Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/91

 on with nails, particularly in Suetonius' and Nero's time.

Aldrovandus remarks, that Suetonius, in his Life of Caligula (A.D. 40), expressly notices the iron shoe, with eight or more nails; and Colonel Smith, who quotes this naturalist, appears to think him correct. ‘We read concerning Caligula, in Suetonius, that the day previous to the races in the circus, he ordered the soldiers to maintain strict silence in the neighbourhood, lest his horse should be disturbed. He remembered when a journey was to be undertaken, if the country to be traversed was mountainous or rough, that, instead of eight, fourteen nails were to be affixed; because such ground wore away the nails rapidly.’ I have carefully read two editions of Suetonius (one of them the ‘Bibliotheca Classica Latina’ of C. B. Hase; Paris, 1828), but do not find the most distant allusion to horse-shoes in the ‘Life of Caligula.’ The reference is not trustworthy.

For reasons which will be hereafter given, it might be concluded, that when shoes for horses or mules are mentioned by any of the Roman or Greek writers immediately preceding or following the commencement of our era, that the modern method of applying a shoe to these animals' feet is not meant, and that there is no proof that it was known. But as additional evidence that the solea was a temporary