scription, to enable them to traverse the roads with their heavy burthens.
There is nothing, however, to show that the ‘Embattai’ of Xenophon, or the ‘Carbatinai’ of Aristotle and Pliny, were employed for solipedes. Nevertheless, now and again a curious passage occurs in the writings of some of the authorities we have just quoted, and in historical descriptions, which acquaints us that on certain occasions, contrivances, which would appear to have been only of a temporary character, were put on the feet of horses, mules, or oxen, to prevent injury to the horn, or to assist in remedying disease. As with the camel, the foot-defences of these creatures seems to have been suggested by that worn by man himself, and improvement in material, according to the ingenuity or wealth of individuals, would, of course, from time to time appear. But there is no description of these improved defences, and their form and means of attachment to the limb have given rise to endless surmises and disputes.
Catullus (B.C. 50) speaks of some kind of shoe, when he is desirous of throwing one of his too solid townsmen off a bridge into the river, so that he might shake him out of his lethargy, as a mule leaves its shoe in a stiff bog: ‘And leave your sluggish mind sunk in thick mire, as the mule his iron shoe in a tenacious bog.’[1]
Joseph Scaliger,[2] in a note on this passage from
