Why did Alexander the Great’s horse cost so much?

I thought it was 1 talent for one servant, 2 talents for the second and 3 talents for the third? For a total of 6 talents.

 

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I wasn’t talking about yearlings.

I was talking about horses like this.


The photo above is the horse Plavius being auctioned. Notice the calm demeanor of the horse and that it is far from a yearling and looks to be in peak physical condition.

If they brought the horse onto the auction stage and it started bucking and going wild I doubt it would’ve sold for that price.

Afterall who wants to buy a race horse that will try to buck off any jockey that attempts to mount it like Bucephalus was believed to do.

Does this look to you like a horse that has not been trained and evaluated for potential prior to auction?

It doesn’t to me. It looks to me like a horse that sold for millions because it had both the bloodline & temperment to become a champion prior to being sold.

 

May I ask where you found your information about Bucephalus having a large white star on his brow?

I had never heard of that and would be interested to read it.

 

I understand that but in my own personal opinion it’s a bit different because very expensive multi-million dollar coins are known to be exemplary rare coins prior to being sold.

Whereas according to the story of Bucephalus he seemed to be a troubled horse when he was offered up for sale as indicated by his refusal to allow anyone to mount him.

I think the story would’ve made a lot more sense if Bucephalus had a record of excelling as a war horse with a calm demeanor both inside and outside of battle prior to the sale because like a multi-million dollar coin it would serve as evidence of being exemplary.

 

I don't have a good answer. I read it in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucephalus#Taming_of_Bucephalus says "Bucephalus is described as having a black coat with a large white star on his brow.". This was added to Wikipedia in 2006 and Google seems to know of 100,000 pages today with this claim.

Yet I couldn't find an ancient source or the reason why this description of Bucephalus was added in July 2006! 15 year old hoax? I am stumped.

 

That's a different parable that occurs seven chapters later in Matthew.

 

μυρίων, the Greek word here translated 10,000 meant 'innumerable' or 'countless', perhaps just 'a lot'. An expert horseman whose abilities allow becoming a team with the fastest and strongest animal will win every time unless, of course, he overestimated those abilities and dies trying. I suspect, by the time this (fictional) story might have happened, Alexander would have had more time 'up' than any living human today.

 

Ah yeah I know what you mean.

Sometimes these things happen. I remember reading a Suetonius translation that said Emperor Augustus used to hand out coins of the ancient kings of Rome to favored guests at festivals.

I remember asking: “Which Ancient Roman kings minted coins?” Only to find out that they didn’t mint coins and the translation was incorrect even though it was a translation by the Gutenberg Project which is a reputable source.

 

Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander V.19

"His mark was an ox-head branded upon him; hence, they say, his name Bucephalas; others, however, say that he was black except for a white mark on his head, which was exactly like an ox-head."

 

So it seems to me like this is a disputed fact regarding the white star marking.

It seems some historians say it was there while others make no reference of it.

That’s the problem with historians writing centuries after the events they write about. It’s hard to know what is fact and what is fiction.

But I guess that also explains why Herodotus preferred primary sources over secondary sources and used primary sources whenever possible since they are sources who actually witnessed the event rather than sources who were told about the event.

 

The Latin reads:
modo nummos omnis notae, etiam veteres regios ac peregrinos

'Rules' of word order in Latin differ from English. I take this as meaning the kings were "old and foreign" which would be the Hellenistic kings. Translators who did not know coins read it as referring to Roman kings so they stuck in the word to make their reading clear. Like English, grammar changed over time and it is always possible that a text came down to us less than clear even before editors and translators embellished it. Word for word translations do not always convey the original idea.

I found this interesting:
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caligula/
Suetonius' style is generally straightforward, although his vocabulary is wide. The challenge for students approaching him for the first time is his tendency to omit auxiliary verb forms (any form of esse is likely to drop), his very frequent use of indirect speech constructions, complex ablative absolute constructions, and substantive participles (which tend to compress the syntax). As with all authors, Suetonius' style will become easier as you read the text.

Clear as mud? I'm no Latin scholar. We have some here. What say you?

BTW there are coins that show Roman kings but they were issued much later in the Republic by moneyers who claimed descent. Exactly how the people of 88BC knew the appearance of the old kings is unclear to me. See Ancus Marcius and Numa Pompilius:

 

I like to think that them knowing the vague appearance of certain Kings of Rome may have been from oral tradition rather than seeing images like statues or coins.

For example it’s well known that in Ancient Greece there were people able to memorize the entire Iliad then they would pass it down to new story tellers and it would be passed down from generation to generation.

Is it possible that the appearance of Roman kings (if they were real or based on real leaders of Rome) could have been passed down as well?


Maybe someone who lived during the Roman kingdom told his son about the kings and what they looked like and he passed it down to his son and I’m guessing over time details were lost but perhaps some details survived. Like hair color or skin color or facial type and maybe the images on coins were artistic representations based on those descriptions?

I believe it’s possible.

 

I added two "citation needed" notes to the Wikipedia article, for the shape of the star and for the color of the horse's eyes. We shall see if anyone can track down a source for these claims.

 

It is also possible that the kings were more mythology than fact so anyone could make up anything as fit their desires.