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Simon of Athens

Simon of Athens was an Athenian writer on horses and horsemanship of the fifth century BC. He is the earliest known ancient Greek writer on the subject; Pliny described him as primus de equitatu scripsit, "the first to have written on riding". His writings are quoted by Xenophon.

Life

It is not known when Simon lived. However, it cannot have been much before 460 BC, as he is known to have criticised a work of the Athenian painter Micon, who lived at about that time.[1]:4[2]:242 Simon is the earliest writer of ancient Greece known to have written on horses and horsemanship, and was described by Pliny as primus de equitatu scripsit, "the first to have written on riding".[1]:4[3]

According to Xenophon, Simon dedicated a bronze statue of a horse, on a plinth decorated with reliefs of his deeds, in the Eleusinion in the Agora of Athens.[1]:4

Works

Simon's writings are quoted by Xenophon,[4]:69 who refers to him both in the Hipparchikós (Ἱππαρχικός) and in Perì hippikēs (Περὶ ἱππικῆς, "on horsemanship"). A fragment attributed to him is contained in the Byzantine Hippiatrica, an assemblage of Greek texts on horse care and horse medicine dating from the fifth or sixth century AD; it deals with the characteristics of a good horse, and is entitled περί ἰδέας ἱππικῆς, or roughly "on the ideal horse". Another fragment is included in the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux.[1]:4

His works were believed otherwise lost until, in 1853, the French philologist Charles Victor Daremberg discovered a single chapter in the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.[5]:352 All the extant fragments of Simon's writings were published by Franz Rühl in 1912.[6]

Simon is mentioned three times in the Hippiatrica: there are two passing mentions of him as an authority like Xenophon, and an account of his criticism of Micon's painting.[1]:1, 4 The attribution to him in the Souda, a compendious Byzantine lexicon, of a work on horse medicine is probably an error, as the passage attributed to him – on the recognition of veins – is in fact taken from the Digesta artis mulomedicinae of Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus.[1]:4 Elsewhere in the Souda Simon's work is referred to as a ίπποσκοπικόν βιβλίον θαυμάσιον, or roughly "wonderful book of horse examination".[1]:4

References

Anne Elena McCabe (2007). A Byzantine encyclopaedia of horse medicine: the sources, compilation, and transmission of the Hippiatrica. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199277551.
Charles Anthon (1853). A Manual of Greek Literature from the Earliest Authentic Periods to the Close of Byzantine Era. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Pliny the Elder, Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff (editor) (1906). Naturalis Historia…, liber xxxiv (in Latin). Lipsiae: Teubner.
Morris Hicky Morgan (1893). The Art of Horsemanship ... Translated, with chapters on the Greek riding-horse and with notes. Boston: Little & Co. Cited in: Keith Stewart Thomson (1987). Marginalia: How to Sit on a Horse. American Scientist 75 (1): 69–71. (subscription required)
Patrice Franchet d'Espèrey (2007). La main du maître: réflexions sur l'héritage équestre (in French). Paris: Odile Jacob. ISBN 9782738120335.

Franz Ruehl (1910, 1912). Xenophontis Scripta Minora. Fasciculus prior, Oeconomicum, Convivium, Hieronem, Agesilaum, Apologiam Socratis continens. Post Ludovicum Dindorf edidit Th. Thalheim; Fasciculus posterior opuscula politica, equestria, venatica continens ... Edidit F. Ruehl. Accedunt Simonis De re equestri quae supersunt (2 volumes, in Latin and Ancient Greek). Leipzig: Teubner.