PREFACE. xix 



Romans, who were, say very little about them. In fact, if we 

 are to believe Xenophon, some of the Greek roads were in 

 anything but a perfect state, since he says, when describing 

 how a horse should be treated by his master, that ''the 

 ground outside the stable may be put into excellent con- 

 dition, and serve to strengthen the horse's feet if a person 

 throws down in it here and there four or five loads of round 

 stones, large enough to fill the two hands, and about a pound 

 in weight, surrounding them with an iron rim, so that they 

 may not be scattered ; for, as the horse stands on these, he 

 will be in much the same conditioji as if he were to travel part 

 of every day on a stony road J ^ 



If Xenophon means that all the Greek roads were in this 

 condition, one cannot award to the Greeks the same meed of 

 praise that one does to the Romans; it moreover must be 

 remembered that horses in Xenophon^s time were not shod 

 as we shoe our horses, but only with a light sandal which 

 must have worn out very quickly if they were made to travel 

 over roads the surfaces of which were strewn with the large 

 stones that Xenophon describes. The earliest mention of a 

 horse-shoe, according to Berenger, is that of Childeric, who 

 lived A.D. 481, of which the figure is preserved in Mont- 

 faucon's Antiquities, and which resembles the shoes in use 

 among us. But for any horse, whether shod or not, to travel 

 over such roads for any great distance would have been 

 utterly impossible, except he were perfectly sound ; in fact, 

 none but sound horses could have travelled on such roads, 

 and these roads were eminently qualified to make a sound 

 horse unsound, however perfectly his foot might have been 

 protected. 



Considering that Xenophon lived 2,338 years ago, it is not 

 surprisinc- that the treatment of highways and horses should 

 have been somewhat primitive. Although it was not very long 

 after the period in which Xenophon lived that the Romans 

 constructed roads far more nearly resembling our modern 

 highways, and if we are to judge from the enormous time 

 they have lasted, it is very evident that they were made in a 



