Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/109

 written, sculptured, and painted, bears undeniable evidence to the fact that neither the Greeks nor the Romans were in the habit of shoeing their animals by nailing a piece of iron on the hoofs as we now do. The contrivance they employed was probably a sock made of leather or some such material, and similar in form and general character to the solea spartea: being passed under and over the foot, and bound round the pastern joints and shanks of the animal by thongs of leather, like the carbatinæ of the peasantry. This sock was not permanently worn, but was put on by the driver during the journey in places or upon occasions when the state of the roads required, and taken off again when no longer necessary. Both the nature of the contrivance, showing that it was a close shoe covering the entire foot, and the practice of putting it on and removing it occasionally, is sufficiently testified by the particular terms employed to designate the object itself and the manner of applying it—mulas calceare, mulis soleas induere. When the underneath part of the sock was strengthened by a plate of iron, it was termed solea ferrea’. This writer describes the solea spartea, and compares it to the sandal used by the Japanese, which, he says, is ‘a small basket, made to the shape of the animal's foot, on to which it is bound by a strap round the fetlock.’ I have seen nothing in or from Japan answering to this description, nor at all like the drawing he gives.

The ‘Nouveau Dictionnaire des Origines, Inventions, et Découvertes,’ also maintains that the Greeks and Romans were ignorant of this art, and that they were content to attach the coverings they used by means of straps, in the same manner as men's shoes.