The Horse in History. Basil Tozer
typical indignant father, Strepsiades, both of whom would serve well as latter-day types of men of the same stamp.
The son, when the comedy opens, has lost heavily on the turf and incurred the displeasure, not to say roused the indignation, of his father, in addition to burdening the old man heavily with his gambling debts. Presently the son is sued by Pasion, a characteristic usurer of that period, for the recovery of the entire sum of twelve minæ.
“For what with debts and duns and stablekeepers' bills,” Strepsiades exclaims in exasperation in the opening lines, addressing his son Pheidippes, who lies asleep before him—“what with debts and duns and stablekeepers' bills which this fine spark heaps on my back, I lie awake the whilst: and what cares he but to coil up his locks, ride, drive his horses, dream of them all night. …” And so on.
This gives us, to start with, an idea of the degree of popularity that horse racing had attained in Greece at about this time, for Pheidippes is meant to be a character drawn from life and typical of the young punters of the period.
Later we learn that the money for which the father is being sued had, in the first instance, been borrowed to pay for a “starling-coloured horse”—whatever kind of weird creature that may have been. Possibly “fleabitten” is intended, for the geographer, Strabo, speaks of “the starling-coloured horses of the Parthians” and of the people of Northern Spain, and it is known that plenty of those horses were of the colour that we should term to-day “fleabitten.”
Aristotle is the next to enlighten us to some extent upon the growing fondness of the Greeks for horses, especially for race horses and war horses. He tells us too that about the average span the horses in his time—the middle of the second century B.C., 384 to 322—lived was eighteen to twenty years, though a few were said to have reached five and twenty, and even thirty, and a very few indeed to have died at fifty.
Whether the custom that then prevailed of feeding horses mostly on barley proved beneficial or the reverse in the long run we are not told. Finally we come to Alexander the Great and his renowned Bucephalus, a horse bred, as we are told, by Philoneicus of Pharsalus, a Thessalian.
Bucephalus, or rather Bucephalos, means ox head, or bull head, from which we may conclude that whatever good points Bucephalus may have had—and without doubt he had many—he certainly had not the fine head of a modern hunter or the tapering muzzle of the thoroughbred that nowadays we so much admire.
It has been stated that Bucephalus derived his name from a mark on the left shoulder in the form more or less of a bull's head. As we know, however, that many years before Alexander's Bucephalus was foaled there existed a type of Thessalian horse upon which the same name had been bestowed, the conjecture is probably a false one.
How great the fame of Bucephalus was may be gathered from the fact that of all the horses possessed by the ancient Greeks down to this date he alone is the animal over which they thoroughly “enthuse.” From what we are told in the writings of Aristotle, indeed, and of later historians, Bucephalus must have been quite a tall horse, well shaped, coal-black, with a good shoulder and small ears. Also he had a white star in the middle of his forehead, a mark characteristic of certain Libyan breeds of old.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT ON HORSEBACK, ABOUT 338 B.C. THE FIGURE IS BELIEVED TO REPRESENT BUCEPHALUS
From a bronze in the British Museum
An unknown writer in the “Geoponics” avers that in the centuries just before Christ many of the best horses had eyes of different colour—what we sometimes term a wall eye, and Americans a China eye—and from his own deductions he concludes that Bucephalus probably had eyes that did not match. There does not, however, appear to be direct evidence that this was so.
Plutarch sets the price paid for Bucephalus by Alexander's father, King Philip, at thirteen talents, while Pliny is of opinion that the price was higher still—namely, sixteen talents.
Now the sum that to-day would be the equivalent of thirteen talents is approximately £3500, and when we bear in mind the prices that in the second century frequently were paid even for the best horses obtainable, and recollect, in addition, that at the time King Philip bought Bucephalus the horse was probably aged—some writers aver that he must have been quite fourteen when Philip bought him—it is not possible to reconcile the statement that a fancy price in any way approaching the sum named could have been paid.
The story of the trial and subsequent purchase of Bucephalus is both pretty and picturesque. More, it would appear to be true in almost every detail. According to Plutarch, whose account probably is the most trustworthy, the horse was first brought before King Philip to be given a public trial, when, to the discomfiture of its owner, it showed itself to be apparently “a fierce and unmanageable beast that would neither allow anybody to mount him, nor obey any of Philip's attendants, but reared and plunged against them all, so that the king in a rage bade them take him away for an utterly wild and unbroken brute.”
At this juncture it was that Alexander—at the time a boy of twelve, and Aristotle not yet his tutor—came upon the scene. We are told that he “leapt suddenly forward and in an access of indignation cried out before the king and everybody assembled that the men attempting to ride the horse were 'clumsy clowns,'” adding, with the self-assurance of precocious boyhood, that “if they were not careful they would spoil the horse entirely.”
Philip at first paid no attention to his son's outburst, deeming it to be childish spleen, but upon the lad's refusing to be quieted he turned to him, suddenly nettled, and demanded in a sharp tone how he dare be so insolent as to criticise his elders. In no way abashed, Alexander retorted that in this instance he certainly did know much better than his elders, and that if his father would allow him he would prove it by himself mounting the horse at once and riding it round the ring.
“And what will you forfeit for your rashness if you are thrown off?” the king inquired, not troubling to conceal his anger.
To which young Alexander retorted with much spirit:
“The price of the horse, by Zeus!”
It is hardly likely that Alexander, rash though he undoubtedly was, would have said this if the price at which Bucephalus was valued amounted to a sum in talents equivalent to thousands of pounds, for King Philip though a just ruler was a stern father, and Alexander must have known that his father would extort the forfeit should he fail to ride the horse.
The lad's reply, we are told, was received with shouts of laughter. This public expression of ridicule it may have been that set the boy upon his mettle, for without further parley he ran out into the arena, ordered his father's attendants aside, and then, grasping the reins, began to pat the horse's neck and “soothe him with soft words.”
For the boy had observed what apparently nobody else had noticed—namely, that the horse grew restive at the sight of its own shadow. Without waiting, therefore, he turned the horse to face the sun, then at once “sprang up and bestrode him unharmed.” Next, gradually and very gently, and using neither whip nor spur, he made Bucephalus move round and round in a circle until the animal no longer feared its shadow and then when it had, as we are told, “given up all threatening behaviour, and was only hot for the course,” he gave the horse its head, “urging him onward by raising his voice and using his heel.”
At the sight of this fine display of horse breaking and horsemanship the spectators, now somewhat abashed at the haste they had been in to jeer, grew silent. But not for long. Presently, as Alexander came galloping back, “full of just pride and pleasure,” the assembled multitude, including the king's attendants, “of one accord raised a great cheer, lifting up their hands from pure joy.”
Philip himself must have been of an emotional nature, for we read that “he said nothing, but wept silently from pure joy.”
Possibly the lad too suffered from “pure joy” at that moment, for upon his dismounting his father advanced with the remark that Macedonia was “not big enough for such a son,” that