The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development

by John Hankins Wallace

The great Greek geographer, Strabo, traveled and wrote in the reign of Augustus, and died A.D. 24. For descriptions of all countries of that period and their industries and productions, he has been quoted for eighteen hundred years as the best if not the only authority. Writing as he did, at the very initial point of the Christian era, he gives us a landmark that fixes itself in the mind. He gives a brief, but quite satisfactory, description of Arabia, in which he notes the general topography and boundaries as they are understood to-day; and then he enters, somewhat, into the climate, productions of the soil, character and industries of the people, etc. Of one part of the country he speaks of the inhabitants as breeders of camels, and of another, that is more productive, he remarks: “The general fertility of the country is very great; among other products there is in particular an abundant supply of honey. Except horses, there are numerous herds of animals, asses and swine, birds also of every kind, except geese and the gallinaceous tribes.”

Here we have from the very highest authority the pivotal fact that there were no horses in Arabia at the commencement of the Christian era. This does not rest upon argument, nor is it a deduction from some condition of things that might have existed; but it is a distinct declaration of what Strabo saw with his own eyes and wrote down when he saw it. It must, therefore, stand as an undisputed fact, until some reputable authority is brought forward to contradict it. This description from Strabo applies to that rich portion of Arabia, bordering on the Red Sea along its full length. With the fact established, circumstantially and historically, that there were no horses in Arabia at the beginning of the Christian era, it now remains to consider how and when they were first introduced in that country.

Philostorgius, a distinguished Greek theologian, born A.D. 425, as related in the preceding chapter, wrote an ecclesiastical history, which is no longer extant, but fortunately Photius, at one time patriarch of the Eastern church, born A.D. 853, prepared an epitome of it. This epitome of Philostorgius comes down to A.D. 425, and is to be found in the Lenox Library of this city, bound up in the same volume with Sozomen’s Ecclesiastical History. I will here quote literally from this epitome so much as is pertinent to the question before us. Constantius was then on the throne of the Eastern Empire, and labored for the promotion of the Christian religion.

“Constantius sent ambassadors to those who were formerly called Sabæans, but are now known as Homeritæ, a tribe descended from Abraham, by Keturah. As to the territory which they inhabit, it is called by the Greeks Magna Arabia and Arabia Felix, and extends to the most distant part of the ocean. Its metropolis is Saba, the city from which the Queen of Sheba went forth to see Solomon.... Constantius, accordingly, sent ambassadors to them to come over to the Christian religion.... Constantius, wishing to array the embassy with peculiar splendor, put on board their ships two hundred well-bred horses from Cappadocia, and sent them, with many other gifts.... The embassy turned out successfully, for the prince of the nation, by sincere conviction, came over to the true religion.”

Other facts might be quoted from this epitome, showing that Theopholis was made a bishop and placed at the head of this embassy and that he remained in Arabia Felix several years, prosecuting his work successfully. It might also be quoted to show that the people of the cities of Yemen (Arabia Felix) were, at that day, well advanced in civilization and refinement, and that wealth and luxury abounded on all sides. Their lands, from the sea to the desert, were wonderfully productive, and their people lived in the cities and on their farms, but few leading a nomadic life. In later generations this part of the country, which is in Arabia Felix, has been called Yemen, and I believe it is universally conceded among the Arab tribes and by writers who have studied the subject that the best horses come from Yemen.

Taking the administration of Joseph as indicating the time when the first horses were introduced into Egypt, about B.C. 1720, and the actual date when Constantius sent the first into Arabia, A.D. 356, we find that Egypt led Arabia by two thousand and seventy-six years. And yet numbers of men have written great pretentious books on the horse, in which they tell us that the Egyptians got their horses from the Arabians; while others equally pretentious and voluminous tell us the Arabians got their horses from the Egyptians; and neither class probably ever gave the labor of an honest hour to settle this question. The one is over two thousand years out of the way, and still they know just as much about it as the other knows. They are both equally ignorant and equally dishonest, for they simply copied, as their own, what somebody had said before them.

It is conceded on all hands and by all men who have gone beneath the mere surface, that the literature of the ages furnishes no evidence that there were horses in Arabia before the fourth or fifth century of our era. General Tweedie, by far the ablest writer on the Arabian horse that we have examined, concedes the pertinency and force of the absence of all literary evidence, until the fifth century is reached, and as a reply he says: “The several Roman invasions of Arabia, in the reigns of Augustus, Trajan, and Severus, must have left foreign horses behind them.” This is, in fact, conceding the accuracy of Strabo’s representations and that there were no horses in Arabia at the beginning of the Christian era. The truth of the historical allusion is that the Romans never overran nor conquered Arabia. They could skirmish around the border and capture a few towns or cities, but the death-dealing desert was too much for them. Trajan at last made it a Roman province by his proclamation, and not by his sword, and for the excellent reason that “the game was not worth the candle.” What a strange fact it is that Arabia, instead of the first, should have been the last country in all the old world to be supplied with horses!

It is very difficult to comprehend or even imagine the changes that may be wrought in a thousand years by a strong, enterprising, and aggressive people, colonized in a rich country occupied by semi-barbarians and savages. This was the condition in Northern Africa, when the Phœnician colonies were planted there, a thousand years before the Christian era. The colony at Utica in Algeria was planted about eleven hundred years before the Christian era, which was contemporaneous with the reign of Saul as king of Israel. The colony of Carthage, that afterward contested with Rome for universal dominion, was planted in the same country, about two hundred years later, and was contemporaneous with Jehu. The whole southern shore of the Mediterranean was dotted with Phœnician colonies, from Egypt westward.

The oldest of the Phœnician colonies so far from home was probably Gades, now called Cadiz, on the Atlantic coast of Spain and outside of the Pillars of Hercules. This colony was planted about fifteen hundred years B.C. and was contemporaneous with Moses and the forty years’ journeying of the Israelites in the wilderness. The more recent scholarship seems to have developed the fact that still north of Gades and extending from the mouth of the Guadelete to that of the Guadiana, there was a very large and flourishing colony planted by the Phœnicians, possessing within itself many of the requisites and functions of statehood, and that this was the ancient “Tarshish” of scripture. This plantation became a secondary Tyre, and the “ships of Tarshish” not only made their voyages back and forth through the length of the Mediterranean, but extended them northward, up the European coast and to Britain, and southward along the African coast for a great distance, establishing trading posts wherever the products of a country promised profitable exchange.

The planting of colonies in that age, even for the one ostensible purpose of trade, involved more than the mere erection of a “trading post” at some selected harbor. A strong and well-equipped and well-trained military force had to be employed to protect and defend them. The Phœnicians were great traders, and at the same time they were excellent fighters. Their numerous colonies on both shores of the Mediterranean required a strong military force that was made up very largely of slaves and the nomadic tribes of the country, but always commanded by prominent and influential Phœnicians. It is impossible to tell what the very early experiences of the colonists may have been with regard to horses; nor do we know whether they found horses already there when they arrived at their new plantations. My belief is, however, that they were not only the first to carry horses to Egypt, but they were the first to carry them to the western extremities of the Mediterranean. It will be remembered that the early trade of the Armenians with the Phœnician merchants was not only in horses, but in horsemen, and it is probable that these “horsemen” were slaves, expert and skillful in managing the horse. It has been said by historians that certain classes of their ships were ornamented with a carved horse’s head, at the prow; and it has been inferred that the ships so designated were specially constructed and fitted up for the safe carrying of horses. It is true that in the course of the centuries horses may have found their way from Egypt westward to Algeria, and by crossing the Bosphorus they might have found their way from Asia Minor to Spain, but it is also true that from small beginnings at the plantation of the colonies there was ample time for them to increase to almost countless herds before the period when the colonists became a mighty military power in the earth.