[drivingpairs] One more word about chariots--my questions are answered!

Greetings all,

I am delighted to report that I have found some wonderful info on chariots 
and hitching.  Many, many thanks to Jay and the site he provided:   
www.humanist.de/rome/rts/index.html; I found almost all I needed from there!

I called my wheelwright (Karl Gayer, from Austria), who retired from 
Colonial Williamsburg and still lives in the area (yippee)!  He told me he 
will build me a chariot if I do the research, because he will build only 
something that approaches authenticity.  ("I won't build one of dose tings 
with a cut-out barrel!")

Anyway, the TV chariot racing show said that:

1) no chariots have survived
2) no one knows what they looked like
3) no research has ever been done on the subject

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

In short, chariots had a pole that snaked UP between the horses and ABOVE 
them, terminating in a large, rigid yoke that rested across the base of the 
neck in front of the withers, or more commonly across their backs behind the 
withers, on top of saddles.  The yoke was secured on the outsides of the 
horses with a surcingle holding it down.  For a four-horse team, there would 
need to be two poles and two yokes -- one for each pair of horses.

Draft was via a sort of breast collar arrangement, with no traces.  The 
breast strap attached to the saddle/yoke juncture and draped downward on the 
breast, like a hunting breastplate or a western breast collar.  It would 
certainly need to fasten to the girth by a false martingle to help keep it 
in position, but evidence of this is not visible on the images I found.

And did I say horses?  How about ponies -- usually about 12 hands tall!  
Skeletons, remnants of harness and pieces of wheels and and chariot bodies 
have indeed been excavated.  I suspect that much of the romance of 
"Gladiator" would dissipate if they traded in those awesome Andalusians and 
authentically had the men driving and riding furry little ponies..... with 
their toes hanging at pony knee level (stirrups weren't invented for about 
another 1000 years, remember).

The TV show said that the racing chariot horses traveled at 40 miles per 
hour..... that's like a modern 15-hand American Quarter Horse sprinting for 
a few meters before running out of fast-twitch muscle steam.  More 
realistically, the chariot ponies would have galloped closer to 20 miles per 
hour or maybe sprinting to 25 mph at best.  (Hmmmm, another experiment for 
me to do with my ponies...)

The British Museum is on-line.  Fascinating.  I was plowing through the 
cyber halls and exhibits, and after seeing what artistic images exist, it 
was plain that the poles NEVER reached between the ponies like a modern 
4-wheel vehicle pole.  I thought about the collars used on the Hollywood/TLC 
horses:  they are hybrid crosses of neck and breast collars.  I remember a 
story in the "Driving Digest" about such a style of collar being used in 
modern marathons.  I must find it.  There's also a story on modern chariot 
racing, like maybe 12 or 13 years ago..... you know, with the "cut-out 
barrels."

It then struck me that the modified neck collars would indeed be stable 
enough to provide a sufficient anchor for a crab style of attachment, and 
are thus used in Hollywood, because they would allow somewhat easy 
modifications of contemporary harness in order to function with the modern 
chariots for the purpose of being movie props.  But-- in antiquity, the neck 
collar had not yet been invented.  So the entire concept of a modern pole 
and traces is completely anachronous.  Even more so to see a four-abreast 
pulling with traces with only one pole between the two inner horses.

There are a number of other significant things I found... about 100 pages of 
computer printouts!

So.... my wheelwright wants to undertake the creation of a working chariot 
for me.  So I am as tickled as can be, now that I have at last found out the 
answer to one of my fundamental questions of life:  i.e., how did they 
harness and hitch and balance chariots????

I'm very much looking forward to driving one.  (And I have an unrestored 
wicker governess car begging to be repaired....  looks like another 
deferment's gonna happen.




Laura Crews
Country Roads Farm Welsh Ponies*
Virginia
*and Fancy Rats

"My furs are not in storage or draped across the bed,
They're hanging from the cage door, waiting to be fed."

"Horses very rarely display the extreme strength that they are blessed with. 
It is truly awesome when you see it. You want it pointed in the right 
direction."

Anyone who would release an animal into the wild to fend for itself should 
themselves be put out in the wilderness with no food or water. If they 
survive, then they know how the animal feels. If they don't survive, then 
they have improved the human gene pool....

Remember: STUPIDITY IS A SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE!

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