detachment, which had fallen into an ambuscade when attacking the Numidians, he says: ‘Not there did the charger, moved by the clanging of trumpets, shake the rocks with the beating of his hoof. .... Nor avails it any one to have cut short the delay of his horny-hoofed steed, for they have neither space nor force for the onset.’[1] And referring to an incident in the campaign which culminated in that important engagement, it is written: ‘Pompey care deters, by reason of the land being exhausted for affording fodder, which the horseman in his course has trodden down, and with quickened steps the horny-hoof has beaten down the shooting field.’[2] The poet Claudianus, three centuries later, addressing the Emperor Honorius, in one of his epigrams exclaims,
‘O felix sonipes cui tanti fraena mereri
Numinis.’
Even so late as the 12th century, Fitz-Stephens, when describing London, and the excellent quality of the horses, remarks, ‘Cum talium sonipedem cursus imminet,’ etc. The expression was, doubtless, borrowed from Virgil, or some of the old Latin poets. And yet later, the characteristic designation is alluded to, for Ludwig Carrio, in commenting on Leutprand's Chronicle, quotes an old verse, a line of which runs: ‘His parvus sonipes, nec marti notus.’
Though the appellation may be traced to the Greeks, yet it has been surmised that it had its origin with the Romans, from the circumstance that in consequence of their not knowing how to protect their horses' feet in a substantial manner, they were compelled to construct their roads to accommodate the unarmed hoof; thus were formed
