590 
VERTEBRATA 
GREEK HOESES, FKOM THE FEIEZES OF THE PAETHENON. 
for US, and his time is come, we content ourselves by stripping off Ms hide, making manure of his 
blood, Prussian blue as well as cat and dog meat of his flesh, and a top-dressing for our fields of 
his pulverized bones. Truly the horse enters largely into the pleasures as well as the pains of 
human life! 
The history of the horse, as far as we are able to trace it, always presents that animal as sub- 
dued to man's use ; nowhere does it give us any account of wild horses, except such as have been 
bred from domestic ones. The earliest written notices of this animal are in the sacred writings. 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had asses, which are spoken of in the enumeration of their riches, 
with camels and sheep, but nowhere is it stated that they had horses. In the time of Moses, the 
Hebrews did not use them even in battle, though Pharaoh and his host came against them with 
chariots drawn by horses. 
King David, we are told, captured a thousand chariots and seven hundred horsemen in his 
conflict with Hadadezar, the Philistine, but he houghed or hamstrung all the horses save one 
hundred, which he reserved for chariots. But Solomon his successor, it appears, introduced this 
animal largely into the military and state service, for the Bible tells us he had forty thousand stalls 
of horses for his chariots and twelve thousand for his cavalry. These animals came partly from 
Egypt and partly from Coa. 
The Book of Job informs us that the Arabians were in possession of this animal, but Strabo 
says that in his time they were not found in the southern portions, comprehending the greater 
part of Arabia Felix. When Mahomet, in the early part of his career, marched against Mecca 
to chastise his enemies there, he had only two horses in his army, and it is to be noted that amid 
his spoils there were camels and sheep, and silver and captives, but no horses. The subsequent 
conquests of the followers of the prophet supplied them with horses, and from that time the breed- 
ing of them has been carefully practiced in Arabia. The famous Arabian breed is of compara- 
tively modern date. 
Homer, in the Iliad, speaks of the numerous stud of Priam, and says that Erichtonius, an an- 
cestor of the Trojan king, had three thousand mares and the like number of colts. The Greeks,, 
however, did not use the horse in war till long after it had been thus employed in Egypt, Assy- 
ria, and Scythia. At the battle of Marathon, 490 B. C, they had no horses, and at that of Platsea, 
a year later, with an army of one hundred and ten thousand foot, they had not a single squadron 
of cavalry. They were in fact in danger of being trodden underfoot by the myriads of Persian 
