Probably if the custom did exist it was on the wane by the time Xenophon began to write. There is evidence to show that in ancient Greece the horses at about this period were rather smaller than those of most other countries of which we have authentic records, a characteristic still noticeable amongst the horses in several parts of modern Greece.
The Greeks almost always used entire horses for all purposes. Even in war they did not employ geldings, a custom that has given rise to the belief that in the centuries before Christ all horses, with the exception of the Libyan steeds, were far more savage than the horses of to-day.
Emphatically we have no reason to suppose that the Greeks made friends and companions of their horses as the Arab race is known to do or to have done, though the fable of Achilles' love for his horse named Xanthus makes a pretty enough story. On the other hand, it is quite possible that Xenophon may have been fond of horses not merely because of the amusement they afforded him or the pleasure he derived from riding and hunting.
For the rest the Greeks, in common with the people of most of the warlike nations in those early days, enjoyed possessing horses mainly because they served to enhance life's pleasure, and were of practical use in war.
Certainly it may be said of Xenophon that he did not preach the doctrine of kindness to horses without himself practising it thoroughly, also that he was ever ready to rebuke severely all who ill-treated their own horses or his.
Apparently the Greeks of about this era did not keep what we should term to-day pleasure horses, though they affected pleasure horses in the sense that they kept race horses. With the death of Xenophon we lose touch, to some extent, with the progress of the horse in history, but the thread is taken up again in the Roman period when Varro, writing in 37 B.C., furnishes certain details that are of interest, Virgil adding to them a little later in his “Georgics.”
After that we find instructive comment in the writings of Calpurnius and Columella in the first century A.D.; in those of Oppian and Nemesian in the third century; and in those of Apsyrtus, Pelagonius and Palladius in the fourth century.
When all is said, Xenophon's information most likely is by far the most trustworthy of any that has been handed down to us, in the same way that his descriptions certainly are the most accurate. Only a few fragments of the book by Simo, written probably about the year 460 B.C., remain; yet even those fragments contain peculiar statements.
Thus in addition to insinuating that Thessaly was the only region famous for horses in the centuries before Christ—an assertion indirectly gainsaid by Xenophon—he didactically remarks that the colour of a horse ought not to be taken into consideration when the animal's qualities are being summed up, a statement that the majority of the early writers openly repudiated, and that, as most of us know, is in every country deemed devoid of truth at the present day.