(1) The horse. The meaning of this symbol must be drawn from the natural use to which the symbol is applied, or the characteristics which it is known to have; and it may be added, that there might have been something for which that was best known in the time of the writer who uses it, which would not be so prominent at another period of the world, or in another country, and that it is necessary to have that before the mind in order to obtain a correct understanding of the symbol. The use of the horse, for instance, may have varied at different times to some degree; at one time the prevailing use of the horse may have been for battle; at another for rapid marches――as of cavalry; at another for draught; at another for races; at another for conveying messages by the establishment of posts or the appointment of couriers. To an ancient Roman the horse might suggest prominently one idea; to a modern Arab another; to a teamster in Holland another. The things which would be most naturally suggested by the horse as a symbol, as distinguished, for instance, from an eagle, a lion, a serpent, &c., would be the following: (a) War, as this was probably one of the first uses to which the horse was applied. So, in the magnificent description of the horse in Job xxxix. 19‒25, no notice is taken of any of his qualities but those which pertain to war. See, for a full illustration of this passage, and of the frequent reference in the classic writers to the horse as connected with war, Bochart, _Hieroz._ lib. ii. c. viii., particularly p. 149. Comp. Virg. _Geor._ iii. 83, 84: “Si qua sonum procul arma dedêre, Stare loco nescit, micat auribus, et tremit artus.” Ovid, _Metam._ iii.: “Ut fremit acer equus, cam bellicus, aere canoro Signa dedit tubicen, pugnæque assumit amorem.” _Silius_, lib. xiii.: “Is trepido alituum tinnitu, et stare neganti, Imperitans violenter equo.” So Solomon says (Pr. xxi. 31), “The horse is prepared against the day of battle.” So in Zec. x. 3, the prophet says, God had made the house of Judah “as his goodly horse in the battle;” that is, he had made them like the victorious war-horse. (b) As a consequence of this, and of the conquests achieved by the horse in war, he became the symbol of conquest――of a people that could not be overcome. Comp. the above reference in Zec. Thus in Carthage the horse was an image of victorious war, in contradistinction to the _ox_, which was an emblem of the arts of peaceful agriculture. This was based on a tradition respecting the foundation of the city, referred to by Virgil, _Æn._ i. 442‒445: “Quo primum jactati undis et turbine Poeni Effodêre loco signum, quod regia Juno Monstrârat, _caput acris equi_: sic nam fore bello Egregiam, et facilem victu per Secula gentem.”