The origin and influence of the thoroughbred horse . e they apparently preferred whitehorses, which they held to be sacred, and which seem regularlyto have accompanied the army on the march. So great valuewas set by the Persians on white horses, probably for sacrifice,that the tribute paid by the Cilicians was set at three hundred 1 Nisa omnes equos flavos habet. - 524. » Xen. Cyr. iv. 3, 28. ^ Ibid. in. 2. ^ Ibid. viii. 24. « Arrian, Anab. vi. 29; Strabo, 729. Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 191 and sixty white horses, one for every day in the year, and fivehundred talents of silver^, a fact which sh
The origin and influence of the thoroughbred horse . e they apparently preferred whitehorses, which they held to be sacred, and which seem regularlyto have accompanied the army on the march. So great valuewas set by the Persians on white horses, probably for sacrifice,that the tribute paid by the Cilicians was set at three hundred 1 Nisa omnes equos flavos habet. - 524. » Xen. Cyr. iv. 3, 28. ^ Ibid. in. 2. ^ Ibid. viii. 24. « Arrian, Anab. vi. 29; Strabo, 729. Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 191 and sixty white horses, one for every day in the year, and fivehundred talents of silver^, a fact which shows that white horseswere especially plentiful in that region. On the march of Xerxeshost the following order was observed. First came a thousandpicked horsemen, then a thousand chosen spearmen, after whomcame ten sacred Nisaean horses, splendidly caparisoned. Thesehorses were called Nisaean because they were reared in Media,on the wide Nisaean plain, which produced horses of large these ten horses came the sacred car of Zeus, drawn by. Fig. 6U. The Turk. eight white horses, followed by the charioteer on foot, and holdingtheir bridles, for no mortal was allowed to mount the liim followed Xerxes himself in a chariot drawn byNisaean horses, with his charioteer beside him-. When Cyrus was about to cross the large river Gyndes,a tributary of the Tigris, we are told that one of the sacredwhite horses having in wantonness entered the river and triedto cross it he was swept away by the stream. Whereupon Cyruswas very wroth with the river, and threatened that he wouldso reduce its stream that henceforth even women misfht cross 1 Herod, iii. 90. - Herod, vii. 40. 192 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. it without wetting their knees\ iVpparently Xerxes thoughtit desirable to propitiate the rivers which he crossed by volun-tarily sacrificing white horses to them. Thus on his marchthrough Thrace the magi sacrificed white horses into theStrymon-. The muster-roll of the a
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