Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Xenophon disliked the "American " seat—Cavalry organised by the Athenians — Cost of horses twenty-three centuries ago— Aristophanes ; Aristotle ; Athenians' fondness for horse racing— Alexander the Great; Bucephalus—Story of Bucephalus ; his death—Famous painters of horses : Apelles, Pauson, Micon— Mythical flesh-eating horses of Diomed—Hannibal's cavalry of 12,000 horse—Coins—Posidonius ; horses of the Parthians, Iberians and Celtiberians T N spite of the derisive remarks often uttered concerning Xenophon's advice to young riders, and his advice on horsemanship in general and the care of horses, there is much sound sense in plenty of the hints he gave to the Greek riders of three hundred years before Christ, while many of the rules he laid down are as applicable to-day as they probably were then. His advice on the vexed question of bits and bitting, to take but a single example, is very sound, while his strong objection to allowing horses' legs to be washed frequently is shared by plenty of horse owners at the present time. Then, the old Athenian apparently disapproved of or disliked what we have come to call the " American " seat on a horse, for he declares that the legs of a man mounted should be almost straight, the body upright and supple. Attempts have repeatedly been made to trace the life of Xenophon prior to the time when, in 401 B.c., he first joined the army of Cyrus, but in vain. He is, however, known to have been a close friend of Socrates from a very early age, and probably when he wrote the "Anabasis" he was a little over thirty. But when he died, about the year 355 B.c., he was quite an old man. Historians are almost unanimous in declaring that at Marathon, in 490 B.c., the Athenians were without cavalry, though by that time many of t...