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Horse and Man in Greek Art
by Seán Hemingway
Since the horse was first introduced into Greece, probably from the Eurasian steppes through the northern Balkans sometime in the Bronze Age (3000–1050 b.c.), horses have held a special place in ancient Greek art and society. Sixteenth-century b.c. relief-decorated tomb markers from Mycenae representing galloping horses drawing chariots are the earliest depictions of horses that we have from mainland Greece. Later Mycenaean art, notably elaborate painted terra-cotta funerary kraters, wall paintings, and small-scale terra-cotta sculptures, illustrate horses pulling chariots in processions, hunting, engaging in warfare, and possibly in races.
Passages from Homer’s epic poem the Iliad appear to confirm the practice of chariot racing at funeral games, as well as the use of horse-drawn chariots for warfare in Bronze Age Greece. The ritual burial of horses in the massive tumulus of a chieftain at Lefkandi on the island of Euboia attests to the symbolic value of the horse, even in death, in the early Greek Iron Age (ca. 1050–900 b.c.).
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Rise and Fall of the Horseman
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