An essay on the knowledge of the ancients respecting the art of shoeing the horse, and of the probable period of the commencement of this art / by Bracy Clark.
- Bracy Clark
- Date:
- 1831
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An essay on the knowledge of the ancients respecting the art of shoeing the horse, and of the probable period of the commencement of this art / by Bracy Clark. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![Another, and a stronger passage, as it is supposed, than the above, in favour of this belief in their knowledge of the art of shoeing, occurs in the eleventh book of the Iliad, 1. 152, and which led the learned Didymus and Eustathius fully to embrace the opinion that they used shoes. rie^oi fitv TTi^ovc oXeKOv <ptvyovTag avayicjj, hriTHg ^'linTTi]ag, (yiro Bi aifuaiv (Lpro Kovlri ’Eic TTtBiSf Ti}v (opcrav IpiyBuTroi -iroBtg ittttwv) XuXk(p BtfiowvTeg' arap xpdwv 'Ayapifivtov Aliv airoKTttvwv tTrer, 'EpyeIokti KtXevwv. ]. 150. “ Peclites quiclem pedites interficiebant, fugientes necessitate, Equites vero equites, (ab ipsis autem excitatus est pulvis E cainpo, quern excitabant grave strepentes pedes equorum) iEre caedentes. At rex Agamemnon Semper interficiens insequebatur Argivos adhortans.” 1. 150. Dr. Samuel Clarke, not quite embracing this opinion of shoes, was led to suppose that a w'hole line was somehow omitted, and that the expression Brjiowvreg did not allude to the feet of the horses, but to the weapons or arms of the men who laid waste the flying enemy; and which interpretation is generally adopted: and to establish this view of the matter, he formed into a large parenthesis the preceding line, and punctuated the passage as seen above, giving a Latin trans- lation of course, in conformity with this view of the subject, which we have also subjoined. Now if it were true, and admitted for a moment, that the ancients did not understand shoeing, of which demonstrative evidence will appear hereafter, then nothing could have been more natui’al to a people so circumstanced, and whose whole dependance was placed in the powers and strength of the natural hoof to endure labour, to extol, and hold in the highest estimation, this very necessary pro- perty, and to give it preference and higher value than any other, as without it the horse was to them nearly useless; and it would assu- redly be the first part to fail them if not so endowed: hence, we believe, will be seen the true intentions of the writer. In the Latin A 2](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22392750_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
