420 
THE HISTORY OF THE HORSE. 
The practice of hamstringing was not confined to the Hebrews: 
we find the Romans adopted the same course with the elephants 
of their enemies, having no desire for the assistance of such dan¬ 
gerous auxiliaries. 
I believe the practice of hamstringing the bull is sometimes re¬ 
sorted to in the Spanish bull-fights. 
The Israelites employed asses instead of horses for all the pur¬ 
poses of agriculture, &c. Christ entered Jerusalem on an ass, 
possibly in indirect obedience to the command; for he came not to 
abrogate the law of Moses, but to spiritualize and fulfil it. 
In the 10th Commandment the Hebrews were enjoined not to 
covet the ox or the ass of their neighbours: if these neighbours 
had possessed a valuable horse, it would have been much more 
desirable. 
A direct allusion to the absence of cavalry as a cause for a more 
implicit trust in the power of Jehovah is frequent in the pages of 
the Old Testament. 
In chap, i of the 2d book of Chronicles we find Solomon importing 
horses from Egypt, not only for his own use, but for the kings of 
the Hittites and the kings of Syria. There have not been want¬ 
ing commentators who endeavour to prove that Solomon not only 
traded in horses, but profited by the supineness of the Egyptians 
and their objections to the hazard of exportation by maritime com¬ 
merce, combined with the facilities of his own dominions to secure 
a monopoly, while he increased the safety of his own territories 
by an effective body of cavalry. 
It is interesting to observe the price given by Solomon’s factors 
in the wholesale purchase of horses and chariots: each horse was 
150 shekels, which, according to the lower or higher value of the 
shekel (2s. 3d. or 2s. 6d.), would be from c£'17..2 to £18..5, while 
the chariots at 600 shekels would be from £68.. 9 to £75. It will 
be observed that the latter sum is four times that of the former, 
which gives some probability to the opinion, that in this, as in 
other instances, the word mercuhah, rendered chariot, denotes the 
horses belonging to a chariot; and, consequently, as it was then 
customary to yoke four horses to a chariot, the price of a set of 
chariot horses quadrupled that of a single horse. The Septuagint, 
however, understands a chariot to have been intended, and, upon 
the whole, it was most likely. Michaelis says the fixing of a price 
had the look of a monopoly, and indicates, besides, that horseman¬ 
ship was in its infancy; for whenever people have sufficient know¬ 
ledge of horses, with all their combinations of faults and excellen¬ 
cies, to judge of them as amateurs, one may be worth ten times as 
much as another, particularly in a king’s stable. 
In the prophecy of Isaiah (ch. v, ver. 28) of the invasion of 
