loud shouts arose from every one, “Behold, Pertinax is here!”[1]
The allusion made by Pliny to the garniture of Poppæa's mules, Mr Pegge remarks, would seem to imply that the solea was pulled on like an ordinary sock; but, as previously mentioned, Vossius doubts this: ‘Verum qua ratione absque clavis id fieri possit, non satis liquet;’ and then he makes the assertion before alluded to, to prove that even the Greeks put on the hoof-armature with nails: ‘in vetusto exemplari Hippiatricorum Græcorum, quod habeo, cui etiam picturæ accedunt, clavorum quibus trajiciantur ungulæ signa et vestigia manifeste apparent,’ And yet, Pegge maintains, the σωαξτία εωίχρυσα mentioned above could not well be nailed, but must have been drawn on and fastened in a different manner, perhaps by being tied round the leg, like the snow-bags Xenophon saw, and as ὑωοδήματα used for the soleæ or shoes of mules seems to imply. Scaliger,[2] from attentive examination of all the passages referring to this subject, certainly was of opinion that the shoes of horses and mules, whatever may have been their materials, were not fastened
- ↑ Ibid. Lib. lxxxiii. ‘Post hæc equum eundem, quum ob senectutem dimissus esset a cursu, et ruri ageret, Commodus arcessiverat, et introduxerat in circum, inauratis ungulis, ac inaurata pelle in dorso ornatum: qui ubi de improvise comparuit, rursum conclamatum est ab omnibus, “Ecce Pertinax adest.”’ Stephanus thinks that Poppæa's mule-shoes were merely the soleæ spartea gilt, and he adds (though we must not forget the mistake he previously makes): ‘Equi bellatores apud Romanos non habebant munimenta pedum seu soleas, sed sole jumenta, ut ostendit Fabrettas (Col. Traj.). . . . . . Pertinacis tamen equi παρηβηχότος ungulas inaurabat Commodus, τύς ὁρλας χαταχρυσώσας’
- ↑ Pitisc. ad Suet. Nero, cap. 30.
