654 
ON HOUSE-SHOES. 
Suetonius says that Nero had his mules shod with silver,* 
and Pliny tells us that his Empress Poppsea had hers shod 
with gold.t But of what form were these metallic shoes? 
Were they an addition to the basket-work covering of the 
hoof, or did they resemble those of modern times ? 
Mr. A. Rich, in his ‘Companion to the Latin Dictionary 
and Greek Lexicon/ observes that “the concurrent testi¬ 
mony of antiquity, both written, sculptured, and painted, 
bears undeniable evidence to the fact that neither the Greeks, 
nor the Romans, were in the habit of shoeing their animals 
by nailing a piece of iron on to the hoof as we now do. ?J J 
The contrivance they employed was probably a sock made 
of leather, or some such material, being passed under and 
over the foot, and bound round the pastern joint and shank 
of the animal by thongs of leather, like the carbatince of the 
peasantry. The sock was not permanently worn, but was 
put on by the driver during the journey, in places or upon 
occasions when the state of the roads required, and taken off 
again when no longer necessary. When the underneath part 
of the sock was strengthened by a piece of iron, it was termed 
solea ferrea. It is consequently an iron plate of this kind 
which Catullus speaks of as being left in the mud, by getting 
detached from the sock under which it was fastened, and not 
one nailed on to the hoof, like a modern horse-shoe. 
Our late vice-president, Sir S. Meyrick, in his ‘ Critical 
* “Nunquam carusis minus mille fecisse iter traditur, soleis mularum 
argenteis.” (Sueton., ‘Yita Neronis/ cap. xxx.) 
f “Nostra setate Popprna, conjux Neronis principis, delicatioribus ju- 
mentis suis soleas ex auro quoque inducere.” (Plin., ‘Hist. Nat.,’ lib. xxxiii, 
cap, xi.) An example of this ancient ostentation occurred as late as the 
eleventh century. It is related of Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany, one of 
the richest princes of his time, that when he went to meet Beatrix, his 
bride, mother of the well-known Matilda, about the year 1038, his whole 
train was so magnificently decorated, that his horses were not shod with 
iron, but with silver; the nails even were of the same metal, and when any 
of them dropped out they belonged to those that found them. (See ‘ Vita 
Mathildis, a Donizorze Script a' cap. xi.) 
The life of Matilda is given in ‘ Leibnitii Scriptores Brunsuicensis / 
vol i, p. 629; and also in ‘Muratori Rerum Ttalicarum Scriptores / Medio- 
lani, 1724, vol. v, p. 353. The anecdote is likewise to be found in Beck¬ 
mann, vol. ii, p. 291, ed. 1817. 
I have somewhere read a story of an English ambassador to the Court 
of Paris, who had his horse shod with silver shoes, but so slightly nailed to 
the hoof that they soon came off, and became the prize of the gazers. 
j Does not Homer allude to shoes when he speaks of “ brazen-footed 
horses” (xa\/co7ro<k£ ’unroi). Iliad/ xiii, 23, and viii, 41.) Mr. Cureton in¬ 
forms me that he has seen horse-shoes of bronze. In the ninth centurv the 
«/ 
Greeks called the iron horse shoe atXtvaia, and the nails with which it was 
fixed Kupipta. (See the ‘ Tactica of the Emperor Leo/ lib. iv, p. 51.) 
