new one every seventh year, at the expense of the townsmen who reside near the place.'
Examples of ostentatious extravagance in horse-shoes are numerous in the middle and succeeding ages. During the Roman period, we have already remarked that attempts at display in this particular direction were made by the wife of Nero and others, when golden or gilded soleæ were fastened on the feet of mules or horses. Gold and silver shoes and nails were fashionable, it appears, among the wealthy who were ostentatiously inclined, to so late a period as the 17th century. When Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany, one of the wealthiest princes of his time, went in 1083, to meet Beatrix, mother of the famous Matilda, marchioness of Tuscany, who married Godfrey of Lorraine, his escort was so grandly equipped, that instead of iron, the horses had silver shoes and nails, and when any of these came off they were the property of those who picked them up.
Qui dux cum peregret illo,
Ornatos magnos secum tulit atque caballos,
Sub pedibus quorum chalybem non ponere solum
Jusserat, argentum sed ponere, sic quasi ferrum
Esse repercussum clavum voluit quoque nullum,
Ex hoc ut gento possent reperire quis esset.
Cornipedes currunt, argentum dum resilit, tunc
Colligitur passim, passim reperitur in agris,
A populo terræ testans quod dives hic esset.[1]
Bartholomeus Scriba, in his Annales Gennenses, for the year 1230, asserts that a certain man, named Ermemolinus, gave eight thousand bizantines to Genoa, as a mark of his affection and friendship; and with this money the
- ↑ Donizone, Vita Mathilda, lib. i. cap. 10.
