The Horse in the Ancient World

As this book demonstrates, horses and humans have had a long and complicated relationship. Indeed, the introduction foregrounds the interdependence of humans and horses. While horses have aided many human endeavors including communication and trade, humans have also enabled domestic equids to flourish as a species. Rather than a study concerning the interactions of humans and horses, this book emphasizes the horse itself and focuses on the development and characteristics of the animal throughout the ancient world. Willekes’ approach is to examine the conformation of the horse and the effect this conformation had on the function and use of each type of horse in the ancient world. Often, the horse is treated as a homogeneous animal, unchanging across time and space. This book shows how the horse adapted to different environments and how these adaptations were used by the ancient peoples of these regions. “Methodology” outlines the focus on the work, which, through an analysis of artistic, literary, and archaeological evidence, seeks to “establish a typology for the horses of the ancient world”. Willekes prefers the term “type” to the more familiar “breed” as specialized breeding occurred infrequently in antiquity. Horse types developed from adaptation to the environment, rather than artificial selection by humans. Willekes begins the book by examining the evolution and behavioral characteristics of the horse. The horse is a prey animal with a strong flight response. As Willekes demonstrates, an understanding of these characteristics elucidates the behaviors of horses in ancient literature. The unusual, aggressive behavior of Alexander the Great’s famous horse Bucephalus is more understandable when we view this aggression as a response to fear (of his shadow) and inability to flee this fear. The natural equine response is to flee from danger and so aggression must be trained in a horse. The rest of the chapter describes the ideal horse from literature. Five Greek and R