for the 

 equestrian art, from which country, by the aid of 

 the colonists who emio^rated from it and from 

 Phoenicia, it was introduced into Greece, (perhaps 

 by Erichthonius, fourth king of Attica,) where it 

 attained to great perfection. Although there was 

 no cavalry employed in the Trojan war, equestrian- 

 ism must have been much practised and well under- 

 stood in Homer's time, which is at once proved by 

 a reference to his works. In the fifth book of the 

 Odyssey, the shipwrecked Ulysses, tossed by the 

 waves on a plank, is compared to a skilful horse- 

 man on an unruly steed ; and in the fifteenth Iliad, 

 we find one man managing four horses at once, 

 leaping from the back of one to another, at their 

 full speed. Herodotus (in Thalia) speaks of hunt- 

 ing on horseback in the time of Darius, even de- 

 scending to the particulars of an accident in the 

 field to the noble satrap of Persia ; and likewise the 

 same writer (in Melpomene) mentions the Amazo- 

 nian women hunting with their husbands on horse- 

 back. Xenophon also says that Cyrus did so, 

 when he exercised himself and his horses. Again, 

 with reference to those early times, we should not 

 pass over the introduction of horses and horseman- 

 ship into the public games of Greece, and particu- 

 larly the Olympic Games, which, according to an 

 expression of Pindar, as far transcended all the 

 others as gold is superior to the baser metals. 

 From the same authority we learn, that the 



