When the hero approaches, or when some fortunate incident is about to happen to the hero, his horse neighs for joy. In the Ṛigvedas,[657] on the arrival of the god Indras, the horse neighs, the cow lows, like a messenger between heaven and earth. The neighing of this horse, and the lowing of this cow, are the thundering of the sun in the cloud. By this neighing or lowing, man is informed that the hero-god Indras is beginning his battles in heaven. Another hymn, which calls the two horses of Indras two rays of the sun (sûryasya ketû), celebrates them as neighing and pouring out ambrosia,[658] i.e., the sun makes rain fall from the clouds; when he shows himself in the east at morn, his horse neighs and drops the dew on the ground.
Herodotus, and, after him, Oppianos and Valerius Maximus, relate the mythical story of Darius Hystaspes, who unexpectedly succeeded to the empire from having persuaded his colleagues to decree that he should obtain the crown whose horse happened first to neigh at the sight of the sun. It is narrated that when he came to the place, Darius, in order to assure himself of success, made his horse smell the odour of a mare.[659] Neighing is the laughter of the horse. We have seen, in the preceding chapter, how the bull speaks and the fish laughs at sight of coition; and so we have here, in the story of Darius, the horse who neighs on account of the mare.—To return to the horse of mythology; the solar horse neighs within the thundering-cloud which, as a cow, the bull makes pregnant, and as a mare, the stallion, and neighs at the approach of the aurora, who appears now as the driver of a hundred chariots[660] (a round number, like the hundred thousand horses which, in another hymn,[661] the god Indras drives; a favourite number, like seven, which is applied to the same solar horses, solar rays and Añgirasas[662])—on which account it can be compared with the Hellenic Aphroditê Hippodameia—now even as a real mare. The sun is now a driver of horses, and now himself a horse; in the same way, the aurora is now an Amazon horsewoman, now a driver of chariots, now açvâvatî, and now a mare. When the sun approaches the aurora, or when the horse approaches the mare, the horse neighs. We know how the Açvinâu considered themselves sons of the wife of the sun, Saraṇyû, daughter of Tvashṭar, who united herself to the sun in the form of a mare. Whether this Saraṇyû be the cloud or the aurora, we have in her, anyhow, a mare with which the sun, solar hero, or solar horse, unites himself to produce the twin heroes, who are, for this reason, also called the two sons of the mare.[663] We have already seen, in the preceding chapter, a hero and a heroine who are hatched from eggs; of the Dioscuri, we know that they were born of the egg of Leda; and the mare's egg is the subject of a story in the Ukermark.[664] Greek writers have handed down several cases of coition between men and mares, and between horses and women, with corresponding births of monstrous conformation. Now, unnatural as such births must appear to us, they are, in mythology, in strict accordance with nature. In the preceding chapter we saw the cow which leaps over the hare, and explained this phenomenon by the cloud or darkness covering the moon, and also by the earth covering the moon in eclipses. In Herodotus and Valerius Maximus, a mare, in the time of Xerxes, gives birth to a hare; and we must here understand the hare to be the moon, coming out of the darkness or clouds; and when we read that the hare suffocated the mare, we must understand it to mean the moon as dispersing the darkness or clouds (perhaps also the sun or evening aurora). We must have recourse in this way to the myth to comprehend the examples of parturition without coition found in some Hindoo legends, and applied to heroes, as well as the curious discussions and information which we find in the ancients, from Aristotle, Varro, Pliny, Columella, Solinus, and St Augustin, to Albertus Magnus and Aldrovandi, concerning mares, and especially Spanish and Portuguese mares, made pregnant by the wind (called by Oppianos[665] of the windy feet), and which are also spoken of in the Pentamerone,[666] with less decency, in reference to the myth of the maiden born of the tree.
The horse of Ariosto, too, has a similar nature—
"Questo è il destrier che fu dell' Argalia
Che di fiamma e di vento era concetto
E senza fieno e biada si nutria
De l'aria pura e Rabican fu detto."
The horse of Ciolle, in a Tuscan proverb, also feeds upon wind alone.
The horse of Dardanos, son of Zeus, was also said to be born of the wind, which brings us back to the Vedic Marutas, whose chariots have horses for wings, and to the volucer currus of the Diespiter of Horace.[667] In the Sanskṛit tongue, the expression vâtâçvas, or wind-horse, is very common, to indicate a very swift-footed horse.
No sooner is the horse Uććâiḥçravas born than he neighs; and like him, in the Mahâbhâratam, the hero Açvatthâman laughs, the son of Droṇas, properly he who has strength in his horse, which is the same as the hero-horse.
Moreover, as the horse exults by neighing over the good fortune of the hero who rides him, so he not only becomes sad, but sheds real tears when his rider is about to meet with misfortune.
When Râvaṇas, in the Râmâyaṇam, comes forth in his chariot, to join in final combat with Râmas, his coursers shed tears,[668] as a sinister omen, Râvanas is the monster of darkness and clouds; when the cloud begins to disperse, drops of rain fall, that is, the horses of the monster weep. The treacherous sister who is confederate with the monster against her brother, in Russian stories, is condemned by her brother, who kills the monster, to fill a whole basin with her tears.[669] These tears are also a legendary symbol of the rain which falls when the solar hero has torn the cloud in two.
Suetonius, in the Life of Cæsar, writes that the horses consecrated by Cæsar to Mars, and then set at liberty after the passage of the Rubicon, refused to eat, and wept abundantly.[670] Note that this legend of the horses that weep is connected with the passage of water, of the Rubicon (a river which no geographer has been able to identify with certainty, probably because the legend of Cæsar relating to it is a fable of mythical origin. We know how mythical beliefs incline to assume a human form, and are especially prone to group themselves round the great personages of history—Cyrus, Alexander, Romulus, Cæsar, Augustus, Vespasian, Attila, Theodoric, and Charlemagne are proofs of this; and perhaps a day will come in which Napoleon I. or Garibaldi will offer a new mannequin to some popular tradition, which is now uncertain and wandering). Thus it is said that Cæsar's horse itself shed tears for three days before the hero's death. In the Iliad,[671] the horses of Achilleus weep for the death of Patroklos, whom Hektor has thrown from his chariot into the dust; in the Paraleipomenoi of Quintus Smyrneus,[672] the horses of Achilleus weep bitterly for the death of their hero. This is a variety of the legend of the horses which throw the solar hero down into the waters, the ocean of night or the clouds, and of that of the horses of Poseidôn. The mists which after sunset in the evening impregnate the air, and the diurnal or nocturnal rains, as well as the autumnal ones, cause tears to fall upon the ground, or weep over the (apparent) death of the solar hero.