HE spell of the black horse was cast at the very beginning of the horse-human partnership. In about 750BC, Homer detailed in the a ‘swift horse of Adrastus, that was of heavenly stock’. The blisteringly fast, black-maned Arion was the offspring of the goddess Demeter, who had turned herself into a mare to escape the attentions of the sea god Poseidon. In the shape-shifting manner of lovestruck classical deities, Poseidon turned himself into a stallion and so Arion was born, a heroic creature, briefly ridden by Hercules, said to be immortal and, like Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty some 26 centuries later, gifted with human speech.
You’re a dark horse
Nov 01, 2023
4 minutes
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