ABSTRACT
Different kinds of horses facilitated numerous activities essential to trade, transport, manufacture, agriculture, warfare, recreation, and entertainment. Consequently, the products of the early modern printing presses included books on the breeding, maintaining, training, and medical treatment of horses. In its ideal manifestation as the author describes it, social status is portrayed as divinely ordained and therefore natural, hierarchical, clearly defined, and stable. If one wants to observe accurately the utility derived by humans from horses, then one must consider first how many horses, and second how many people there are in this world. As there are many social groups and many kinds of horses, so must there be many kinds of utility. As Fugger tells us, what kind of horses a person had access to, and what that person actually did with those horses, sent a clear message about that individual's specific place in society.
