Letter 40
To Uranius
I have just sent you a present, a horse most perfect in every quality that befits a horse. You will find him useful for racing as well as for hunting, and when you lead a triumphant procession in honour of the Libyan victory. I do not know for which purpose he is most valuable, whether for hunting or for contests in the hippodrome, or again, whether for parade or for actual warfare. If he is less beautiful than the horses of Nesa, if he is heavy about the head and too thin about the flanks, perhaps God does not give all points together to horses any more than to men. After all perhaps it is an additional good quality in his case that the soft parts of the body are less developed by nature than the hard. Bones, I know, are more equal to toil than flesh is. Your horses are heavier in flesh, ours in bone.