That shoeing was not known to Old Testament people, no one has yet, so far as I am aware, offered a doubt. Deborah[1] (B.C. 1296) sings, ‘Then were the horse-hoofs broken by the means of their prancings, the prancings of their mighty ones;’ or, as it might perhaps more correctly be rendered, ‘Then did the horses’ hoofs smite the ground, and were broken from the haste of their riders.’ Isaiah[2] (b.c. 760), in the grandly prophetic language in which he foreshadows the downfall of Jerusalem by the armies of Rome, mentions the hoofs of their horses and what was esteemed their best quality. He says, ‘Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind.’ And Jeremiah[3] (b.c. 607), when foretelling the punishment of the Philistines, says: ‘At the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of his strong horses, at the rushing of his chariots.’
It is in Homer (B.C. 1000) that we find some investigators contending for the first notice of a metallic footdefence. Among these appear Fabretti, Bourgelat, Montfauçon, Cuming, and a few others. In reality, however, it was Eustathius, who lived in the 12th century, who, in his Commentaries on Homer, first speaks of that poet mentioning horses as shod. In the ‘Iliad’ (Book xi., lines 150-2) occurs the passage noted by Eustathius:
πεζοὶ μὲν πεζοὺς ὄλεκον φεύγοντας ἀνάγκῃ
ἱππεῖς δ᾽ἱππῆας—ὑπὸ δέ σφισιν ὦρτο κονίη
ἐκ πεδίου, τὴν ὦρσαν ἐρίγδουποι πόδες ἵππων
