54 THE HORSE IN HISTORY 



ing 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 BucephaW, 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 thorough- 

 bred 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, how- 

 ever, that many years before Alexander's Buce- 

 phalus was foaled there existed a type of Thes- 

 salian 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. 



