Horses of History: Bucephalus

One HELL of an Endurance Horse
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How many fathers do you know would give an unbroken, unrideable  horse to their twelve year old son and tell that boy: you tame him, you can have him.

The horse was named Bucephalus, King Phillip of Macedonia was the father, and the twelve year old boy was Alexander, the future conqueror of much of the known world at that time.  Alexander, as the story goes, was so astute that he noticed that Bucephalus was afraid of his own shadow, so he turned the him into the sun and also took off the cloak he was wearing, which was flapping in the breeze.
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True story or just a legend, we will never know;  but is this one of the earliest recorded instances of how to deal with a spooky horse?  Certainly it shows the value of careful observation and good common sense as they apply to horse training.

Look Dad - no shirt, no shoes, no helmet!

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​Bucephalus was named after the brand on his haunch – the outline of the head of an ox.  The ancient Greeks loved and revered horses, carving them into statues and friezes, featuring them in paintings, pottery and mosaics.  Horses represented wealth and status, and were a vital part of the socioeconomic life of ancient Greece. 

A section of the Parthenon frieze depicting Greek cavalry.
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But Bucephalus was destined to more than an ordinary life – he carried Alexander the Great into war.  By the age of eighteen, Alexander was a commander in his father's army, helping to defeat the city states of Macedonia and build the most powerful empire in Europe, which he then inherited when his father was assassinated.

But Europe wasn't enough for the young king;  in 334BC, with an army of 43,000 footsoldiers and 6,000 cavalry, Alexander crossed the Dardenelles and set his sights on conquering the great Persian Empire. With his army, he cut a swathe through what is modern day Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Libya and Egypt. Then onward through Iraq and Iran through the Hindu Kush to Pakistan, where supposedly the loyal Bucephalus died, perhaps killed in battle.  
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I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion. ~ Alexander the Great

  
​When Alexander died of a sudden fever in Babylon in 323BC at the age of thirty three, he had been at war for ten years across most of southern Asia, crowning himself the ruler of Macedonia, Egypt, and Persia. Seeking to reach the “ends of the world,” he made it all the way to India.  And he had done it all on horseback, traveling tens of thousands of miles across deserts, plains, swamps and mountain ranges. 

What a ride.

Alexander's travels.