The prominent position of the formula ὠκέες ἵπποι and related expressions attests the special role played in Greek epic by horses and the physical abilities that distinguish them. The similarity of formulas in both Indian and Iranian oral poetries makes it clear that the phrase indicates a common poetic inheritance. It is a sensible assumption that a formula about horses that is important enough to be maintained in all three cultures would accompany other poetic and cultural treatments of horses that were also commonly inherited. In fact, the similarities in the treatment of horses found in the descendant traditions do extend beyond vocabulary.
They are especially manifest in the relationship between horses and heroes, which appears to be rooted in a common predisposition toward the anthropomorphizing of horses and the concomitant hippomorphizing of humans. [1] Perhaps this tendency is to be expected given the nature of the genres in which our evidence is found, yet the particularities of this phenomenon are sufficiently unique that a common inheritance may reasonably be sought. Additionally, research into a prominent horse sacrifice ritual in the parent culture reveals several insights into the nature of this common inheritance, namely that a ritualistic shift in identity between horse and human was central to the event. A survey of our Greek, Sanskrit, and other IE evidence will demonstrate the case for common inheritance and provide a vantage point from which surprising aspects of the Greek treatment of horses become comprehensible. I will first review some idiosyncrasies of the relationship between horses and heroes in Greek epic, in order to isolate it as a phenomenon worthy of this sort of analysis. Then I will evaluate the evidence for the PIE horse sacrifice and discuss its relevance to the current issue, ultimately suggesting that a unique model for understanding the relationship between horses and humans informed that ritual and that that model, if not the ritual itself, exerted lengthy influence over Greece.
Heroes as Horses and Horses as Heroes
Before proceeding to cross-cultural and historical parallels, then, I will discuss some special details of horse/hero comparisons that are generally found in Greek epic. The fact that there is a close connection between the two is not surprising, but the depth and nature of this link is truly unique and not, I think, common outside of the IE world. First, the similarity between horses and heroes begins at the level of ontology. [2] Not only are both essential figures of martial excellence, but horses are seemingly unique in the animal world for sharing with humans, especially heroic humans, the capacity for divine lineage and semi-divine identity. Several Greek gods have immortal horses that are known by name, such as those of Ares, Helios, and the Dioskouroi. [3] Yet immortal horses that live among mortals are more important for the current discussion, and there are several. For example, Pausanias describes the very powerful horse, Areion, owned by Herakles and then by Adrastus, which was born from the coupling of Poseidon and Demeter when both gods had assumed the form of horses: