284 HORSEMANSHIP. 



of bits, care should be taken that they are suffi-. 

 ciently wide for the mouth, so as not to press 

 against the horse's cheeks, and that the headstall 

 is sufficiently long to let the bit drop well into the 

 mouth. 



As we read in the 22d chapter of Genesis, Sd 

 verse, that " Abraham rose up early in the morn- 

 ing, and saddled his ass,"" saddles of some sort must 

 have been used in very early days ; but few things 

 appear more extraordinary to those persons who 

 look into ancient history, than the fact of saddles 

 with stirrups being a comparatively modern inven- 

 tion. Although a French translator* of Xeno- 

 phon, by an oversight, makes a governor of Armenia 

 hold the stirrup of the Persian king when he 

 mounted his horse, — " II lui tenoit Teti^ier lorsq'il 

 montoit a cheval," it is well known that the ancients 

 had no stirrups, but that men of rank among them 

 were accompanied by a person whose office it was 

 to lift them into the saddle, whom the Greeks 

 called ava(3oXivg^ and the Romans strator. There 

 is no mention of stirrups in any Greek or Latin 

 authors, no figure to be seen in any statue or monu- 

 ment, nor any word expressive of them to be met 

 with in classical antiquity. In the celebrated 

 equestrian statues of Trajan and Antoninus, the 

 legs of the rider hang down without any support, 

 whereas, had stirrups been used at that time, the 

 artist would not have omitted them. Neither are 

 they spoken of by Xenophon in his two books upon 

 horsemanship, in which he gives directions for 



•" D'Abkncourt. 



