It was founded on the principal virtues of piety, honor, valor, courtesy, chastity and loyalty.
It was the idealized code of gallantry and honor that medieval knights were pledged to observe. They rode bareback, or on a cloth or skin, strapped to the horse.Ĭhivalry was the system, spirit or customs of medieval knighthood. They used no stirrup, but had both bridle and bit. The Greeks and Romans, especially the former, were skilled horsemen, and feats on horseback were a feature of their games. 1825), as did the Persians (Cyrus at the battle of Thymbra), Greeks and Romans. The Hebrews understood the use of the horse in war (Job xxxix. The fable of the centaurs, if the derivation from ~epretv, to goad, raiipos, bull, be accepted, would indicate the early existence of pastoral peoples living on horseback.Īrchaeological discoveries in India, Persia, Assyria and Egypt show that in the polished stone age quaternary man had domesticated the horse, while a Chinese treatise, the Goei-leaotse, the fifth book of the Veuking, a sort of military code dating from the reign of the emperor Hoang-Ti (2637 years B.C.), places the cavalry on the wings of the army. The origin of the use of the horse as a means of transport goes back to prehistoric times.