THE GREEK RIDIXG-HORSE. 73 



tiro in military affairs, and it is safe to 

 assume that he had already seen service in 

 the Athenian cavalry. Even after the battle 

 of Coronea he still had opportunities for 

 keeping up his acquaintance with horses. 

 He was always as far as possible from being 

 a closet scholar; and no man not a lover 

 of the free, vigorous outdoor life of the 

 country could write, as Xenophon does in 

 the " Oeconomicus," with such a particular 

 acquaintance with all the various sides of a 

 country gentleman's life. The preparation 

 of the soil for all its different products, the 

 tilling and sowing, and then the reaping, 

 threshing, and winnowing of the grain, the 

 planting and tending of trees and flowers, 

 the care of that all-important olive which 

 entered into so many of the relations of 

 Greek life, — all these were familiar to him, 

 and the oversight of the farm-labourers and 

 bailiffs as well. Nor did he neglect field- 

 sports. Once a year there was a grand hunt 

 on his estate to which all the country round 

 was invited ; and his treatise on Hunting, 

 with its full account of the breeding and the 

 training of dogs, shows that the annual hunt 



