That Homer himself, however, had sound knowledge of the qualifications which go to make up what in latter-day English we probably should term a “finished charioteer” is shown by the following rather well-known lines that here are translated almost literally:— “But he who in his chariot and his steeds Trusts only, wanders here and there Unsteady, while his coursers loosely rein'd Roam wide the field; not so the charioteer Of sound intelligence; he, though he drive Inferior steeds, looks ever to the goal While close he clips, not ignorant to check His coursers at the first, but with tight rein Ruling his own, and watching those before.” Menesthus, emphatically one of the finest of the many fine riders spoken of in the “Iliad,” or, as Homer himself describes him, “foremost in equestrian fame,” is typical of the horsemen of that period. In the “Iliad” too we find what I believe I am right in stating to be the first direct historical allusion to wagering on horse races. But the medium current on racecourses in those days was not coin. The odds apparently were laid in “kitchen utensils”—as a lad with whom I was at school once construed the line, to his subsequent discomfiture—namely, cauldrons and tripods. Such, at least, we are led to infer from the paragraph in the twenty-third book of the “Iliad,” which, according to William Cowper's blank verse translation, edited by Robert Southey, runs somewhat as follows:— “Come now—a tripod let us wager each, Or cauldron, and let Agamemnon judge Whose horses lead, that, losing, thou mayst learn.” Or more euphoniously, as Lord Derby has it: “Wilt thou a cauldron or a tripod stake And Agamemnon, Atreus' son, appoint the umpire To decide whose steeds are first?” The cauldrons and tripods referred to were of course of great value, and, as trophies, highly prized by competitors in the races and other competitions calling for a display of skill and daring. There is another allusion in the “Iliad” to the presentation of a tripod as a great reward for valour. It occurs in the eighth book, and the passage goes more or less like this: “Let but the Thunderer and Minerva grant The pillage of fair Ilium to the Greeks, And I will give to thy victorious hand, After my own, the noblest recompense, A tripod or a chariot with its steeds, Or some fair captive to partake thy bed.” I recollect how at school this passage, with several others, used to be rigorously excluded when Homer was being construed, with the result that Kelly's famous “Keys to the Classics” used afterwards to be produced surreptitiously, and the “censored” lines turned carefully into English. * * * * * From what Homer tells us elsewhere, and from additional sources, we may conclude that of all the races that bred horses and took just pride in them in the early centuries before Christ the Thracians were probably the most renowned.