[Exchange.]
    The Greeks and Romans did not know stirrups. The ancients had no saddles like ours, although a Monsieur Ginzrot tries to make out from Julius Caesar and other Roman writers, that they did sometimes employ a kind of frame like a saddle-tree, which was stuffed with wool or cloth, and then covered over with a thick, pliable cloth, and the whole was fastened on with a cingulum or zona, which answered to our surcingle or girth.
    Among the thousands of bronze remains of harness, bridle bits, buckles and horse paraphernalia in the department of “small bronzes” in the Naples museum, there is not a stirrup, not a spur, not a horseshoe. Among the equestrian statues and statuettes in bronze, marble and terra cotta, the saddles, such as I have described, is rarely to be found as a companion to those equestrian statues in marble of the Balbi [father and son], found in the Basilica [not in the theater, as most ciceroni and guides tell the traveler] at Herculaneum, are without saddles, and of course without stirrups. The Balbi ride bare-back.
    The full-size equestrian statue in bronze of Nero, discovered only half a century ago in Pompeii, represents the emperor riding without saddle or stirrups. The wonderful bronze statuette group of Alexander and Bucephalus gives us the pose of the great Macedonian seated upon his bare-backed steed, and he appears riding calmy and fearlessly into battle, dealing heavy blows with his sword with as much force as if he had stirrups to stand up in. All these are in the museum at Naples, and photographs and engravings of them are to be found everywhere, so that any reader of this article can examine for himself.
Post a Comment