122 



Vestiges of the Earliest Inhabitants of Wiltshire. 



When not employed in war or hunting, they delighted to spend 

 whole days in revelling and feasting, 1 to which the song of the 

 bard was a necessary accompaniment. They drank ale even in 

 those early days, but mead seems to have been their favorite bever- 



I would call especial attention to the following authorities for its prevalence in 

 contemporary or even much earlier times, thus proving how wide-spread and 

 general was its adoption. 



We hear of the war chariots of the Egyptians, the Canaanites, the Syrians, 

 the Israelites, comprising almost all the nations of whom the Old Testament 

 treats, in Exodus xiv., 7 — 28, Joshua xvii., 18, Judges i., 19, iv., 3, 1 Samuel 

 viii., 11, 12, 2 Samuel x., 18, 1 Kings iv., 26, xvi., 9, xxii., 34. 2 Kings vi., 

 14, 15, xviii., 24, Isaiah xxxvi., 9, xxxvii., 24, Jeremiah xlvi., 9, Ezekiel 

 xxiii., 24, and many other passages of Holy Scripture. 



Ctesias asserted that the war chariots of the Assyrians even at a very early 

 period were armed with scythes, a statement contradicted by Xenophon, who 

 ascribes this invention to the Persians (De Cyr : Inst: vi., 1, 30). 



In Homer we have continual reference to the war chariots in general use 

 amongst the combatants on either side: (see particularly Iliad iii., 29, iv., 366, 

 xvi., 148 — 154, 467 — 474, xix., 397.) And we have farther allusion to them in 

 Yirgil, (iEn : x., 453, vii, 184,) Horace, Ovid and Tacitus. 



In Rollin's Ancient History we read of the war chariots of the Egyptians 

 B.C. 941, (vol. i., 61,) of the chariots armed with scythes of the Assyrians B.C. 

 2000, (vol. i., p. 268,) of the Medes, (vol. i., p. 301,) of the Persians, likewise 

 armed with scythes (vol. ii., pp. 32, 117, 118). 



Keithley mentions the scythed chariots of the Syrians, (History of Rome, 

 p. 263,) of the Armenians, (p, 373,) and, to come nearer home, of the Gauls, 

 (p. 158.) 



Rawlinson speaks of the Babylonian chariots of war, (Herodotus, vol. i., 

 p. 513,) of the Egyptian B.C. 990, (vol ii., 376,) of the Salaminian, (vol. iii., 

 p. 320,) of the Persian and Assyrian, (vol. iv., p. 119,) and for a full descrip- 

 tion of these latter, see vol. ii., 1 — 21, of the Five Great Monarchies of the 

 Ancient Eastern World, by the same author; who also speaks of the Ethiopian 

 war chariots (vol. ii., 433). 



No less full and definite is the description of the war chariots of the ancient 

 Egyptians, given by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in his most comprehensive work on 

 that nation, (vol. i., pp. 345, et seq.) See too Layard's Monuments of Nineveh, 

 2nd series, plate 24, and his Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii., p. 350. 



Now if nations so various, so many, so disconnected with one another, and of 

 such different degrees of civilization as these were, made use of the chariot in 

 their battles, I see no ground for refusing credence to the plain declaration of 

 Caesar, who speaks with the authority of an eye-witness when he describes, so 

 minutely as he does, the tactics in battle and the manoeuvring of the British 

 chariots of war. [Bell : Gall : iv., 33, v., 19.] 



1 War, drinking, and the chace, were the principal delights of all barbaric 

 nations. Compare Herodotus, lib. v., cap. 6, on the customs of the Thracians. 



