Natural Hiftory of the Ancients. 113 



Recruited into rage he grinds his teeth 

 In his own flefh and feels approaching death. 

 Ye gods, to better fate good men difpofe, 

 And turn that impious error on our foes !" 



Turning once more to the Eaft, we find the 

 Aflyrian horfes highly prized at prefent as they 

 were of old. They are fmall of ftature, but of 

 exquifite fymmetry and wonderful endurance. Mr. 

 Layard mentions a cafe where a Sheikh refufed no 

 lefs afum than 1,200 for a favourite mare. 1 The 

 Median horfes now belong to two diftinct breeds, 

 the Turkoman, a large powerful animal with long 

 legs and a big head, and the true Arabian, much 

 fmaller and more perfectly maped. Of the Nyfaean 

 horfes we have already fpoken. Babylonia bred 

 vaft numbers of horfes under the Perfian rule. 

 Thus one fatrap porTeiTed 800 ftallions and 10,000 

 mares. The breed is thought to have been ftrong 

 and large-limbed rather than handfome, the head 

 being too large and the legs too mort for 

 fymmetry. The Huns, like the Parthians and 

 Scythians, pafled all their lives on horfeback. 

 Cilicia alfo pofleffed a breed of white horfes. It 

 brought 360 of thefe one a day for all the days 

 of the Perfian year year by year to Darius. 2 

 The horfes belonging to the lake-dwellers of the 

 Paeonians were fed with fifli from the Jakes below 

 the pile-dwellings, according to Herodotus. 3 The 

 Sigynnas, a Thracian tribe in the extreme North, 

 he alfo tells us, pofTefied horfes fo fmall that they 



1 Rawlinfon's "Five Empires,' i. 232; ii. 302; iii. 404; 

 and Herod., i. 192. 



2 Herod., iii. 90. 3 Ibid , v. 16. 



