Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/88

 As Mr Clark has remarked, the circumstance of the emperors muleteer dismounting and fastening on the shoes of the mules, in order to detain the car while the solicitor who had bribed him presented his petition, would show that they were not attached by nails; for nailed shoes are not so readily put on in the highway, and coachmen would not be likely to carry tools and other requisites for this purpose. The passage in Suetonius is against such an inference. The muleteer doubtless dismounted to readjust, or make more secure, the fastenings of some of the soleæ, which were supposed to have broken loose.

And Ribauld de la Chapelle, in the last century, was also of opinion that the ancient Romans did not put the modern-shaped shoe on their horses or mules, but enveloped them in a sock (sabot), an act indicated by the words, 'Jumentis soleas inducere.' He alludes to this instance in the Life of Vespasian, where the muleteer could change the coverings of the mules' feet when they were worn out.

Suetonius, in commenting on the great extravagance of Nero (A.D. 60), asserts that he never travelled with less than a thousand four-wheeled chariots, drawn by mules whose feet were shod with silver; and the drivers of which were dressed in scarlet jackets of the finest Canusian cloth. And the elder Pliny, speaking of the instances of luxury in silver plate among the Romans, amongst others relates the following: ‘We find the orator Calvus com-