Indeed there are parts of the world where to this day horses are well treated because to ill-use them is deemed unwise policy. Thus in no part of the Western States of America have I ever seen a horse flogged unmercifully, and upon several occasions when attention has been drawn to this the reply has been practically the same: “If we served them badly we should get less work out of them,” an observation that some Englishmen, plenty of Frenchmen, and very many Italians, who have to do with horses, might with advantage bear in mind.
The physical strength of horses in the very early centuries must have been prodigious. If the details we have of the way in which the early war chariots were constructed are accurate, then at least three of our twentieth-century horses would be needed to accomplish the work, one might almost say perform the feats, that a pair of horses could do twelve or thirteen centuries ago.
Even as late in the world's history as the period of Julius Cæsar the staying power of some of the war horses in Britain was amazing. Men who have been in action in our own times will tell you that a wounded horse gives in at once, that he seems to have no heart. Yet in Julius Cæsar's time, and in earlier epochs, an arrow or a javelin wound, if not too severe, apparently had the effect of setting a war horse upon his mettle rather than of causing him to give in.
Can the horse's temperament, then, have changed within the last ten centuries? Is he a less courageous animal than he was? Is he more highly strung, less intelligent, less strong physically, and of a weaker constitution? Such problems have to do with the history of the horse rather than with the horse in history, and, so far as I am aware, they have not as yet been solved.