The connexion of the horse with the heroic dead, whencesoever the notion may have arisen, was certainly in some districts of Greece very close. Milchhoefer has shown[89] how the sculptural evidence indicates that this connexion was closest in Thrace and Northern Greece. And this is but natural. The aristocracies of Thessaly, of Boeotia, and other northern parts of Greece were essentially equestrian; whereas in Peloponnesus the horse, being unsuited to the rugged mountain paths, was comparatively rare. The strength of a Thessalian army lay in its cavalry; the strength of a Spartan army in its array of spearmen. To a horse-loving race it was natural to think of the mighty dead as horsemen. Even at Sparta the national heroes, the sons of Zeus, Castor and Pollux, were essentially riders; and on monuments they seldom appear without their steeds. Still more close is the connexion between heroes of Northern Greece and their horses. A great deal of learning has been expended by a variety of archaeologists to prove that the horse, when he appears in the sepulchral banquets and the present class of reliefs, is of chthonic signification; that he belongs mythologically to the gods of the world below, and to mortals assimilated to them[90]. It may be doubted whether they have proved their case. Hades is in Homer κλυτόπωλος, in allusion to the dread chariot in which he bore away Persephone[91]; but he does not appear as a rider. The wild rider or hunting ghost is familiar in northern lands, but not in ancient Greece. It seems preferable to take the simpler explanation, that a chief accustomed all his life to riding would scarcely be supposed to lack a horse in the fields of Hades. We have ancient evidence that the presence of a sculptured horse beside a sculptured man showed his knightly rank in the _Athenian Constitution_ of Aristotle[92], where we are told that a statue of one Diphilas on the Athenian Acropolis, which was set up to mark his rise to the knightly rank, had a horse standing beside it. Several extant monuments show how the god-like heroes of Northern Hellas came as horsemen to receive the tribute of the living. And this kind of monument spread from the north into other parts of the Greek world. One of the earliest and most typical of these reliefs is in the British Museum[93] (Fig. 35). It comes from Rhodes, and may be dated about 400 B.C. In it we have a combination in three figures of the three elements which in this class of monuments are almost universally mingled. First, there is the hero himself on horseback. Next, there is a female figure of stature equal to or greater than his own[94], who meets him and pours him a cup of wine. Thirdly, there is a worshipper on a somewhat smaller scale, who does homage. [Illustration: FIG. 35. HORSEMAN RELIEF, BRITISH MUSEUM.]