Horses see daimons; ivy-juice for the cataract

For a horse's cataract. Homer wrote the Trojan horses as swift, but he made the Thessalian ones prophetic and gave them a human voice — not pointing out daimons, but exposing a horse-learning. Those now set over horses need to learn the divination from horses clearly, but they are unused to it. A horse's nod and look and voice and silence signify various things. I leave the rest aside: winters and prosperities and good years of fruits and their own offspring. The greatest: they both say and show the onsets of enemies; they also foretell murders; and they have often exposed hidden brigand-bands by a tension of the ears, or by hesitation of going forward, or by snorting.

And they have shown not only wicked men. Trust me when I say it: they see daimons too, and I know many that at crossroads neighed and fell and proclaimed the threat by the voice. Those of two unlike eyes seem to excel especially toward the understanding of such things, despising both war and apparition, and alone claiming against lions the kingship of the animals. Whether then it is a work of soul, or a nature of eyes, both must be trained: the one by teaching and art, the other by care.

Horses, like human athletes, must hold off from sex. This brings harm of the eyes; and much winter, having brought a chronic drip, does so too, and a cough besides. Let each affection be treated — the cataract — with the Bacchic plant. Treatment of horses that have the cataract: ivy juiced and mixed with the material already named; let it be an ointment two days running; then, the next being skipped again, let this be three times and often, until the horse recover the accustomed prophetic sight. I do not begrudge the treatment also to the second-rank beasts of horses. Use this for the cough; in a little you will find something lying inside.