Incitatus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Incitatus was the favored horse of Roman emperor Caligula. Its name is a Latin adjective meaning "swift" or "at full gallop".
According to Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Incitatus had a stable of marble, with an ivory manger, purple blankets, and a collar of precious stones. Others have indicated that the horse was attended to by eighteen servants, and was fed oats mixed with gold flake. Suetonius also wrote that Caligula planned to make Incitatus a consul. Caligula even procured him a wife, a mare named Penelope.
The horse would "invite" dignitaries to dine with him in a house outfitted with servants there to entertain such events.
[edit] Caligula's Folly
Historical revisionists like Anthony A. Barrett in Caligula: The Corruption of Power (Yale, 1990) question the negative portrait of Caligula. They ascribe Caligula's treatment of Incitatus as a way of ridiculing and angering the Senate, rather than a proof of his insanity. They suggest that later historians like Suetonius and Dio Cassius were motivated by the politics of their times and that their histories were distorted by the desire to include more colorful, but perhaps less reliable sources.
[edit] In popular culture
Incitatus appears as a character in Bill Willingham's comic book series, Jack of Fables. In the comic, Incitatus has the power of speech, and assists the Big Bad Wolf in tracking down the title character during a flashback sequence set in the Old West. The horse is also mentioned in Atlas Shrugged, referring to Cherryl Brooks during a high society party, a dime-store salesgirl who winds up marrying James Taggart.
