Key takeaways
- The horse is the only animal that rewrote the language. Chivalry and cavalier both come from it.
- Its oldest symbolism is status, not freedom. Owning one was the point.
- Horses were buried with Scythian kings and in the tombs of the pharaohs.
- The Centaur is not a monster so much as a description: horse and rider as one animal.
- White stallions were the supreme sacrifice to the Greek gods.
Most animal symbolism is projection. Horse symbolism is closer to an economic record: for several thousand years the horse was the fastest thing a person could own, and almost everything it came to stand for follows from that one fact.
Here is what it has meant, and where the meanings are documented rather than assumed.
What does the horse symbolize?
Status, power and partnership, in that order historically and roughly the reverse order today. Britannica calls the relationship unique and describes the horse as a partner and friend that plowed fields, hauled goods, tracked cattle, and carried combatants into battle and adventurers to unknown lands.
Freedom, the meaning most people reach for now, is the newest layer. It belongs to a world where nobody needs a horse, which is a very recent world.
How did the horse change the English language?
Two of our words for good conduct are horse words. Britannica notes that the influence of the horse is expressed in terms like chivalry and cavalier, which connote honor, respect, good manners and straightforwardness.
Both descend from words for horseman. The idea that a certain kind of man behaves a certain way was, linguistically, inseparable from the idea that he rode.
That is the strongest evidence for what the animal actually meant. You do not build your vocabulary of honor around livestock.
Why is status the real theme?
Because ownership was the message. Britannica records that a beautiful and well-trained horse was a status symbol in ancient Greece, and that kings, generals and statesmen had, of necessity, to be horsemen.
Xenophon, the Greek general, put the visual convention plainly when he recorded that gods and heroes are depicted on well-trained horses. If you were being shown as important, you were shown mounted.
The French zoologist Buffon called the horse the proudest conquest of Man, which is a revealing phrase: the pride is in the conquering.
Were horses really buried with kings?
Yes, and across unconnected cultures. The horse's place was at its master's side in the graves of the Scythian kings and in the tombs of the pharaohs.
There is a domestic version of the same instinct. Britannica notes that a horse's head suspended near a grave or sanctuary, or on the gables of a house, was held to confer supernatural powers on the place.
Superstition also read meaning into the color of a horse, which is why color is so rarely incidental in old horse imagery. A white horse is making a claim.
What did white horses mean?
They were the most valuable thing you could give away. White stallions were the supreme sacrifice to the Greek gods, which is a precise statement of worth: the best horse, destroyed deliberately, to prove the offering cost something.
That is why white horses carry a different charge from other colors in Western art. They are not simply pale. They are the sacrificial and the divine end of the palette.
What made the horse a weapon?
The chariot, and later than you would guess. The World History Encyclopedia is blunt on the point: horses were not used for transport, plowing, warfare or any other practical human activity until quite late in history, and the chariot was the first such application. Donkeys and other animals were preferred in early civilizations.
Once it arrived, it dominated. The chariot was the supreme military weapon in Eurasia roughly from 1700 BCE to 500 BCE, a light two-wheeled vehicle drawn by one or more horses and usually carrying a driver and a fighter with a bow or javelins. It was also a hunting vehicle and a sporting one, raced at the Olympic Games and in the Roman Circus Maximus.
The geography behind that is worth knowing, because it explains why horse imagery reads as open country. The horse's main ecological niche was the Eurasian steppe, a strip of grassland about 4,800 km long and on average 800 km wide, running from Hungary to China. The animal's symbolic landscape is not a paddock. It is a plain.
What is the Centaur really about?
Unity, not monstrosity. Britannica describes the Centaur as the most obvious symbol of the oneness of horse and rider, created by Greek mythology.
Read that way the figure stops being a hybrid creature and becomes a description of an experience. A skilled rider and a trained horse do function as one animal, and a culture that took riding seriously found an image for it.
It is worth noticing what the Greeks did not do. They did not imagine a man carrying a horse, or a horse wearing a man. They imagined a single body.
What is Pegasus really about?
Violence, ambition and the limit of both. Britannica records that the winged horse sprang from the blood of the Gorgon Medusa as she was beheaded by Perseus, which makes the most decorative horse in Western art the product of a killing.
The rest of the story is a warning rather than a triumph. With the help of Athena, or Poseidon depending on the telling, Bellerophon captured Pegasus and rode him against the Chimera. He then attempted to fly to heaven on the same horse and was unseated, killed in some versions and lamed in others. Pegasus went on without him, becoming a constellation and the servant of Zeus.
One detail explains why the image attached itself to poetry and inspiration: the spring Hippocrene on Mount Helicon was believed to have been created where the hoof of Pegasus struck rock. A horse that opens a spring by standing on stone is a very old way of saying that something is a source.
Which horses are remembered by name?
| Horse | Rider |
|---|---|
| Bucephalus | Alexander the Great |
| Incitatus | The Roman emperor Caligula |
| El Morzillo | Hernan Cortes, to whom a statue was erected |
| Roan Barbery | Richard II, mentioned by Shakespeare |
| Copenhagen | The Duke of Wellington, buried with military honors |
Britannica's point in listing them is that the names are inseparably linked to those of their riders. No other working animal gets this treatment; nobody remembers a famous ox.
One note of caution on Incitatus. The famous claim that Caligula made him a senator is one Britannica flags as formerly believed rather than established, and it is repeated far more confidently elsewhere than the evidence supports.
Where does the horse sit in the Chinese zodiac?
Among the twelve animals of the annual cycle, where the sign attaches to your birth year rather than your birth month. Britannica notes that the system, called Sheng Xiao or Shu Xiang, assigns each year of a twelve-year cycle an animal and a personality said to typify that year, with the sign changing at Chinese New Year rather than at a month boundary.
The history is unsettled. Some sources place its origin in the Warring States period, some in the Qin dynasty and some in the Han, though it was firmly established by the latter half of the Han. The familiar tale of a race between animals, called by the Jade Emperor in one version and by the Buddha in another, is legend rather than record.
For art, the useful point is that this is a second, independent tradition in which the horse already carries meaning. A horse piece will read differently to someone who grew up with the zodiac than to someone who grew up with cavalry paintings, and neither reading is the wrong one.
How long has the horse been in art?
As long as there has been art. Britannica traces the line from Stone Age drawings to the Parthenon frieze, from Chinese Tang dynasty tomb sculptures to Leonardo's sketches and Verrocchio's Colleoni, and on into the Qur'an and modern literature.
That continuity is unusual. Most subjects fall out of fashion for centuries. The horse simply has not, and that is worth remembering when choosing one for a wall: you are joining a very long queue.
Which horse imagery works on a wall?
Motion or stillness, not the middle. A horse running and a horse standing entirely still both read strongly. A horse mid-pose in a field reads as a calendar.
- Dark horses on pale walls, pale horses on dark walls. Horse art fails on tonal matches.
- Racing imagery suits an office; landscape horse imagery suits a living room. They are different subjects.
- Classical horse relief reads as architecture and sits well above heavy furniture.
- Avoid tack and equestrian equipment nearby unless you ride. Otherwise it reads as theme, not taste.
The range is in the animal wall art collection, and what different animals have meant covers the broader pattern.
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Frequently asked questions
What does a horse symbolize?
Status, power and partnership historically, and freedom more recently. For thousands of years the horse was the fastest thing a person could own, and most of its symbolism follows from that.
Where do the words chivalry and cavalier come from?
From words for horseman. Britannica notes both connote honor, respect, good manners and straightforwardness, so the English vocabulary of good conduct was built on riding.
What does the Centaur symbolize?
The oneness of horse and rider. Greek mythology created it as an image of a skilled rider and trained horse functioning as a single body, rather than as a monster.
What does Pegasus symbolize?
Inspiration, but with a violent origin. Pegasus sprang from Medusa's blood when Perseus beheaded her, and the spring Hippocrene was said to have opened where his hoof struck rock, which is where the link to poetry comes from.
What did white horses mean in ancient Greece?
They were the supreme sacrifice to the gods, meaning the most valuable offering available. That is why white horses carry a sacrificial and divine charge in Western art.
Did Caligula make his horse a senator?
Probably not. Britannica treats the claim about Incitatus as formerly believed rather than established, and it is repeated far more confidently than the evidence supports.
