Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/44

 am aware, to prove that the ancient Greeks were cognizant of hoof defences, as we now employ them, except the finding of a horse's hoof (of stone?) in the ruins of the Parthenon. In alluding to this, Mr Syer Cuming, who appears to have taken some interest in the subject, asks, ‘Does not Homer allude to shoes when he speaks of “brazen-footed horses?” (χαλκοποδες ἱπποι). Mr Cureton informs me that he has seen horse-shoes of bronze.’

And at a later period he writes, ‘Since the publication of my paper a few facts have come to light, which tend to prove in an eminent degree the assertion therein advanced, namely, that the horses of the classic ages were shod in a similar way to those of our own day. At the time the paper was produced, we had little to countenance the idea that the early Greeks protected the feet of their steeds with metallic shoes, beyond the bare fact that some ancient horse-shoes of bronze were known to be in existence, and the poetical mention of “brazen-footed horses” in the Iliad (viii. 41, xiii. 23). Within these few years, however, Mr Charles Newton, while Vice-consul at Mytilene, found among the fragments of the Parthenon, a horse's hoof with holes all around the inside, clearly indicating where a metallic shoe had been fastened, and it is quite unlikely that any such defence should appear upon a statue if a similar article had not been in actual use at the time.'

It must be confessed that the discovery of a horse's foot among the world-renowned ruins of the Parthenon, with what appeared to be holes all round the inside only,