of nail-shoeing, which at the time these were made it appears they were not.
If not supports for lamps, ancient stirrups, sandals for sound or diseased feet, or iron socks for wearing at night while the horses were resting, what then are they? The first one I saw in the British Museum—belonging to the second class—suggested its probable use. Was it not a skid or drag (sabot or enrayeur) to put under the wheel of a carriage to moderate its descent on steep places? This appeared to me a very likely supposition. It is well known that the Romans employed such instruments for their vehicles, and they are often mentioned in their real, as well as in a figurative, sense, by the designation of 'sufflamen.' For instance, Juvenal, in the ist century, in his eighth satire (148), writes:
Ipse rotam astringit multo sufflamine Consul.
And in his sixteenth satire (50) he also alludes to it:
Nec res atteritur longo sufflamine litis.
Seneca, also in the ist century, speaks of the 'rota sufflaminanda;' and Prudentius in the fourth century (Psych. 417), notices it:
Tardat sufflamine currum.
Gruter, in his collection of Ancient Inscriptions (1803) gives the following reference to it: 'Fontium aquarumque cœlestium ex montibus delabentium torrenti sufflamen his muris fossaque opposuit, et ad plana perduxit.'
Ainsworth, in his Latin Dictionary, explains the meaning of the designation: Sufflamen. Sufflo, machinæ genus, quo in descendu vel procursu nimio tota solet sufflari, i. e., retineri. And another classical dictionary explains it as
