1st review
Today I started reading this horsemanship classic book. This is the 2006 publication by Dover and it was translated from Greek by Morris H. Morgan.
Xenophon is presented like a very skilled rider and a student of Socrates, living in ancient Greece 2300 years ago.
The book first chapter starts with an interesting first topic: “how a man, in buying a horse, would least likely to be cheated”
Today I didn’t have the time to read further than the first advice and got totally lost in the interesting footnotes we find all over the book.
1st advice was on buying an unbroken colt… “the first things which I say you ought to look at are his feet”
Regarding the horse foot I found interesting information about hoof care practice on the ancient age… at the time the horses were barefoot however the Romans “used for the mules the solea, a sort of sock of leather completely covering the hoof and tied about the fetlock, strengthened underneath by a plate of iron”… How about this??? A sort of ancient hoof boot, cool!!
But it gets even better… “Nero (the emperor that set Rome on fire) substituted plates of silver, and his luxurious wife Poppaea, gold.” … It cant get much more extravagant, don’t you think?
(to be continued)
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4 comments:
Lucky you, this is a book I would love to read! That first chapter sounds very interesting, what did they look for in a colt in those days? Is it similar to what we look for?
I think my farrier uses shoes of silver and gold. Don't they all?
Hi Anna and Anne! (form another Ana)
Anna,
Hi ordered it from Amazon... can´t you get it in NZ?... As far as I read, yes... is very very similar to what we still look for now... however on the hoof shape they considered better is diferent... I´ll write about it later :)
Anne,... over here is just plain iron... you have to send me your farrier some day when I win the lottery :):):)
I'm sure I could get it lol, but I've never seen it around, now I might have a look in the online bookstore.
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