Xenophon on the Minds of Horses

 

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     In discussions of ancient Greek philosophers’ views concerning animal intelligence, Xenophon’s name seldom appears.  Richard Sorabji for example writes an important book entitled Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate, but mentions Xenophon only in passing and not as a source for information about animal minds[1].  Nor does Xenophon figure importantly in the most comprehensive collection of ancient Greek texts on animal/human comparisons to date, Urs Dierauer’s Tier und Mensch im griechischen Denken[2].  Yet this situation is somewhat peculiar since Xenophon’s treatise “On Horsemanship” contains a rich animal psychology, or at least an equine psychology, which is distinctive precisely for its stress on the parallels or similarities between the horse’s mind and the human mind.

     The relative neglect of Xenophon in academic books and journals, as a source of important information about animal intelligence, is counterbalanced by his enormous popularity among actual horse trainers and riders, including both theorists of training and of so-called “classical” riding principles and expositors of the “natural horsemanship” methods associated primarily with western riding.  In the works of Alois Podhajsky, erstwhile director of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, Xenophon’s name appears multiple times within each chapter and is always noted in terms of the highest reverence.[3]  Sylvia Loch, author of Classical Riding and The Classical Seat, also reveres Xenophon and quotes him as if he were a contemporary with a particularly useful perspective on perfecting the relationship between horse and rider, to the horse’s best advantage.[4]   Pat Parelli’s 1993 book Natural Horse-Man-Ship cites Xenophon in its introduction:

            Over 2,000 years ago, one of the first great riding masters was a man

            named Xenophon.  He said that communication is the key to horsemanship.

            Learning to communicate with your horse is vital if the two of you are

            going to be on the same track as partners.[5]

Thus, the stone neglected by scholars is a cornerstone among riding enthusiasts, including both those of the dressage and ‘haute ebrownin’  schools of equitation and the western riding community.

     In this paper I would like to make Xenophon’s views on the minds of horses, as manifest in the treatise on horsemanship, as explicit as possible.[6]  I believe Xenophon has a significant contribution to make to our understanding of the range of opinion on the nature of the animal soul which existed in the classical world.  In her book Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name, Vicki Hearne argued that animal trainers generally have a much higher opinion about animal intelligence and even animal virtue than researchers and theorists who do not have systematic training relationships with animals; Hearne also inferred that trainers’ views carry a certain authoritative weight, since they are tested in a more practical crucible than those of non-trainers.  In On Horsemanship, Xenophon definitely writes as an experienced trainer and rider (also cavalry officer and cavalry strategist); so perhaps his equine psychology demands our attention also for the kind of reason Hearne gives: it has a practical origin, and has been refined in practical testing.

     I will explore Xenophon’s contributions to equine psychology in the treatise On Horsemanship  under three headings:  (1) Passages which stress, to a striking degree, commonalities between horses and humans; (2) passages concerning the cognitive psychology of the horse, lending it a certain amount of intellectual sophistication;  and (3) passages concerning the more general psychology of the horse’s affective and reflective capabilities.  From all of these areas it emerges, I believe, that Xenophon’s understanding of the mind of the horse lends it a considerable degree of psychological depth and cognitive complexity, drawing the horse in closer analogy to humankind than has heretofore been realized.

 

Section 1: “It is the same with horses and with men” (Peri Hippikes IV.2).

     Xenophon’s audience for the treatise on horsemanship consists of young Greeks contemplating the purchase and/or higher training of a war-horse.  These men may or may not have had much prior experience with animal care.  Xenophon assumes as little as possible.  One of his explanatory strategies, and one which appears in the text with striking frequency, is drawing close analogies between horses and human beings.  Concerning the feeding of a horse who has been brought home from the breaking-trainer, Xenophon recommends watching eating habits carefully so as to detect signs of colic or other problems as early as possible: “It is the same with horses and with men: all distempers (noshmata) in the early stage are more easily cured than when they have become chronic and have been wrongly treated”.

     Though this particular passage is about physical ailments and makes the common-sense point that catching them early is better than letting them advance, the theme of animal-human commonality which it strikes also appears on the psychological plane.

     For example, both horse and rider are given one basic teaching law or didagma.  For the rider, the didagma in dealing with the horse throughout his training, the “one best rule and practice”,  is “…never to approach him in anger, for anger is a reckless (lit. “forethought-less”, apronohton) thing, so that it often makes a man do what he must regret” (VI.13).  For the horse, the didagma is the two basic training sounds: the chirp (poppusmoj) and the cluck (klJgmoj).  Both these foundational rules are pervasive through the training process, simple to remember, and function in the same way for horse and rider in training.

     Horse and man alike also respond poorly to force, as Xenophon stresses in XI.6, citing Simon’s earlier treatise on horsemanship with approval.

For what a horse does under constraint, as Simon says, he does without understanding, and with no more grace than a dancer would show if he was whipped and goaded.  Under such treatment horse and man alike will do much more that is ugly than graceful.  No, a horse must make the most graceful and brilliant appearance in all respects of his own will with the help of aids (apo shmeion `ekonta).

 

Just like a human dancer, the brilliant horse must be the agent of his own graceful motion (albeit with the help of a human “choreographer’s” aids).  Both horse and man become awkward and graceless in their movements when subjected to force. Beauty of motion depends upon the mover initiating the motion willingly or voluntarily, and initiating it with understanding (epistatai, XI.6). 

     Old saws apply equally to horses and to humans, as in the following text concerning the length of galloping sets: “Nothing in excess is ever pleasing either to horse or to man” (X.14).  It is noticeable that Xenophon does not simply say that running a horse ragged is counterproductive in training.  His point differs from this claim in two ways: he stresses again the commonality between horse and human; and he places the emphasis of the training advice upon what is pleasing (hdu) to the horse.  Thus the horse is conceived as a partner, rather than an object, in the training project, and a partner whose willing and appreciative participation in the project is essential to its success.

     This last point emerges repeatedly in the treatise.  At X.3-5 for example, the “brilliant” movements are related to what the horse delights in outside the training regimen.[7]

…(I)f you teach the horse to go with a slack bridle, to hold his neck up and to arch it towards the head, you will cause the horse to do the very things in which he himself delights and takes the greatest pleasure. A proof that he delights in them is that whenever he himself chooses to show off before horses, and especially before mares, he raises his neck highest and arches his head most, looking fierce; he lifts his legs freely off the ground and tosses his tail up.  Whenever, therefore, you induce him to carry himself in the attitudes he naturally assumes when he is most anxious to display his beauty, you make him look as though he took pleasure in being ridden, and give him a noble, fierce, and attractive appearance.

 

Clearly then, things which delight and please the horse should be training outcomes as well.

     Thus, horse and human have at the foundational level of training their commonalities: in adverse response to force, in reliance upon basic axioms of learning, in their displeasure at excess, and in their willing participation in the training partnership.

 

Section 2: How the Horse Learns

     Xenophon consistently describes the training programme as one in which the trainer teaches (didaskein) and the horse learns (maqein).  Further, the learning process for the horse follows a pattern of induction.   Consider the following text, in which Xenophon explains how to acclimate a horse to a feared object:

To force him with blows only increases his terror; for when horses feel pain in such a predicament, they think (oiontaii) that this too is caused by the thing at which they shy. (VI.14)

 

The horse who fears something focuses attention upon it.  If he is then struck, he infers that the pain is caused by the fearsome object.  Xenophon’s horse is busily making sense of its physical environment, and drawing causal connections among its elements.  Far from being simply reactive in a stimulus-response mode, the horse performs inductions with the evidence provided, and generates theories about its experience.  Only by working with or around the horse’s native induction processes can the trainer successfully de-spook the horse.

     In addition, we must note the emphasis of our earlier text XI.6 (on the opposition between force and brilliance), on the necessity for the horse to perform his movements with understanding (not anagkazomenoj, which is out epistatai oute kala).  What does this mean?  The horse must have a grasp of the logistics of the exercises, and must be an intelligent director of his own moves.  The horse is not a puppet or a machine, but an understander and only thereby a willing mover in the high school equitation.  Proper training, Xenophon emphasizes, enlists the horse’s understanding and will; it is thus not merely a physical but also a mental discipline for horse and rider alike.

     Thus, the horse’s cognitive psychology, though far from completely described in this treatise, involves at least rudimentary inductive powers and the ability to grasp the patterns of schooling maneuvers to a sufficient degree to be their director and deliberate originator (if the resulting movements are to be brilliant and beautiful).

 

Section 3:  Affective and Reflective Psychodynamics of the Horse

     The nature and disposition of the horse’s soul become more evident through interaction with human handlers; concerning very young unhandled horses, little can be inferred with certainty.  “For judging an unbroken colt, the only criterion, obviously, is the body, for no clear signs of temper (yuch) are yet to be detected in an animal that has not yet had a man on him” (I.1).  Thus Xenophon is using the word “psyche” to denote character traits which define a horse’s behavior in its partnership with humans.  But certain character traits can be elicited through proper handling even prior to systematic work, and Xenophon explains how to ensure that the young horse will be “…gentle, tractable, and fond of man (filanqrJpoj) when sent to the professional trainer (II.3).  Some traits however seem to be innate, such as the willingness to work again immediately after a work-session; this shows “a patient temper” (yuchj karteraj; III.11).

     Xenophon provides a relatively lengthy discussion of the “spirited” horse (qumoeidej  ippon), introducing it with another parallel between human and horse psychology: “First, then, it must be realized that spirit (qumoj) in a horse is exactly what anger (orgV) is in a man” (IX.2).   This may be more than an analogy:

Therefore, just as you are least likely to make a man angry if you neither say nor do anything disagreeable to him, so he who abstains from annoying a spirited horse is least likely to rouse his anger  (hkist an exorgizoi; IX.2-3).

 

According to this passage, spirit in a horse just is anger.  The subsequent discussion emphasizes the similarity between human anger and equine thymos regarding their arousal and avoidance.  “Any sudden sign disturbs a spirited horse, just as sudden sights and sounds and sensations disturb a man” (IX.4). 

     Attempting to “ride out” the energy of the spirited horse in strenuous exercise is a big mistake. 

For in such cases a spirited horse does his utmost to get the upper hand by force, and in his excitement (lit. “in his anger”, sun tV orgV IX.7), like an angry man, he often causes many irreparable injuries both to himself and to his rider (IX.7-8).

 

Just as approaching a horse in anger violates the fundamental didagma of training from the human point of view (cf.VI.13), so failing to recognize the commonality between human anger and equine thymos leads to disastrous accidents.  “Anger management” is a crucial element in the horse’s training, in relation both to the trainer’s own anger and to that of the spirited horse.

     Finally, Xenophon also stresses that the horse has the capacity to reflect on his own appearance; at times it is almost as if horses are credited with possession of a “self-image”.  The horse can be “…anxious to display his beauty” (X.5); he will “…bear himself proudly when ridden” after proper training (X.15); “..he bounds forward for very joy with a proud bearing and supple legs, exultant” when bit pressure is released in a good schooling session (X.16); and “…no one leaves him or is tired of gazing at him so long as he shows off his brilliance” (XI.9).

     This point is underscored in a comment about the beauty of manes and tails (and recommendation that they not be trimmed excessively):

…(T)he mane, forelock, and tail have been given to the horse by the gods as an ornament.  A proof of this is that brood mares herding together, so long as they have fine manes, are reluctant to be covered by asses, for which reason all breeders of mules cut off the manes of the mares for covering (V.8).

 

When in  possession of their natural manes, these mares are too haughty to accept the sexual advances of the asses; when rendered dumpier by mane-cutting, they lose this haughtiness.  Such could not be the outcome unless the mares were aware of their appearance in the before and after states.

     In summary then, Xenophon’s horse possesses both an affective and a reflective psychology.  The horse’s emotional range includes philanthropia, thumos/orge, delight, pleasure, and pride.  On the darker side, the horse can also be given to kakourgein and adikein, for which reason leading from the side is highly recommended (VI.3-5).  And the horse has some form of reflective self-perception, as manifest in proud displays of “brilliance” and in the humility of the clipped mares.  

     In his practical little treatise on horse purchasing and training, Xenophon constructs an equine psychology which has as a central theme the commonality or similarity between human and animal minds.  Horses learn, understand, make inductions and associations, grow angry and are soothed, take pride and pleasure, all in ways that can best be understood by analogy with our own psychological experiences in these areas.  The center of gravity for the training regimen he recommends is located in realization of, and utilization of, this animal-human similarity. 

     No doubt Xenophon stresses the relationship between animal and human psychology and mentality in part because of the existence of violent training methods which he deplores - either for humane or for pragmatic reasons.  Such violent training finds illustration in no less a source than Plato; the Phaedrus gives a classic picture of the use of extreme violence to change horse behavior.   To tame the soul’s unruly horse, it will be recalled, the charioteer gets tough:

(H)e falls back like a racer from the starting-rope, pulls the bit backward even more violently than before from the teeth of the unruly horse, covers his scurrilous tongue and jaws with blood, and forces his legs and haunches to the ground, causing him much pain.  Now when the bad horse has gone through the same experience many times and has ceased from his unruliness, he is humbled, and follows henceforth the wisdom of the charioteer…[8]

 

This comparison is hardly fair to Plato, who is not writing a training manual but a description of the taming of sexual desire; nevertheless it graphically depicts what must have been at least one recognizable method of dealing with “unruliness” and the “bad”  horse. 

     But beyond this rhetorical purpose, Xenophon seems genuinely convinced of the common ground between human and equine intelligence.  This conviction emerges more clearly, and is more repeatedly stressed, in this text on horsemanship than in any other extant literature from the classical period.  Thus Xenophon should be reckoned among those ancient writers who contribute importantly to the ongoing discussion about the limits of human nature and our psychological distance or proximity to our animal neighbors.  And since his views appear to have been tested in the crucible of actual training relationships, they may possess not only theoretical interest but some validity as well.  At any rate Xenophon provides a description of the training partnership between horse and human which is both moving and richly  intriguing.  

   


[1] On pp. 171 and 172 of Sorabji’s book, Xenophon is noted as having emphasized the importance of animal sacrifice in his Oeconomicus, and having noted the excitement of hunting hounds running in packs.  Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate; New York: Cornell University Press, 1993.

[2] Dierauer notes Xenophon’s references to animal instinct in the Memorabilia and Cyropaideia; pp.49-56.  Urs Dierauer, Tier und Mensch im Denken der Antike; Amsterdam: Gruner Verlag, 1977.

[3] Alois Podhajsky, The Complete Training of Horse and Rider in the Principles of Classical Horsemanship; Hollywood, CA: Wilshire Book Company, 1967; My Horses, My Teachers; London: Harrap, 1969; The Art of Dressage: Basic Principles of Riding and Judging; London: Harrap, 1973.

[4] Sylvia Loch, The Classical Rider: Being at One with Your Horse; London: J.A.Allen & Co., 1997; The Classical Seat; Surrey: D.J. Murphy, 1987.

[5] Pat Parelli, Natural Horse-Man-Ship.  Salt Lake City: Western Horseman Inc., 1993; p.6.

[6] References will be to the text and translation of E.C. Marchant; “The Art of  Horsemanship” comprises pp. 295-364 of Xenophon: Scripta Minora; London: Heinemann, 1956.  The authenticity of Xenophon’s authorship of this treatise and other minor works has been questioned, largely on the grounds of the heterogeneity of the expertise which they display.  For my purposes it is not essential that the question of authorship be answered definitively; for convenience I will refer to Xenophon as the author of the views I discuss here, though I will make no claims connecting these views to others in Xenophon’s extant corpus.

[7] J.K. Anderson, in Ancient Greek Horsemanship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) notes that the “brilliant horse” (lampros hippos) acquired a somewhat technical definition denoting specialized training, though this technical meaning may not have been fully articulated in Xenophon’s time; see Anderson pp.122-7.

[8] Plato, Phaedrus 254e; tr. H.N. Fowler; London: Heinemann, 1971.