Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The horse; with a treatise of draught / [William Youatt]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
19/600 page 7
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The horse; with a treatise of draught / [William Youatt]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
![tinguished for their stately appearance and lofty action. Old Blundeville, from the inspection of many of the ancient sculptures, says that these were more heavy-headed than the heroes of the Parthians*. Perhaps they were so ; but no one can dispute the stateliness of their figure, and their proud and high and equal step. Although often ridden, they were better calculated for the chariot. This kind of horse seems to have pleased the ancients; and their painters and statuaries are fond of exhibiting them in their most striking attitudes. The horses in the cut at the commencement of this chapter are illustrative of the remark. Oppian says of them, what is true at the present day of many horses of this character, “ when young, they are delicate and weak; but strength comes with years, and, contrary to other horses, they are better and more powerful when advanced in age+.” The Parthians fought on foot in the army of Xerxes. Either they had not begun to be celebrated as horsemen, or there were reasons which no author states for their being dismounted at that time. No very long period, however, passed before they became some of the most expert riders that the world could produce, and were reckoned, and justly so, almost invincible. They are described as being exceedingly active and dexterous in the management of their horses. They were as formidable in flight as in attack, and would often turn on the back of the animal, and pour on their pursuers a cloud of arrows that at once changed the fortune of the day. Vegetius gives a singular account of the manner of their breaking in their horses, and rendering them sure-footed when galloping over the most irregular and dangerous grounds; for they were lighter and hardier horses than those of the Cappadocians or Medes, and tetter for their peculiar pace and manner of fight¬ ing. A spot of dry and level gi'ound was selected, on which various troughs or boxes, filled with chalk or clay, were placed at irregular distances, and with much irregularity of surface and of height. Here the horses were taken for exercise ; and they had many a stumble and many a fall as they galloped over this strangely uneven course; but they gradually learned to lift their feet higher, and to bend their knees better, and to deal their steps sometimes shorter and sometimes longer, as the ground required, until they could carry their riders with ease and safety over the most irregular and dangerous places. Then it was that the Parthians could fully put into practice their favourite manoeuvre, and turn upon and destroy their unsuspecting foes. They could also travel an almost incredible distance without food or rest;);. To the Scythians, the Medes, and the Parthians, in after times, and in rapid succession (if, indeed, they were not different names for hordes of one common origin), succeeded the Ostraces, the Urals, the Monguls, the Calmucks, the Nogays, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, and the Huns—all people of the vast plains of Central Asia, which has been well denominated the nursery of nations. These were all horsemen. Some of their leaders could bring from two to three hundred thousand horsemen into the field. The speed of their marches; their attacks and their retreats ; the hardihood to which they inured themselves and the animals by which they were carried ; the incursion, and often $ ttlemcnt, of horde after horde, each as numerous as that to which it succeeded ; —these are circumstances that must not be forgotten in our rapid sketch of the horse. At the end of the eighth century, when the Saracens overran a great part o. Europe, they brought with them a force of 200,000 cavalry, in a much highet state of discipline than the Goths and H uns of former ages. * Blundeville’s FowurChicfcst Offices, p. 3. J Quot sine aqua Paitluis miliia currat t Bennger, vol.i. ]t. 22. equus.—Propertius, lib. iv. cleg. 3.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29297400_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
