Attempts have repeatedly been made to trace the life of Xenophon prior to the time when, in 401 B.C., he first joined the army of Cyrus, but in vain. He is, however, known to have been a close friend of Socrates from a very early age, and probably when he wrote the “Anabasis” he was a little over thirty. But when he died, about the year 355 B.C., he was quite an old man.
Historians are almost unanimous in declaring that at Marathon, in 490 B.C., the Athenians were without cavalry, though by that time many of the wealthy citizens undoubtedly owned horses, some of which they most likely used for racing. When, however, the Athenians came to realise what an amount of execution could be done, and to see the execution that was done by the Persians, with the help of cavalry, they set to work to organise in Athens, as quickly as possible, a powerful body of mounted warriors.
How formidable that cavalry later on proved itself to be is well known to all classical scholars, and the more surprising it therefore is that the Greek cavalry should not afterwards have risen to the level of that organised by Macedonians. Indeed, according to more than one historian, the Greek cavalry was employed chiefly to harass an enemy when marching, or to pursue a vanquished and retreating regiment, while one writer at least maintains that the Greek cavalry at best never approached within javelin range of an enemy's line of battle during an attack.
The cost of horses at about this time varied almost as widely as it does now. Thus it was not unusual to pay three minæ, the equivalent of about fifteen guineas, for quite a common hack—an extraordinarily high price when we bear in mind the purchasing value of money in those days—while for trained war horses, or for race horses, any sum from ten minæ upward was paid frequently.
Xenophon is known to have given approximately eleven minæ for a little war horse that, so far as one can ascertain, did not afterwards fulfil expectations, so perhaps it is hardly astonishing to read that some years later the terms “horse owner” and “spendthrift” came to be deemed more or less synonymous.
A list drawn up at about this time of the principal defects to be guarded against when inspecting a horse with a view to purchase is interesting, inasmuch as the points looked upon as faults three and twenty centuries ago are with only a few exceptions deemed to be egregious defects to-day.
The following is the list that was drawn up, so it is alleged, by Pollux:
Hoofs with thin horn (sic); hoofs full, fat, soft and flat—or, as Xenophon termed them, “low-lying”; heavy fetlocks; shanks with varicose veins; flabby thighs; hollow shoulder-blades; projecting neck; bald mane; narrow chest; fat and heavy head; large ears; converging nostrils; sunken eyes; thin and meagre sides; sharp back-bone; rough haunches; thin buttocks; stiff legs, stiff knees.
Though among the horses of the ancient Greeks the hogged mane must at one time have been seen often enough, there does not appear to be in the works of the early writers any direct allusion to the hogging of horses as a regular practice.