Horses in War

[Vidhyanath Rao]

> Homer tells us precisely what happens when chariots cross a ditch:
> ".... the hosts of Troy, whom the digged trench held back against
> their will.  And in the trench many pairs of swift horses, drawers
> of chariots, brake the pole at the end, and left the chariots of
> their lords...."  Iliad 16.369 (et seq)

There is a modern eye-witness account of what might happen when a 2nd m.
BCE chariot tries to jump a ditch. This is in footnote 10 on p. 40  in
Spruytte, Ancient Harness Systems. During experiments with a
reconstructed copy of the chariot found in Tut's tomb, the horses took
fright for some unknown reason and took off at high speed. The alarmed
driver jumped to safety. The horses came to a deep ditch about 1.30 m
wide, jumped and landed on the other side. The pole broke, but [the
point of the story] the yoke and the neck forks stayed put on the
horses' necks, though the right fork turned to be cracked on inspection.
[It doesn't say where the pole broke.]