The oldest civilizations of which we have any record of the horse are the Egyptian and the Babylonian. On the tombs the horse was always carved pacing. The frieze of the Parthenon was the work of the great artist Phidias. His horses were pacers. Five hundred years before the Christian era the great sculptors of Greece and Rome put some of their greatest work into statues of horses—all pacers. Relics of some of the very earliest Greek friezes are still preserved in the British Museum and show the horses to be pacing. At the beginning of the Christian era the Romans had conquered the Britons and the horses they found there, or carried there, they called “ambulatores”—amblers—and during the five hundred years that Rome ruled the island these horses were the favorites for the saddle and light driving. In 1215 A.D. the barons wrenched from King John the famous Magna Charta, the great seal of which is a knight in armor, mounted on a pacing horse. In a previous chapter we have told how Sir Walter Scott describes them and how for centuries the pacing horse—the ambler—the jennet, was the favorite, if not the only saddle horse of the knights and ladies and the nobility.
Could such a horse have been a scrub? For many years there has lived in England a wealthy American who is an artist and a fond lover of horses—Mr. Walter Winans. I am indebted to Mr. Winans for many valuable discoveries about the pacer, the first of them being his letter and illustrations showing the original drawings from the Egyptian tombs, these carvings being copied by Mr. Winans while studying ancient Egyptian sculpture.
Some years ago, Mr. Walter Winans, of Brighton, England, sent me sketches of bas-reliefs taken from Egyptian tombs. While never having had before the pleasure of seeing a cut of the bas-reliefs sent to the writer by Mr. Winans, I have known of their existence and have repeatedly called attention to the fact that the past history of the pacer demonstrated beyond a doubt that he was a horse of the noblest blood, the war-horse of ancient battles, the companion of ancient kings and princes. The fact that he has been able to do what he has done is convincing proof of a past greatness somewhere in his breeding—a scrub would have died at the wire long ago. If “society” is looking for something that is blue-blooded, with a hoariness that no other blue-blooded can boast of; that is eminently respectable to a degree bordering on classical mythiness; that is more ancient than the pyramids and more respectable in lineage than the longest pedigree of Norman knight, I respectfully refer it to the pacer. My only regret in the matter is that the recognition, by “society,” of distinguished lineage, illustrious achievements and present worth cannot be a subject of mutual acknowledgment and congratulation.
Brighton, Eng., Jan. 23.
Dear Trotwood: I have brought the pacer to more than four thousand years ago. Prof. J. E. Marey, Professor of the College of France, has just published a book called “Le Movement,” dealing with the correct drawings of men and animals in motion. He gives two engravings, of which I enclose pen copies, one of them from an Assyrian bas relief, the original of which is in London, England, British Museum; the other is a copy of an ancient Egyptian Bas-relief at Medynet-Abou, in Egypt. They both represent horses pacing. Prof. Marey says (freely translated from the French). “Examples of a pacing gait are here accurately represented. It is of all gaits the easiest to observe, and therefore to draw, on account of the symmetry of movement.... Trotting, which is so often represented in modern works, seems rarely to figure in that of the ancients.”
I noticed lately in one of your contemporaries, which goes in for “society,” a suggestion that pacing races should not be held on days that trotting is indulged in, so as not to offend road riders (a long list of which it gives), who dislike to see a pacer. It is a good thing that these road riders did not live four thousand years ago, or they would have been shocked to see all the rulers and great men of Assyria and Egypt driving pacers. The ancient Romans called trotters “tormentores,” on account of the way they shook them up, riding without stirrups.
Referring to the pictures again, the reason the figures holding the symbols of authority (the half-circles) and the groom at the horses’ heads being so small, is because that in ancient Egyptian conventional art figures were not drawn in their proper proportions, but large or small, according to the importance of the person represented.
The Assyrian pacer looks as if he must be the champion stallion of the period.
Yours truly,
WALTER WINANS.