By the close of the fourth century A.D. the Romans apparently had outgrown their prejudice against the use of saddles, for at about that time the saddle is referred to with some frequency. Certain it is that in 380 A.D. the famous cavalrymen of Theodosius were mounted on horses provided with true saddles—that is to say saddles with a tree, also with a bow in front and behind.
Generally a cloth or numner was worn beneath saddles, but it is known that at one time Roman horses suffered from sore backs owing probably to the way the Roman soldiers sat their horses when saddles first came into vogue. Soon after this it was that the saddle came to be known as “the chair,” presumably because of the Latin word sella, from which we have the French noun, selle, meaning saddle.
Some famous horses are referred to in the records of the sixth century, but little is said of their history. Thus we have the Persian steed of Chosroes, called Shibdiz, a name signifying “fleeter than the wind.” Apparently he was a famous charger, for we read that he carried his master safely through several important engagements. Yet he was used for other purposes.
The story of King Arthur is so closely bound up with fable and fiction that the truth is difficult to get at. He must have owned many good horses, however, of which Spumador—a word signifying “the foaming one”—and the mare Lamri were perhaps the most renowned. There are, nevertheless, historians who maintain that these horses never actually existed.
Sir Tristram's charger, Passe Brewell, mentioned in the “History of King Arthur,” and elsewhere, is another animal around which “a web of imaginative description,” as one writer terms it has been woven. Consequently we shall be well advised to pass these fables by without comment.
In the first half of the sixth century the practice of regularly shoeing horses apparently came into vogue, for shoes are referred to in the records of the ways and customs of the famous Emperor Justinian. It seems certain, however, that the shoes fashioned at about that period were clumsy in design, also needlessly heavy. Specimens of them have from time to time been discovered, and it is said one was found in the tomb of King Childeric, the date of whose death is placed so far back as 460 A.D.
Though Tacitus, who wrote between 80 and 116 A.D., does not allude to the horses of the Swedes, it is certain that about the sixth century A.D. the Swedes had become not only a race of fine horsemen, but owners of magnificent horses. Indeed in 550 A.D., or thereabouts, Jornandes went so far as to compare them favourably with the race of Thuringians.
Probably it was in a measure owing to the intense devotion of the Swedish king, Adhils, to horses and to all that appertained to them that the Swedish nation became so renowned for their horses and their horsemanship. Then, though the Arabs had no horses at the beginning of the Christian era, they probably were breeding them in great numbers by the beginning of the sixth century A.D., for it was due mainly to a quarrel at about that time over a famous horse named Dahis that two formidable tribes entered into a deadly and long-drawn-out struggle.