Romans
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Romans
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Roman
Early 19th C Quizzes
and Jigsaws |
Foreign influences?.Roman horses.
We don't know what colour these early horses were, though various authorities suggest that they were dark-coated. Stone sculptures and bronze toys give no indications of colour. Collected bone evidence from Southern England mainly points to small ponies in domestic use from the late Iron Age through to early medieval times. Literary Comments: Tacitus Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote scathingly in 55 AD about the Germans and their equestrian battle maneouvres. He evidently admired light, speedy, handy horses more than the "slow and ugly" animals of northern Europe: "Their horses are remarkable neither for beauty nor for fleetness. Nor are they taught various evolutions after our fashion, but are driven straight forward, or so as to make one wheel to the right in such a compact body that none is left behind another." (Tacitus, Germania) Literary Comments: Julius Caesar Caesar, the Roman general, who brought his troops into Southern Britain in 55 and 54 BC, did not discuss the size of the animals he saw in the British battle chariots, but he described the handiness of the charioteers with some admiration:
A modern misconception. A common misconception is to link the Fell and Friesian breeds by their modern appearance alone - ie, black colour and length of hair - and to imply that the Friesian is the only foreign input the Fell breed has had. The issue is by no means so clear-cut. Many areas other than Frisia contributed auxiliaries to the Roman Army in the North of England; such as France, Belgium, Spain, Hungary and Germany; for more details see the Cavalry page. Some of these countries practised gelding, so not all the war horses would necessarily have been breeding material. In particular, the use of the term "mini-Friesian" is frowned upon by enthusiasts of the Fell pony and the Friesian alike. A Fell should not be described as a mini version of any other breed. Changes to Fell and Friesian breeds
"During the 16th and 17th centuries, but probably also earlier, Arabian blood was introduced, especially through Andalusian horses from Spain. This has given them the high knee-action, the small head and the craning neck." (Bouma, 1979). Whatever breeds were used, this crossing introduced desirable lighter riding qualities into what had previously been more of a heavy-armour or work horse. For a timeline please see the Friesian Horse Association's web site where you can also read a short history from G. J. A. Bouma's “Het Friese Paard” from which the above quotation is taken. Colour comparisons
Fells have always been described as brown, bay, black or grey. Other colours have been registered in the early days of the Stud Book though they are not now seen in registered stock. It may be more significant for our equine argument that that the colour black is easily bred "pure" to exclude other colours if fashion so dictates. Brown Fells, for instance, dropped steadily out of favour on the show circuit from the 1950s onward, and even now many fewer browns/bays are registered than blacks. The result is that the modern (and mistaken) concept of the Fell, even in England, even in sometimes Cumbria, is "a black pony". Yet I have ridden or driven more bay and brown Fells (see photo of my excellent driving mare) than blacks! Roman mystery Richardson (1990) remarks on the prepotence of the Friesian horse, while Dent and Machin-Goodall (1962) give evidence of the similarities of the Frisian language with Old English which is supported by DNA testing in more recent times (albeit from the southeast Danelaw area rather than from northwest England). However, there is no particular reason to suppose that ancient Roman imports still have even a minor influence on the modern Fell after 2,000 years. Surprisingly little is known of Roman military sources of horses (Hyland), so, until the conservators of the Vindolanda tablets decipher a Roman military stud list, we can only deduce the types of horses in the Fell’s homeland from the bones recorded in archaeological digs. Remember that the modern idea of a "breed" was a concept unknown in ancient times, and that what we're really talking about is a type of animal from a particular location. We may safely assume that there were some horses from Frisia among the Roman army lines because there were some Frisian auxiliaries employed; but we actually know nothing specific about whether there were any long-sustained crosses, what types were involved or what locations they came from, the numbers that were bred, how many crossbred horses might have been kept as breeding or working stock, or how many offspring survived to produce further generations. I have several correspondents who hold that the Roman Sarmatian cavalrymen based at Ribchester were involved in horsebreeding for the Army in the North. Very large numbers of Sarmatian cavalry were moved around the North of England and Southern Scotland over several centuries, so at a stretch it might be possible to cite Polish, Hungarian, or even Iranian horses as the source of any supposed outcross. However Strabo, writing around the time of the birth of Christ, reported that the Sarmatians gelded their war horses (Hyland). Whether this custom became less universal among the Sarmatians in the 200 years that followed, cannot be certainly known (the Pazyryk burials included geldings, but they were of Scythian, not Sarmatian origin). So again, we simply don't know what foreign input there was. [Archaeological work in progress in Cambridgeshire (2005-06) and so far not written up, may indicate that ponies as well as horses were being bred. Anything relevant to this argument will be mentioned and cited here once published.] Medieval and later Friesians Friesian horses were known in England in medieval times (see "Horses in Cumbrian Medieval Romances"); they were popular carriage horses in the late 16th C; and Friesian horses accompanied Dutch engineers into Norfolk and Lincolnshire during the drainage of the Fen country in the 17th C. These Friesian trotters are said to have influenced the Norfolk trotter, and the Old English Black (later the Shire). If there is any Friesian influence at all in the Fell breed, then it may really have come in modern rather than Roman times. However, if this is the case, it came very circuitously indeed, via a few 19th C breedings, that traced back through Norfolk and Yorkshire cobs, to the horses of East Anglia, and thence to the Dutch imports. Other dark, stocky European breeds of pony It is equally possible that there were dark coated ponies all over Britain and Western Europe from which several rather similar modern breeds descend, such as the Merens/Ariegeois, Døle, Pottok, Asturcon, Garrano and Bardigiano as well as the Fell and Dale. In that case, one has to assume that the Roman Army's auxilia, and their military preferences, must either have had little or no effect on any of them, or must have affected all of them to roughly the same extent. Whether the Friesian is the fons et origo of these breeds, or they (including the Friesian) all derive from a common root, is a "chicken and egg" argument that could keep zooarchaeologists, DNA researchers and horse enthusiasts happily arguing for many years to come.
Some present day Fells can appear superficially similar to some present day Friesians. That occasional modern likeness cannot prove, on its own, that the two breeds looked the same in Roman times, nor that they were interbred. In fact, history is silent on the subject. |
Both
the
Fell and the Friesian originally varied
much more in colour than they do now. The
Friesian was not always an entirely black
breed. Once, roans
were permitted, and up to the end of the 19th
century about twenty percent were chestnut
or bay; these colours were deliberately eliminated (or blacks were "carefully
selected", depending on your point of view). It is the modern Friesian
that has become almost exclusively "a black horse". 
