Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/209

This page has been validated.
ROMAN CAMPS AND VILLAS.
181

the end of the 4th or the commencement of the 5th century. The weight of these fullered shoes amounts to about 265 grammes each (about 91/2 ounces).

'These two varieties of shoes are not only met with in Roman establishments, civil and military, but also in the Burgundian tombs of the 5th century, and in ruins of the 7th and 8th centuries; as also in the dwellings of the middle ages, and in all the districts over which horses of this epoch have passed. According to all appearances, during the Roman period the people of the country had preserved the mode of shoeing practised by their ancestors of Celtic origin, and the breed of horses had scarcely increased in size; while the Romans, or rather the foreign troops attached to the legions, had imported stronger horses, and employed shoes different from those of our nation. Such is at least the opinion that we derive from the facts and the circumstances accompanying the discovery of these articles. We possess some shoes found with a heap of horses' bones, the hoofs of which yet remained shod, and which were lighted upon when repairing the road from Courtemantruy to Saint-Ursanne, not far from the Roman camps of Moron and Mount Terrible (figs. 36, 37). Another shoe, almost identical with them, has been gathered in the last-named camp, on the same level with Roman relics (fig. 38). A fragment was also found in the same place (fig. 39). The ruins of the Roman villas of Debilliers and Fourfaivre contained a considerable number of the type represented in figures 40 and 41. It would be superfluous to offer any more descriptions or drawings, because in nearly all the Roman sites in the country, shoes of the same, or of slightly dif-