I was interested to see that only the two middle horses were harnessed to the chariot – the outer ones were stated as being there to ‘help with steering’ but having done a bit of horse driving in my time I’m not convinced by this arguement – they seemed to be more for show. If these chariots were built for speed, then you’d want all available horsepower hitched into the ‘drive’ – ie hitched to the chariot itself. I don’t know whether it was a safety decision to only hitch up two horses, but I’m sure this isn’t how it would have been done by the Romans.
