As worldlings do, giving the sum of more
To that which had too much.
The depreciatory tone of the query, ‘What’s in a name?’ should not lead us to undervalue that indispensable requisite to sustained and specialised existence. A name is, indeed, a power in itself. It serves, at the least, as a peg to hang a personality upon, and not the most ‘powerful rhyme’ can sustain a reputation apart from its humble aid. But the bard of Odysseus has long ceased to possess one. His only appellation must remain for all time that of his hero in the Cyclops’ cave. The jealous Muses have blotted him out from memory. We can only be sure that he was a man who, like the protagonist of his immortal poem, had known, and seen, and suffered many things, who had tears for the past, and hopes for the future, had roamed far and near with a ‘hungry heart,’ and had listened long and intently to the ‘many voices’ of the moaning sea; who had tried his fellow-men, and found them, not all, nor everywhere wanting; who had faith in the justice of Heaven and the constancy of woman; who had experienced and had not disdained to cherish in his heart the life-long fidelity of a dog.
CHAPTER IV.
HOMERIC HORSES.
The greater part of the Continent of Europe, including Britain, not then, perhaps, insulated by a ‘silver streak,’ was prehistorically overrun with shaggy ponies, large-headed and heavily-built, but shown by their short, pointed ears and brush-tails to have been genuine horses, exempt from leanings towards the asinine branch of the family. This, indeed, would be a hazardous statement to make upon the sole evidence of the fragmentary piles of these animals’ bones preserved in caves and mounds; since even a complete skeleton could tell the most experienced anatomist nothing as to the shape of their ears or the growth of hair upon their tails. We happen, however, to be in possession of their portraits. For the men of that time had artistic instincts, and drew with force and freedom whatever seemed to them worthy of imitation; and among their few subjects the contemporary wild horse was fortunately included. With his outward aspect, then, we are, through the medium of these diluvial graffiti, on bone-surfaces and stags’ antlers, thoroughly familiar.
It was that of a sturdy brute, thirteen or fourteen hands high, not ill represented, on a reduced scale, by the Shetland ponies of our own time, but untamed, and, it might have been thought, untameable. The race had not then found its true vocation. Man was enabled, by his superior intelligence, to make it his prey, but had not yet reached the higher point of enlisting its matchless qualities in his service. Horses were, accordingly, neither ridden nor driven, but hunted and eaten. Piles of bones still attest the hippophagous habits of the ‘stone-men.’ At Solutré, near Mâcon, a veritable equine Golgotha has been excavated; similar accumulations were found in the recesses of Monte Pellegrino in Sicily; and Sir Richard Owen made the curious remark that, evidently through gastronomic selection, the osseous remains of colts and fillies vastly predominated, in the débris from the cave of Bruniquel, over those of full-grown horses.[[87]]
[87]. Phil. Trans. 1869, p. 535.
The descent of our existing horses from the cave-animals is doubtful, Eastern importations having at any rate greatly improved and modified the breed. Wild horses, indeed, still at the end of the sixteenth century roamed the slopes of the Vosges, and were hunted as game in Poland and Lithuania;[[88]] but they may have been muzins, or runaways, like the mustangs on the American prairies. Nowadays, certainly, the animal is found in a state of aboriginal freedom nowhere save on the steppes of Central Asia, in the primitive home of the race. There, in all likelihood, the noblest of brute-forms was brought to perfection; there it was dominated by man; and thence equestrian arts, with their manifold results for civilisation, were propagated among the nations of the world. They were taught to the Egyptians, it would seem, by their shepherd conquerors, but were not learned by the Arabs until a couple of millenniums later, the Arab contingent in Xerxes’ army having been a ‘camel-corps.’ The Persians, indeed, early picked up the habit of riding from the example of their Tartar neighbours; yet that it was no original Aryan accomplishment, the absence of a common Aryan word to express the idea sufficiently shows. The relations of our primitive ancestors with the animal had, at the most, reached what might be called the second, or Scythian stage, when droves of half-wild horses took the place of cattle, and mares’ milk was an important article of food. The aboriginal cavalry of the desert belonged, on the other hand, to the wide kinship of Attila’s Huns, who, separated from their steeds, were as helpless as swans on shore. The war-chariot, however, was an Assyrian invention, dating back at least to the seventeenth century B.C. It quickly reached Egypt on one side, India on the other, and was adopted, some time before the Dorian invasion, by the Achæans of the Peloponnesus. Mycenæan grave-stones of about the twelfth century are engraven with battle and hunting scenes, the actors in which are borne along in vehicles of essentially the same construction with those brought before us in the Iliad. They show scarcely any variation from the simple model developed on the banks of the Tigris; yet there was no direct imitation. Homer was profoundly unconscious of Ninevite splendours. He had no inkling of the existence of a great Mesopotamian monarchy far away to the East, beyond the rising-places of the sun, where one branch of his dichotomised Ethiopians dwelt in peace. Nevertheless, the life that he knew, and that was glorified by him, was touched with many influences from this unknown land. If some of them filtered through Egypt on their way, acquaintance with the art of charioteering certainly took a less circuitous route. For the third horse of the original Assyrian team was never introduced into Egypt, and was early discarded in Assyria itself. He figures continually, however, in Homeric engagements, running, loosely attached, beside the regularly yoked pair, one of whom he was destined to replace in case of emergency. The presence, then, of this ‘silly,’ or roped horse,[[89]] παρήορος ἵππος, demonstrates both the high antiquity, and the Anatolian negotiation, of the loan which included him.
[88]. Hehn and Stallybrass, Wanderings of Plants and Animals, pp. 38-39.