3. Lyric Horses

I believe that it is clear that the PIE horse sacrifice ritual and the depiction of the hero in Greek epic reveal an inherited Indo-European tendency toward the hippomorphizing of humans and the anthropomorphizing of horses which continued to exert influence into the Greek Archaic period. The examples of this phenomenon that have been considered so far have focused generally, although not exclusively, on the similarities that are to be found between horses and epic heroes. Yet this tendency, epitomized in the PIE kingly horse sacrifice ritual, exerted influence on the poetic landscape beyond the epic battlefield. This is clear from the fact that hippomorphic depictions of humans are especially common in Greek lyric. These depictions, however, are often of a very different tenor from those of epic and point up a different set of similarities in the ancient Greek conceptions of horses and humans. The points of coincidence in lyric depictions of horses and humans are largely erotic and present the beauty of horses as uniquely analogous to the beauty of humans, and also draw heavily from the symbology of sexual dominance inherent in horse-riding. These comparisons are especially important counterpoints to the description of horses examined in Chapter 2 because they often deal with women. As in the case of the heroic depictions of horses discussed in the previous chapter, aspects of these erotic depictions may have some precedent in the PIE horse sacrifice, in which the ability of the horse to stand as sexual substitute for a human is an essential component.

By looking at the ways in which horses function in depictions of human sexuality, both male and female, I hope to situate the previous discussion of horses and heroes within a broader understanding of the poetic role that horses played in ancient Greece and also to draw out a fuller range of the hippomorphizing IE tendency, of which that involving heroes is just one facet. Many of the sources to be considered here are quite famous, and their imagery is well studied. [1] Yet I hope that after a review of these sources I will be able to present new angles from which to view them and new contexts in which to understand them. This sexualizing element of the treatment of horses in early Greek poetic art will, in fact, ultimately be shown to play a significant role in the development and deployment of early Greek metapoetry, namely in the image of the charioteer, a subject which will both conclude this chapter and form the backdrop for the next.

Equine metaphors and hippomorphic depictions of humans are especially common in Greek lyric, indicative not only of martial excellence but also of erotic impulse. Since the erotic object of Greek lyric can be a male human just as easily as it can be a female, it is only logical that hippological depictions of human sexuality would have both male and female subjects. As mentioned in the last chapter, the PIE horse sacrifice comprises our best evidence for hippomorphism in the parent culture and none of our evidence regarding that sacrifice suggests any reason to expect that the phenomenon was restricted to men. Although the slippage of identity between horse and king seems to have been the most important aspect of the ritual, there was a concomitant transformation of mare and queen. The ritual logic was seen to rest upon a general ontological similarity and even overlap of humans and horses generally, so it is not surprising that the Greek daughter culture displays vestiges of that phenomenon in its depiction of women and men. Yet the conventions of ancient Greek sexuality do not yield an identical treatment of male and female sexual objectification, and male and female hippomorphically eroticized subjects are accordingly treated somewhat differently. I will first highlight some examples dealing with female subjects, and then move to examples involving males.

The most extensive example of hippomorphic erotic imagery in Greek literature is probably Alcman’s Partheneion, which represents the most prolonged demonstration of this phenomenon in Greek lyric. This lyric is particularly interesting from the point of view of horses and gender because it is not only about women, but was also performed by women. It appears, in fact, to have been written for performance by a chorus of Spartan girls engaged in a choral competition. Although the lyric begins with the narration of local Spartan mythology, the ensuing dialogue is largely self-reflective, calling explicit attention to the qualities of the song and its performers, and contrasting those with the qualities of the opposing choruses. [2] The tone of these self-reflective moments is repeatedly erotic, and is probably also homoerotic, something not often attested between women in our ancient sources. [3] It is not perhaps surprising that the beauty of the girls in the competition is a frequent subject of the hymn, since Greek society would readily have allowed that the beauty of the performer justifiably influences the effectiveness of the performance, but it may be surprising that the beauty of the girls is repeatedly phrased in hippological terms: As Campbell points out, this is strongly reminiscent of Homeric dactylic hexa-meter, although not dactylic itself, and recalls the Homeric phrase ἵππους / πηγοὺς ἀθλοφόρους; “strong prize-winning horses,” Iliad IX 123–124. [5]

The competitive nature of the choral performance alone may seem enough to explain a hippological Homer reference, since the horses of the Iliad are readily indicative of combat, of which even nonviolent competition may be seen as a form. Yet soon after this line, the other of the chorus leaders is also compared to a horse: This comparison is, I believe, without Homeric precedent. The competitive import of the courser is still felt, of course, but the introductory “ἦ οὐχ ὁρῃς;” hints that the visual beauty of the horse is relevant in much the same way as its speed and that both qualities are meant to reflect the competitive preeminence of the chorus leader. This is followed by a similar comparison that makes the importance of the performers’ beauty explicit: Although the metaphor here is clearly of a horse race and the competition among the girls is likened to that between competing horses, the beauty of the girls is the central point and the inferiority of this girl’s beauty to Agido’s seems to imply that she is inferior as chorus leader. The girls’ capacity as choral performers is at least partially dependent on their sexual attractiveness, and horses are apparently fitting representatives of beauty that functions as an element of their competitive excellence.

The erotic connotations of horses may help to explain a certain point of interpretive controversy regarding the phrase ὑποπετριδίων ὀνείρων (49). I have translated this as “from one of the dreams under a rock,” just as the text reads, but this understanding of the text is not universally shared. It is common to read ὑποπετριδίων as if it were ὑποπτεριδίων and thus the phrase would be understood to mean “from one of those winged dreams.” Page, for example, translates the passage this way, but he does not alter the text, and cites the authority of the Etymologicum Magnum. [7] Page and the compiler of the lexicon presumably both prefer this interpretation for the same reason: ὑποπετριδίων ὀνείρων does not make clear sense. ὑποπτεριδίων ὀνείρων could be less problematic because dreams are occasionally described as having wings. [8] This conclusion requires, however, that one accept that an unexpected metathesis of the consonantal tau sound and the vocalic sound of the epsilon has occurred in this word in the Spartan dialect. Even if this phonetic development is acceptable, it is still not clear what these winged dreams have to do with horses. The reading “from one of those winged dreams” does not actually make significantly better sense than the obvious reading and is also linguistically problematic. Nagy, however, suggests a way of avoiding these pitfalls by demonstrating that the obvious reading may, in fact, have made perfect sense, by citing scholia that attest to a myth of Poseidon fathering the first horse through a nocturnal emission that occurred while he was sleeping under a rock. His emission then became the first horse: [9] Thus, there is mythological precedent for translating the phrase as it appears. Furthermore this clearly reveals an association between horses and sexuality which would make very good sense in this lyric. If this reading is correct, it makes this association an explicit part of the symbology of the lyric. The inherent association of horses with sexuality is an important motivating force in the hippological comparisons used throughout this lyric.

It should be made clear that there is a general equine theme to the Partheneion. The lyric seems to have been written for a competition at the temple of Artemis Ortheia, [11] who was propitiated with hippomorphic votive offerings. [12] Additionally, the lyric begins with a description of the myth of the descendants of Hippocoön, who were slain by the Dioskouroi. Hippocoön is not himself particularly associated with horses, at least not in a way that our limited sources for Spartan mythology allow us to know, but his very name is suggestive of equine associations. The Dioskouroi are consistently depicted as horsemen and associated closely with horsemanship. They are, in fact, often identified with the Indian Aśvins, or horsemen, and the IE Divine Twins. [13] We know virtually no details of the battle between the Dioskouroi and the Hippocoöntidae, but it seems that it pitted one group of horse-heroes against another. There is a hippological symbolic network here that extends beyond the choruses, and much of the hymn is concerned with horses in some way. The Spartans were renowned for their hippomania and especially noteworthy for the training of girls in horse-riding. [14] The erotic equine imagery coincides with the song’s pervasive equine theme, but it is not born from the theme, as further examples will demonstrate. The song instead exploits a connection between horses and sexual attractiveness that was broadly culturally resonant.

Such hippomorphic depictions of attractive girls are not confined to Sparta, although the horse-raising culture of Sparta makes their use especially sensible there. Similar poetic tropes are recognizable elsewhere, as in a famous poem by Anacreon: Clearly there is much more at work here than simply comparing the girl to a horse because of their shared beauty. The metaphor of the man’s role in courtship as horse tamer is the dominant idea, yet this depends on, and in turn reinforces, the association between horses and sexuality and is surely also reliant on the beauty of young horses as emblematic of the beauty of young girls. In fact, the power dynamic assumed in ancient Greek erotic relationships is presumably an important part of the logic of the erotic hippomorphic comparisons. A significant part of taming a horse was and is “breaking” it for riding, and the metaphor of riding as sexual intercourse was common in Greek antiquity as it is contemporary culture. [16] The fact that a young horse required breaking is not an alternative explanation for the hippomorphic depictions of young girls but a complementary one. The breaking of the horse and the nature of its relationship to men cooperate in the phenomenon of hippomorphic imagery.

The first word of this lyric, πῶλος, is particularly interesting here in light of the discussion of Hades’ epithet κλυτόπωλος in Chapter 1, and a potential allusion here to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. [17] Anacreon’s depiction of a young girl playing in a meadow, careless of the attention or sexual plan of her male viewer, calls to mind the Homeric image of Persephone picking flowers just before her abduction in the hymn: Anacreon describes the Thracian girl very similarly in line 5: νῦν δὲ λειμῶνάς τε βόσκεαι κοῦφά τε σκιρτῶσα παίζεις, “Now you graze in the meadows and nimbly skip around in your play.”

As Anacreon relies here on the depiction of Persephone’s abduction by Hades for the setting of this song it is remarkable that the girl is called a πῶλος, the very word at the core of the Homeric epithet κλυτόπωλος that proved confusing to scholars ancient and modern. [18] The immediate point of the image of the πῶλος here is, of course, to deploy the metaphor of horse-taming as a power-laden sexual act. Xenophon, in fact, tells us that the verb used in describing the breaking of a horse is πωλυέειν and the man who breaks the horse is the πωλοδάμνης. [19] In the allusive context of Anacreon’s lyric, however, it is hard not to think that πῶλος means something more.

I suggest that there is a sort of poetic humor at work here, based on a tradition of which we are unaware, in which this foal-breaking metaphor meets the intransparency of the epithet κλυτόπωλος and yields a solution that makes Persephone herself the πῶλος of the epithet. Persephone is, of course, the eternal bride, the ever-youthful κόρη, so she would be a perfectly logical subject of this equine metaphor. If this is true it would not be hard to see here a clever reinterpretation of κλυτόπωλος. As discussed earlier, Hades is not famous for his horses generally, and when his horses are described they are ἵπποι rather than πῶλοι, in fact, yet he is famous for his bride, who is herself imaginable as a πῶλος. The prevalence of the horse-breaking metaphor, therefore, allows this lyric to humorously recast the Homeric epithet κλυτόπωλος so that it does not mean “of famous foals” but rather “of the famous foal,” that is, Persephone.

Another fine example of the use of hippomorphic imagery in depicting sexually attractive women is furnished by Semonides, in his well-known iambic catalogue poem. He compares women to different sorts of animals, or rather states that different sorts of women descend from different sorts of animals, although there are two women who do not descend from animals, but from the sea and the earth, respectively. The various women are all said to descend from something whose characteristics can be observed in the woman herself: the shameless woman descends from a dog (12–20), the fickle woman descends from the sea (27–42), and the reluctantly hardworking woman descends from a donkey (43–49). The most beautiful, yet least helpful, woman comes from a horse: The point here is the stereotyping of the beautiful woman as useless, and thus less desirable than she may initially seem. As Egoscozábal points out, a significant contributing factor in the logic of the horse representing this woman lies in the role that horses played in large parts of ancient Greece: they were symbols of wealth and affluence, but did not actually do much labor. [20] The horse is presumably also fit for contrasting this woman with the woman who descends from a donkey, who is said to do all of her work, albeit grudgingly (43–45). Additionally, Gregory has shown that comparisons of horses and donkeys in ancient Greek are frequently coded as discussions of social and economic hierarchy. [21] So the use of a mare here may function to denigrate wealthy women, in order to suggest to the listener, who may not be able to marry a rich woman, that he is better off without one. [22]

The beauty of the horse is equally important, as the emphasis on her vanity here proves. The beauty of the woman is as recognizable in this mare as the salient qualities of the other women were in the sea and the donkey. It is worth noting that the narrator’s description of the beautiful woman’s similarity with the beauty of the horse focuses consistently on the mare’s hair. Egoscozábal also points out that there is an element of reality in this depiction, since the maintenance of a horse requires that a great deal of care be dedicated to its hair. [23] I think that it is also important that the horses’ hair is distributed much like that of humans, particularly in women, who are less likely to go bald, so this is an especially logical point of comparison. The focus on the hair of the horse/woman is an important element of the hippomorphizing and concomitant anthropomorphizing. [24] Its significance will be discussed at greater length shortly. Women then, especially beautiful and young women, are easily compared to horses in Greek lyric because of their beauty and because of the connotations of breaking and taming in descriptions of horses, especially young ones.

In addition to literary comparisons of women to horses, Greece actually provides a wonderful example of literal female hippomorphism in the myth of the rape of Demeter by Poseidon. Although it is Poseidon who bore the title Hippios, and to whom horses were sacrificed, it was Demeter who was worshiped in hippomorphic form. Pausanias tells us that during his tour of Arcadia Demeter was still worshiped in the cave in which she was supposed to have taken refuge after the attack. The cult image of the goddess which was set up there is described thus: We see sex, hippomorphism, and male power linked even more clearly and explicitly than in the literary passages, but this same assemblage of themes can be documented throughout these texts, and they are the same themes that are joined in the PIE horse sacrifice.

To return to that horse sacrifice, then, it was seen there that the principal unifying theme of the various descendant traditions was an overlap of human and equine identity, exemplified in hippomorphism. Furthermore it was clear that the parent culture found this ontological coincidence to be especially useful in thinking about sex and demonstrated a nexus whereby hippomorphic sex was symbolically linked to expressions of male power and authority. This nexus of ideas is culturally unique, and the fact that the exact same nexus exists in Greece means that its presence there is best understood as one of inheritance, not of coincidence. To be clear, what I am suggesting is not that erotically tinged depictions of horses originate in the PIE horse sacrifice but simply that the parent culture used horses and their connection to humans as a means for thinking about sex and power and that the Greeks inherited elements of this tendency, as expressed in depictions both of women and of men, as we will now see.

Despite the apparent ease with which the Semonides poem asserts the relationship between horses and female sexual attractiveness, this phenomenon is not entirely restricted to women, or to mares, as this passage by Ibycus readily documents: In this case the man is apparently aging and presumably not as attractive as he once was, so he is merely an old stallion. Yet his earlier beauty is vouchsafed by his status as an ἀεθλοφόρος, “prize-winning,” horse. This work imports the symbology of epic with its equation of the horse and hero, thereby activating the metaphor of courtship as competition, and hence war, so conventional in amatory poetry. It is important to note that we cannot know the gender of the love-object here and the erotic hippomorphism is articulated in terms not of sexual subjugation but of sexual agency: the lover is the horse, not the beloved. The narrator races with other men in pursuit of a common erotic object. There is still a differential of power operative here, certainly, but it works along a different axis. The horse is controlled not by a lover, as the Thracian girl by the ἱπποπείρης ἐμβάτης, but by Eros and Aphrodite. By casting himself as a horse the narrator engages in a pretense of powerlessness and reluctance by exploiting the relationship between horses, sexuality, and dominance, which, as the πῶλοι of Anacreon make clear, is integral to hippomorphic representations of humans.

Ibycus also reveals the latent erotic character of the comparison of epic heroes to horses. Although horses in the Iliad are primarily prized for their martial excellence, as are the men whom they aid in battle, physical beauty is conceived of in ancient Greece as attendant on other physical and moral excellence for men as well as women. Thus the Homeric heroes are not only brave, strong, and fast, but also exceptionally beautiful, as are their horses. For example, when Priam has come to terms with Achilles, the slayer of his son, the two men marvel at each other’s physical beauty: In this moment of daring and noble humility, Priam, despite his age, is still beautiful, and Achilles is fittingly as handsome as he is heroic. Achilles’ beauty may lie in the background in the Ibycus lyric, since it recalls a moment in book XXII of the Iliad when Achilles himself is likened to a horse: As discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, Achilles’ epithets and his connection to his chariot team make clear his horse-like qualities, so this comparison is completely logical. The similarity between Achilles and his horses, as discussed thus far, has primarily involved the overlap in martial prowess and ontology, the fact that he, like his chariot-team, is partly mortal and partly divine. The erotic import of this similarity has not yet been addressed, nor, Ι admit, is it obvious here.

Yet one character, Paris, is especially noted for his physical beauty, and as such it is particularly fitting that his prideful displays are compared to the prancing of a stallion. As he returns to the battlefield after having sex with Helen, Paris is described thus: The comparison certainly rests to some extent on shared martial capacity, as the emphasis on feet and legs indicates, but the dominant theme is one of splendor.

It should also be noted that the mane of the horse is a focal point for the comparison. The horse’s mane is said to flow over its shoulders. Although horses’ manes can do this, this description sounds much more appropriate to a human, as in the Archilochean fragment 25: ἔχουσα θαλλόν μυρσίνης ἑτέρπετο / ῥοδῆς τε καλόν ἄνθος ἡ δέ οἱ κόμη / ὤμους κατεσκίαζε, “she delighted holding a sprig of myrtle and the beautiful rose blossom, while her hair overshadowed her shoulders.” [26] It is as if the horse is being anthropomorphized as Paris is being hippomorphized and their hair is the shared axis of the mutual transformation.

The similarity between this and the likening of Achilles to a horse is clear and is remarked upon on by Kirk. [27] Compare the use of σεύατ’/σευάμενος (VI 505; XXII 22), ποσὶ/ πόδας (VI 505; XXII 24), πεδίοιο/πεδίοιο (VI 507; XXII 23), γοῦνα/γούνατ’ (VI 511; XXII 24), and ἐβεβήκει/ἐβεβήκει (VI 513; XXII 21). The similarity between this comparison, the horse simile employed by Ibycus, and the simile of the race horses used in Alcman’s Partheneion make clear that the metaphor of a racing/fighting horse is a ready erotic image for both men and women. I would note that Paris’ sexual attractiveness is part of the point of the simile, but his sexual agency is not questioned. [28] The fuller comparison of Paris to a horse makes the erotic nature of such a comparison clear, and suggests that Achilles’ beauty underlies his own comparison to a horse as much as his speed and strength. The overlap in vocabulary reflected here and in the Ibycus lyric highlights how extensively the iconography of racing and battle coincide in hippological erotic imagery as well as prevalence of that erotic imagery itself, even without the intentional activation of an erotic setting.

It should be noted that parts of these two similes are combined in book XV, in a description of Hector in lines 263–269. Lines 263–268 are the same as those used to describe Paris, while line 269 ends with the final words of the simile that described Achilles:

Although Homeric vocabulary and formulas are often repeated, full similes rarely occur more than once. [29] Accordingly, Aristarchus athetized most of this simile (lines 265–268). [30] Janko, however, defends the authenticity of the simile by reminding us that Hector is also returning to battle and has good reason to exult. [31] Hector is, of course, beautiful himself, and although the context of the simile is less explicitly erotic when it is used of Hector than when it is used of Paris, the attractiveness of a hero is virtually inseparable from his martial prowess, so it is still sensible here, as well as in book VI.

The reference to Paris’ hair in XV 266–267 is especially noteworthy since it recalls the depictions of hair seen in previous passages that dealt with women. Hair is, in fact, a frequent and almost universal focus of hippomorphizing passages. In Alcman’s Partheneion it was the hair of the girl that demonstrated her superiority over her competition, at the very moment that she was compared to a beautiful horse: The woman in Semonides’ iambic poem was not like any mare but a long-maned mare (χαιτέεσσα, 57), and her self-absorbing beauty was typified by the fact that she constantly brushed and decorated her hair with flowers (αἰεὶ δὲ χαίτην ἐκτενισμένην φορεῖ | βαθεῖαν, ἀνθέμοισιν ἐσκιασμένην, 65–66).

The importance of the horse’s hair as the focal point of hippomorphic comparisons can be seen nowhere more clearly than in the story of Pelopidas, discussed in Chapter 2 for its significance in regard to human sacrifice and the ease with which human sacrifice becomes or resembles horse sacrifice. I requote it here for convenience: It is the similarity in hair that confirms that this mare can be a ritual substitute for the girl: a red-haired mare can apparently be sacrificed in the place of a red-haired girl. This story also is not without sexual implications. The young women who were avenged in the defeat of the Spartans were the victims of sexual assault. The sacrificing of another young woman to them, or a young mare that can stand in for such a young woman, is evidently motivated by a desire for a sacrificial victim that reflects the identity of these Leuktridai, whose identity in this context is bound up in their position as sexual object. Note that the youth of the girls is made quite explicit: they are referred to as παῖδας, children, and κόραις, girls, and the horse that is sacrificed for them is a πῶλος, a word which imparts the notion of sexual inexperience and reluctance when used in application to humans. This sacrifice, the depictions of Paris returning to battle, Alcman’s chorus, and Semonides’ extravagant woman, all have roots in the equine capacity for near-human identity, as well as the symbolic utility of horses in reflecting human sexual attractiveness, which is frequently expressed through the similarity of horse and human hair. [32]

As a final example of the applicability of equine erotic imagery to depictions of both male and female sexual attractiveness, I would point to the use of a neuter form of ἵππος, τὸ ἵππον. Hesychius states that τὸ ἵππον could be used to refer to the sexual organs of males as well as females: τὸ μόριον καὶ το τῆς γυναικὸς καὶ τοῦ ἀνδρός. [33] In relation to this, Egoscozábal cites numerous ancient authorities for the belief that both male and female horses were especially amorous animals. [34] Clearly the erotic signification of horses includes both males and females, even if erotic images of horses still conform to a dichotomy of gender representation. Just as we saw in Chapter 2 that martial similarities reflect inherited thought patterns, so too do erotic echoings.

It is of course true that use of hippological erotic imagery is not entirely confined to the world of ancient Greek literature, and slang term terms such as “stallion” and “filly” are common enough even in recent English parlance. There are hippological phrases for actual sexual acts in English as well. One only has to reflect upon the tenacity of the rumors about the proclivities of Catherine the Great to recognize that the association between horses and human sexuality has some currency, yet I know of no culture in which the tendency is quite so pronounced or quite so consistent with the PIE model as the early Greek. A tradition that is as long-lived as the one that I am postulating in the case of horses and sexuality would not be very plausible if were not also logical, and even if something very similar to this phenomenon occurs elsewhere, it is unlikely that all of the behaviors that the phenomenon demonstrates in ancient Greece occur elsewhere in precisely the same form. Additionally, the fact that such an association can occur in multiple cultures independently does not mean that it cannot be inherited as well. If the phenomenon can be identified in the culture of the PIE speakers and in ancient Greece, then the fact that the phenomenon is sensible or logical makes it all the more likely that it was operative in the intervening stages between the culture of the PIE speakers and that of the ancient Greeks and so represents a genuine inheritance.

One facet of the erotic equine imagery that presents unique challenges to comparatists is the figure of the charioteer, because of the difficulty of identifying physical evidence of chariots in the parent culture. Although Greek chariots are deployed in erotic lyric, their treatment is one that grows quite naturally out of the inherent erotic function of the horse. Anacreon 417, already discussed, makes clear how easily sexual hierarchies are mapped onto human–horse relationships, and how the lover may be positioned as rider and horse-breaker. Anacreon 360, however, presents a horse that is not ridden but driven and the object of desire is positioned as the charioteer: Comparable examples also occur elsewhere: A particularly interesting extension of this metaphor is the Athenian marriage ritual, in which the best-man is known as the πάροχος, the companion of a chariot rider: Although our data are limited, it seems perhaps that while women are depicted as horses, men may be depicted as horses or charioteers. In any case, the inherent connections between horses and sex seen elsewhere make this particular development quite natural.

What is particularly exciting here is that recognition of the deep connection between horses and poetic depictions of human sexuality in Greece and the further IE world may provide a key to understanding one of the most fascinating figures in Greek poetry, the metapoetic charioteer. The depiction of poetry as a chariot in Greece is relatively common, especially in Pindar. For example: The method by which he comes to and details the lineage of heroes is, of course, his song, and that song is here a chariot. He concludes Olympian I Here, just as in Olympian VI, the metaphor of the chariot of song is combined with the metaphor of the path of song, an image that may also be of IE or Greco-Indo-Iranian origin. In Isthmian VIII we are told that the chariot of the Muses is rushing ahead to celebrate the memory of Nikokles the boxer. Olympian IX and Pythian X have similar images: Non-Pindaric instances exist as well, of course. Parmenides is also an obvious example, from outside of epinician poetry. The Greek applications of this metaphor are rather diverse in fact, but its origins are pre-Greek.

This is clear because the metaphor is quite common in early Iranian and Indian poetry, two of the earliest literatures from cultures that share a common ancestor with the Greek. Our earliest poetic texts from Iran are the Gathas. Composed perhaps as early as 1000 BCE, the Gathas represent a very small assortment of hymns written in the Old Avestan language and embedded in broader Zoroastrian liturgy, which is generally written in a later form of the language. In these hymns the words of the poet, Zarathustra, are imagined as proceeding from the poet’s mouth upwards to heaven in the form of a chariot. They are, in fact, occasionally imagined as engaged in a great chariot race, competing with the hymns of other singers, in a competition to reach heaven and achieve fulfillment. For example the poet asks Also the singer proclaims his talent by asserting In predicting the culmination of his prayer he says that Good fame is that which is attained through song. The search for fame then is expressed as a chariot race of songs. In this regard it is not unlike the epinicians of Pindar. In both cases the song is imagined as a chariot.

The image of the song as chariot and the singer as charioteer is also common enough in the Ṛgveda, the earliest layer of Indian poetry. [36] In the description of the invention of sacrificial ritual (10.130), we are told that the Gayatri meter (a common hymnic meter) is the yoke-mate of Agni, imagined as a horse. In hymn 1.61 to Indra the singer says In hymn 5.73, to the Aśvins, the horse men, the poet says There are other examples as well, but these few will suffice here to document the existence of the phenomenon. [37] This was then a particular metaphorical tradition inherited commonly by the Greeks, Indians, and Iranians from a common parent that routinely linked not only heroes and patrons with equestrian excellence, but also poets themselves.

Current archaeological evidence, however, does not permit the conclusion that horses were used in the drawing of these wagons, since no harness suitable for horses, rather than oxen, is known to have been invented before 2500 BCE, well after the breakup of the PIE speakers, however that event is to be understood or dated. [38] It is probable, then, that the domesticated horse was kept by the PIE speakers as a food and as a riding animal without being put into the harness. So domesticated horses existed and wagons existed before the IE diaspora, but horses were not put to wagons until afterward, a development that must have happened independently in each culture.

It seems unlikely then that the metapoetic charioteer is an inherited feature after all. So where does it comes from? I think that the similarity in treatment across these languages is too consistent to be coincidence. I suggest simply that the origins of the metaphor have less to do with charioteers themselves than with the domesticated horse and with the symbology of that horse in IE culture. [39] I suggest that a common equine ideology was inherited in all three cultures and then developed along parallel lines in the three cultures. There are some reasons for this that are obvious. The aristocratic world to which much of this poetry belonged may well have been the same world to which horses belonged, in both Greek and pre-Greek times. If horses were a symbol of wealth and of heroic martial virtue in early Indo-European times, as they probably were, then they would have been easily adopted by poets wishing to address those themes and situate their own work within that world.

There are perhaps less obvious reasons as well and one of them, I suggest, has its roots in the connection between horses and sex. I speak here of a particular sort of force embodied by the horse, a force that itself had special connections to horses and to poetry. What I mean by this is an extension of an idea described by Max Latona in his article comparing Parmenides to one of the Indian Upanishads. [40] He points out that when early IE poets describe the curbing of passions they often describe it in ways that are hippological. In Homer, in fact, the checking of one’s own strong internal desires is often described as “taming, checking, and bridling,” all hippological vocabulary in which the human’s emotional and psychological forces are likened to the physi-cal force of the horse. [41] There was then, even in early IE times, a traditional metaphor linking horses and human emotional forces. This emotional force is, however, also an intellectual and poetic force and is signaled by one of the Homeric horse’s most salient and, I think, characteristic possessions, that is, its μένος. Μένος is, of course, associated with Homeric heroes themselves but is also regularly possessed by and placed in horses:

In Indo-Iranian poetry the connection is more varied but clearly present. In the Ṛgveda horses are said to have been formed from the cognate term manas (I.120.2), by the craftsman gods. They are often compared to the intellectual power of manas, being swifter than manas (manaso javīya), [43] and yoked to manas (manoyuja). [44] Poetic connotations are especially clear here as songs are also said to be manoyuja. [45] Chariots are also yoked to manas. [46] Manas here indicates the intellectual and creative force of the poet, but it is expressed through a metaphorical language in which horses are that manas.

This term belongs to one of the more fleshed out of the IE etymological networks. It is itself very simple, an e-grade s-stem noun derived from the verbal root *men-. The root is usually defined as something like “to think,” but its derivatives have a surprisingly wide range of meanings. [47] To begin with there is the item currently under discussion, menos, with perfect cognates in Sanskrit manas and Avestan manah, displaying meanings ranging from “strength,” to “mind,” to “spirit.” Some derivatives also have emotional import, such as δυσμενής, “hostile,” which has perfect cognates in the Sanskrit durmanas and Avestan dušmanah. Several derivatives also have to do with anger, such as μῆνις, “rage,” and μενεαίνω, to “rage.” [48] Perhaps the most famous are the words having to do with memory and, in the world of oral poetry, with the production of poetry. The function of this root in regard to Greek conceptions of poetic production is typified in the word μιμνήσκω and the muse Μνεμοσύνη. [49]

The connotation that is least discussed, however, is the sexual. In Greek the wooer of a bride is a μνηστήρ, and the verbal expression of his activity is μνάομαι, which can also mean “to think.” More bluntly, μένος can also mean semen, as proven by the Cologne Archilochus. [50] The sexual connotations of this root, incidentally, were suggested by Gregory Nagy in his work on Greek and Indic meter. [51] Sexuality and semen are things to which the IE horse is often connected, as they are a surprisingly prominent elements of equine mythology. [52] Semen is an important feature of the mythology of the Aśvins and, as discussed in Chapter 2, a horse is even said to have sprung from the spilled semen of Poseidon. Moreover, the Vedas give stallions the unusual epithet retodhā, “semen-giver,” for their role in the aśvamedha. [53]

The root *men-, then, deals with thought, emotion, memory, and sex. Perhaps then it should not be translated as “to think” but rather as “to direct one’s life force,” or something similar. The direction of this force could result in a sexual and reproductive act, a valorous act, or even an intellectual and poetic act. I suggest that the horse may have embodied the force expressed by this root, even in early IE times. This would not be surprising considering the unique function of the horse in early IE society, both practically and sacrificially. Given the associations of such a force it would not be hard to imagine that it played a significant part in the development of this metapoetic image.

The PIE horse sacrifice helps to show that Greece was the inheritor of an ideology that uniquely linked horses and humans, and that made use of horses to think about sex and power. This inherited ideology exerted influence over depictions of sacrifice, as seen in Chapter 2, but also seems to have colored Greek erotic depictions of humans generally, both male and female. The linkage between sex and horses, preserved in the ritual, also helps to explain the image of the metaphor of the metapoetic charioteer, common in Greece, India, and in Iran, since the horse seems to have had a special connection to μένος and the PIE verbal root *men-, to which poets also have a special connection. This root and its derivative μένος encapsulate an ancient concept of life force that expressed itself in both poetic acts and sexual acts.