Beauty from Getty Museum - Homer's Iliad horse-stealing episode

 Salvete Omnes, 

today we have the last day of July 2026, time flies or as ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said - panta rhei. 

While another ancient Greek - Homer - and his compositions - the Iliad and the Odyssey - have been with our culture for close to 3,000 years, inspiring countless writers, painters, sculptors and film makers - eg the latest Nolan's film.

So our horse-related image comes from the Iliad milieu, but from the  early Archaic period of the ancient Greek history & art,  as it shows Odysseus and Diomedes' infiltration the Thracian camp, the Trojan allies, at Troy in order to steal their famous horses ("huge of size, a wonder to behold'' or -  ''His[Rheos] be verily the fairest horses that ever I saw, and the greatest, whiter than snow, and in speed like the winds.'). Odysseus slays (of honey-sweet life) Rhesos/Rhesus, a Thracian king, and 12 other sleepingThracian warriors. - Book X of Iliad,

Murray's translation

Here you can read the description from Getty Collections webpage - where the amphora's photos are available for study. The authorship has been attributed to Inscription Painters (Chalcidician style) from Rhegion, Southern Italy (then so called Magna Graecia due to the Greek colonization and settlement) 

the amazingly well portrayed white stallion 

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the act of killing of king Rhesos you can also study from the Wiki Commons page, where horse side of the amphora does not appear. Note that Odysseus is carrying a bow and arrows in a quiver slung on his back.

Valete

Thracian Bit - another example from the MET

 Salvete Omnes,

MET is  greatly 'stuffed' with art and artefacts. 

In the past I presented various surviving ancient bit from the MET and other museum collections.

Well, a couple days ago i had a chance to look at some Thracian bit reconstruction in combination with a headstall done by a Romanian author and artist Radu Oltean - here Radu's books are listed - goodreads .

So following me studying his reconstructions in his book on the Getae and Dacians, I looked up various Thracian bits in the MET collection.
Therefore today I would like to bring to your attention another MET example of these early ancient curb-bits (I wrote about two - here and  here):

this bit - dated to II-I centuries BC, is made out of bronze somewhere in the Balkans.

height - 15,2 cm

width (of the mouthpiece? )- 14cm

weight - 462,1 g

The mouthpiece looks more or less like  a jointed-snaffle one, but instead of rings where reins would be attached etc there are two longish shanks attached to the mouthpiece by another small ring, and instead of a curb-chain there is a horizontal 'curb-bar,' with three available positions for the bar.  Above the mouthpiece there is a large  'lyre-shaped' cheekpiece  on each side of the mouthpiece, although not part of a shank, but once attached to the headstall it could have acted in unison with the shank.
I think the bit is beautiful, the workmanship of the smith who made it quite exquisite and precise, and somewhat flowing.
The bronze used to make the mouthpiece in the horses mouth could have tasted sweet to the horse and thus caused the horse's mouth to stay 'wet' and 'pliable.'

A great example of the beauty of ancient horsemanship and blacksmith art I daresay.

ps
you can also peruse this article about the ancient curb-bits, I made it available in 2017.

Valete

The Adrianopol book cover - full

 Salvete Omnes,

last year I did a cover for a military history  book on the battle of Adrianopole1205AD by Jakub Juszynski - the  Infort Editions publisher - I wrote about it in August 2021.

I finally got the copy of the entire book cover jacket - which I would like to share with you, although it is all in Polish - but I am certain you could appreciate the graphic design scheme etc of this publisher.

it was a battle fought by  Baldwin I, emperor of the newly-created Latin Empire and his allies the Venetians against the alliance of king Kaloyan of Bulgaria Second Empire and his Cuman(Polovetz) allies (his wife Anna was a Polovetz princess).

nota bene, this map below shows the economy of Send Bulgarian Empire - note that the horses were mostly bred in the ancient Thrace region of the Balkans. Under the Byzantine Empire  this ancient Thrace area was one of the centers of horse breeding and cavalry recruiting for the East Roman emperor and their armies.

enjoy

Valete

Ancient curb bit from MET

Salvete omnes,
let us canter to the ancient, classical  Balkans for the fabulous MET has a very interesting early curb-bit. They claim is it  from the I c BC / I c AD . It is not on display in the exhibition halls but the museum displays it on their website.

The bit is of mixed metal, copper alloy and iron alloy, we could infer that this was a sweet [to the horse] bit? It weights 680.4 g
The shanks are 16.2cm(6 3/8inch)  long, while the mouthpiece is 11.1 cm (4 3/8 in.) wide, however as we can see the bit has a port, quite substantial.
The shanks are  curved forward and had a heavy bar. There is no shank above the mouthpiece. There appears to have been rollers? on the cannons on both sides of the port, but only one remains.

The bit looks similar to the bits found in ancient Iran (eg Susa), but they are dated much later, to the Sassanid era (III c AD-VII c AD)

The image is in public domain, comes from MET website.

Ancient horse from coins

Salve,
today is Tłusty czwartek (Fat Thursday) and our Polish folklore associates this day with eating pączki  and other delicious sweets; so enjoy them wherever you can find a Polish bakery :)

Good traditions aside,  I have been browsing the web looking for the ancient coins and other Hellenic and Roman art images showing Dioskouroi riding horses and holding palm branches, and I cam across some very interesting coins from the ancient Greeks sphere of influence, i..e., Mediterranean Basin. Why are they interesting? Well, because they show different types of horses.

Please note that I do not own any of these images nor have any right to them - they came from this website Ancient Coin search Info
I am showing them to simply share these interesting depictions of horses of the ancient Hellenic world.
Coins from V to III century B.C. - let's the images speak for themselves . Note that Ann Hyland has written on these horses in her book Equus, The Horse in the Roman World.
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 circa 260 from Carthage - a Numidian stallion?

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 Tarentine, Magna Graecia (Italy) - Osprey has a book on the Tarentine horsemen, we need one on the Numidian horsemen

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 Macedon - Thessalian, Thracian, perhaps steppe influenced horses, eg king Philip II, father of Alexander, brought from his wars (340s B.C.) against the Thracians and Scythians thousands of horses as war spoils - so tell us the ancient historians, eg Quintus Curtius Ruffus or Arrian etc.

Paeonia (Greece)

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 Thrace - Thracian horse, note the famous mares of Greek mythology or Rhesus of Thrace horses

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Thessaly - a Thessalian horse

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Caria, Achaemenid satrapy in Asia Minor - Nisean horse

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