the men, interpreting their neighing for a language of truce and friendship. In the other Indies, to ride upon an elephant was anciently the highest honour; the second to ride in a coach with four horses; the third to ride upon a camel, and the last and lowest to be carried or drawn by one horse only. One of our late writers tell us that he has been in a country in those parts where they ride upon oxen with pads, stirrups, and bridles, and that he found this equipage very much to his ease. Quintus Fabius Maximus Rutilianus,2 in a battle with the Samnites, seeing his cavalry, after three or four charges, had failed of breaking into the enemies' main body, took this course to make them unbridle all their horses, and spur their horses with all their might, so that, having nothing to check their career, they might, through weapons and men, open the way for his foot, who by that means gave them a bloody defeat. The same command was given by Quintus Fulvius Flaccus against the Celtiberians: Id cum majore vi equorum facietis, si effrænatos in hostes equos immittitis ; quod sæpè Romanos equites cum laude fecisse suâ memoriæ proditum est. ... Detractisque frœnis, bis ultro citroque cum magna strage hostium, infractis omnibus hastis, transcurrerunt.8 "You will do your business with greater advantage of your horses' strength if you spur them unbridled upon the enemy, as it is recorded the Roman horse to their great glory have often done. . . . . . And their bits being pulled off without breaking a lance, they charged through and through with great slaughter of the enemy." Mare's milk the The Duke of Muscovy was anciently obliged to pay this reverence to the Tartars, that when they sent delight of the Tar- any embassy to him he went out to meet the ambassadors on foot, and presented them with a goblet of mare's milk (a beverage of greatest esteem among tars. 1 Arrian, Hist. Ind. c. 17. Or rather Rullianus. See Livy, vii. 8 Livy, xl. 40. them); and if, in drinking, a drop fell by chance upon the horse's mane, he was bound to lick it off with his tongue.1 The army that Bajazet had sent into Russia was overwhelmed with so dreadful a tempest of snow that, to shelter and preserve themselves from freezing, many ripped up and embowelled their horses, to creep into their bellies and enjoy the benefit of that vital heat. Bajazet, after that furious battle wherein he was overthrown by Tamerlane,' was in a hopeful way of securing his own person by the fleetness of an Arabian mare he had under him, had he not been constrained to let her drink her fill at the ford of a river in his way, which rendered her so heavy and indisposed that he was afterwards easily overtaken by those that pursued him. They say, indeed, that to let a horse stale takes him off his mettle; but I should rather have thought that drinking would have refreshed her and revived her spirits. Croesus, marching his army over a common near Sardis, met with an infinite number of serpents, which the horses devoured with great appetite, and which Herodotus says was a bad omen to his affairs. 8 We call a horse cheval entier that has his mane and ears entire, and no other will pass muster. The Lacedemonians, having defeated the Athenians in Sicily, return- Horses clipped to ing triumphant from the victory into the city of be led in triumph. Syracusa, amongst other bravadoes caused all the horses they had taken to be shorn and led in triumph. Alexander fought with a nation called Daha; a people whose discipline it was to march two and two together, armed and on horseback, to the war; but being in fight, one always alighted, and so they fought one while on horseback and another on foot, one after another, by turns.5 I do not think that for good and graceful riding any nation 1 See the Chronicle of Muscovy, by Peter Petrejus, a Swede, printed in High Dutch, at Leipsic, in 1620, in 4to. part i. p. 159. This species of slavery began about the middle of the thirteenth century, and lasted near 260 years * In 1401. 3 Book i. c. 78. 4 Plutarch, Life of Nicias, c. 10 Instances of the excels the French, though a good horseman, according to our way of speaking, seems rather to respect the courage of the man than his horsemanship and address in riding. The most knowing in that art that ever I knew, that had the best seat and the best method in taming a horse, was Monsieur de Carnavalet, who served our King Henry the Second in this respect. I have seen a man ride with both his feet upon the saddle, take off the saddle, and at his return take it up again, refit and remount it, riding all the while full speed; having galloped over a cap, make at it very good shots backward with his bow, take up any thing from the ground, setting one foot down and the other in the stirrup, with twenty other apes' tricks, which he got his living by. wonderful dexter Ity of riders. There has been seen in my time at Constantinople two men upon a horse, who, in the height of his speed, would throw themselves off and into the saddle again by turn; and one who bridled and saddled his horse with nothing but his teeth. Another, who betwixt two horses, one foot upon one saddle and another upon the other, carrying another man upon his shoulders, would ride full career; the other standing bolt upright upon him, making excellent shots with his bow. Several, who would ride full speed with their heels upwards and their heads upon the saddle, betwixt the rows of scimitars fixed in the harness. When I was a boy, the Prince of Sulmona, riding a rough horse at Naples, to all his airs, held reals under his knees and toes as if they had been nailed there, to show the firmness of his seat. CHAPTER XLIX. OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS. their dress. I SHOULD willingly pardon our people for admitting no ɔther pattern or rule of perfection than their own peculiar manners and customs, it being a common vice not of the vulgar only, but almost of all men, to look upon their own country's fashions as the best. I am content when they see Fabricius or Lælius, that they look upon their countenance and behaviour as barbarous, seeing they are neither clothed nor fashioned according to our mode. But I find fault with their especial indiscretion in suffering themselves to be so imposed upon and blinded by the authority of The French very the present custom, as every month to alter changeable in their opinion, if custom so require, and that they should so vary their judgment in their own particular concern. When they wore the belly-pieces of their doublets as high as their breast, they stiffly maintained that they were in their proper place. Some years after they were slipped down between their thighs, and then they laughed at the former fashion as uneasy and intolerable. The new fashion in use makes them absolutely condemn the old with so great a warmth, and so universal a contempt, that a man would think there was a kind of madness crept in amongst them, that infatuates their understandings to this strange degree. Now seeing that our change of fashions is so prompt and sudden that the inventions of all the tailors in the world cannot furnish out new whim-whams enough, there will often be a necessity that the old despised ones must again come in vogue, and again fall into contempt; and that the same judgment must, in the space of fifteen or twenty years, take up not only different, but contrary, opinions, with an incredible. lightness and inconstancy. There is not any of us so discreet that suffers not himself to be gulled with this contradiction, and both in external and internal sight to be insensibly blinded. I will here muster up some old customs that I have in memory; some of them the same with ours, others different, to the end that, bearing in mind this continual variation of human things, we may have our judgments clearer and more firmly settled. The use amongst us of fighting with rapier and cloak, was The practice of in practice amongst the Romans also: Sinistras the ancient Romans to fight with sagis involvunt, gladiosque distringunt,1 " They rapier and cloak. wrapped their cloaks round the left arm, and wielded the sword with the right," says Cæsar; and he mentions an old vicious custom of our nation, which continues yet amongst us, which is to stop passengers we meet upon the road, to compel them to give an account who they are, and to take it for an injury and just cause of quarrel if they refuse to do it.2 The ancients before dinner. At the bath, which the ancients made use of every day before they went to dinner, and, indeed, as bathed every day frequently as we wash our hands, they at first only bathed their arms and legs, but afterwards, and by a custom that has continued for many ages in most nations of the world, they bathed stark naked in mixed and perfumed water, so that it became a mark of great simplicity of life to bathe in pure water. The most delicate and affected perfumed themselves all over three or four times a day. They often caused all their hair to be pulled out, as the women of France have some time since taken up a fancy to do their foreheads, Quod pectus, quod crura tibi, quod brachia vellis, "How dost thou twitch thy breast, thy arms and thighs," though they had ointments proper for that purpose. 1 Cæsar, De Bello Civili, i. 75. Id. De Bello Gallico, iv. 5. a Seneca, Epist. 86 |