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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gam3rBlake, post: 8016304, member: 115909&quot;]The story goes that Alexander’s father Phillip II paid a merchant 13 talents for</p><p>Alexander’s horse Bucephalus (literally “Ox head”) after first turning the merchant away because the horse was behaving erratically and refused to be mounted.</p><p><br /></p><p>Alexander noticed that it was behaving erratically because it was afraid of its own shadow. Alexander turned the horse away from its shadow and the horse calmed down and allowed Alexander to mount it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Plutarch says that the incident so impressed Philip that he told Alexander:</p><p>&nbsp;<i>&quot;O my son, look thee out a kingdom equal to and worthy of thyself, for Macedonia is too little for thee.&quot; </i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p>Then he immediately purchased the horse for his son at a price of 13 talents of silver.</p><p><br /></p><p>But upon hearing this story my immediate thought was: “Why on Earth was Bucephalus so darned expensive?”</p><p><br /></p><p>Back then a single talent was ALOT of money. Approximately 57 pounds (26kg) of silver equalled 1 talent and apparently Phillip paid 13 talents which is 741 pounds of silver or approximately 78,000 drachmae.</p><p><br /></p><p>That means Phillip II basically paid the horse’s weight in silver for Bucephalus.</p><p><br /></p><p>For a price comparison: 1 talent was a <i>month’s </i>pay for an entire trireme crew of 200 men.</p><p><br /></p><p>100 drachmas = 1 mina</p><p>60 mina = 1 talent</p><p><br /></p><p>Why would he pay so much? Surely there were many other fine horses that could’ve been had for much much cheaper. It’s not like Macedon at the time was stupidly rich and able to afford squandering massive amounts of money on things like that.</p><p><br /></p><p>Does anyone have any thoughts or insight into why Phillip II would have paid so much money for Alexander’s horse Bucephalus?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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