Although both Greeks and Trojans were accomplished charioteers, riding on horseback was, we are told, so rare and curious an exhibition in ancient Greece that only one single reference is found in the poems of Homer. According to Gladstone, equestrian exercise was "the half-foreign accomplishment of the Kentauroi," who were fabulously half-man and half-horse: similarly, in most ancient Ireland there are no riders on horseback, and the warriors fight invariably from chariots.[432] On the other hand, in Etruria there are found representations of what might be a modern race meeting, and the effect of these pictures upon the early investigators of Etrurian tombs seems to have been most surprising. In the words of Mrs. Hamilton Gray: "The famous races of Britain seemed there to find their type. The racers, the race-stand, the riders with their various colours, the judges, the spectators, and the prizes were all before us. We were unbelieving like most of our countrymen.... Our understandings and imaginations were alike perplexed."[433] The verb to _canter_ is supposed to be derived from the pace at which pilgrims proceeded to _Canter_bury. But pilgrims either footed it or else ambled leisurely along on their palfreys, and the connection between canter and Cantuar is seemingly much deeper than supposed. At _Kintyre_ in Scotland the patron saint is St. _Cheiran_, who may be connoted with _Chiron_, the wise and good _Kentaur_ chief; and this connection of Chiron-Kentaur, Cheiran-Kintyre is the more curious, inasmuch as both an Irish MS. and Ptolemy refer independently by different terms to the Mull of Kintyre, as "the height of the _horse_".[434] [Illustration: FIG. 245.--From _The Heroes_ (Kingsley, C.).] The illustration herewith is an early Victorian conception of Chiron, the wise and kindly Kentaur King, and CANTORIX, an inscription found on the spectral steeds of Fig. 146, might seemingly without outrage be interpreted as _Canto rex_, or _Song King_: in Welsh _canto_, a song or _chant_, was _gan_, and the title _tataguen_ meant "the father of the muse";[435] according to mythology the walls of Troy were built by Oceanus to the music of Apollo's lyre. It would appear probable that Kent, the county of Invicta, the White Horse, was pre-eminently a horse-breeding county, as it remains to this day: part of Cantuarburig is known as Hackington, and in view of the Iceni hackney-coins there is little doubt that horse-breeding was extensively practised wherever the equine Eceni, Cantii, and Cenomagni were established. It is noteworthy that the Icknield Way was known alternatively as Hackington Way, Hackney Way, Acknil Way, and Hikenilde Street.[436]