Achilles had his Chestnut, his Dapple, and his Spry; Hector, too, had his favorites--Whitefoot and Firefly; but far more famous and certainly more authentic, is Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander. Plutarch relates the whole beautiful story: how Philip of Macedon paid a great sum for the horse, only to find it quite unmanageable. Just as he was ordering its removal, the young Alexander, who had been watching the futile efforts of the grooms, begged leave to try his hand. By a method similar to Rarey’s--by gentleness, confidence and a firm hand--he won Bucephalus. Henceforth, the two were fast friends and fellow-soldiers. They fought together in Asia, accompanied part of the time at least by Peritas, a great Molossian hound. Once Bucephalus was captured by a party of barbarians, but they wisely surrendered him in time to avert the king’s vengeance. Wounded in the great battle with Porus, and worn out by age, this noble horse died in India on the banks of the Hydaspes. His monument was a city, built on the spot where he died, and named after him by his master. The pair are commemorated in various ancient works of art, of which the most notable is a great mosaic, now in Naples, representing the battle of Issus. Next to Bucephalus might be placed the black horse which Cæsar rode during his campaigns in Gaul. It had curiously divided hoofs, whence the augurs predicted good fortune to its rider; and, as though to preserve that fortune for one alone, it would let no one mount but Cæsar. Its after-fate is uncertain--except that the master of the world was not ungrateful, and placed the statue of his good servant before the temple of Venus in Rome. Possibly its history is summed up in the story Suetonius tells--that Cæsar ordered the horses which had served him in Gaul to be consecrated and maintained without labor the rest of their lives. Among them, it is more than likely, was the nameless steed of good augury. A thousand years later we find the famous Cid in Spain riding Bavieca to victory, and mindful of his horse’s welfare even in the hour of his own death. “When ye bury Bavieca, dig deep!” says Ruy Diaz, “for shameful thing were it that he should be eat by curs.”--“And this good horse lived two years and a half after the death of his master, and then he died also, having lived, according to the history, full forty years.” Yet another group of centuries, and what equine hero is this, standing firm as a rock, small, but deep-chested, in color a rich chestnut, and gazing at us with large velvety eyes?--who but Copenhagen, the war-horse of Wellington!