Evidence does exist, however, that in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages horses of a type that closely resembled that of the horses of the Palæolithic Age were to be found in several parts of Europe. The Trojans, as most of us know, bred horses very largely indeed, so much so that we read of King Erichthonius, who in the thirteenth century B.C. was in his heyday, that he became “richest of mortal men” and the possessor of “three thousand mares which pastured along the marsh meadow, rejoicing in their tender foals,” a statement that indirectly recalls the fine lines in Longfellow's “The Minnisink”:
“They buried the dark chief—they freed
Beside the grave his battle steed;
And swift an arrow cleaves its way
To his stern heart! One piercing neigh
Arose,—and on the dead man's plain
The rider grasps his steed again.”
Erichthonius, according to Virgil, was the first to handle a four-in-hand, for in the third book of his “Georgics” we are told how
“Bold Erichthonius first four coursers yok'd
And urg'd the chariot as the axle smok'd.”