Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/170

160 When bought, the horse must be placed in a stable which is under the master's eye. It must be made as difficult to steal the horse's food from his stall as the provisions from the master's larder. It must be observed whether the horse scatters his food from the manger—a sure sign that he is off his feed, and for some reason out of sorts. The ground outside the stable should be laid down with round stones, in order to harden the horses' feet. This sort of precaution was especially requisite among the Greeks, as they had not attained the art of shoeing horses with iron. Xenophon's anxiety on this subject leads him to give the mistaken advice that the groom should never wash a horse's legs, but only dry-rub them; for "daily wetting," he says, "does harm to the hoofs." He is far from countenancing the practice adopted in modern times of cropping the ears and tails of horses. On the contrary, he is for stimulating with water the growth of the tail and forelock, in order to give the animal as much defence as possible against flies; and of the mane, in order to give the rider an ample grasp in mounting. This business of mounting must have been a serious one in Xenophon's day, for the simple expedient of stirrups had never been invented. In fact, if we want to form an accurate idea of rider and horse as conceived by Xenophon, we should look at some of the friezes from the Parthenon in the British Museum. Modern sculptors appear to consider stirrups prosaic, and frequently omit them on that account; but Phidias omitted them in his equestrian figures, because in his time they did not exist. And, without them, the only