From the earliest times throughout the Mediterranean, the horse has been a symbol of prestige, wealth and status. Social rank has often been defined in terms of the ability to own and keep a horse: the hippeis in Greece, the equites in Rome, or the knights of medieval Europe. The English word, “knights”, has the same meaning.
In the Agora, the earliest evidence of the association of horsemanship and high social status is found in the Iron Age cemetery burials that underlie the later civic centre. The first is a tomb from the 9th century BC. C., with a rich grave goods in the form of ceramics and an iron sword, at a time when said metal was still scarce. The burial was a cremation, and two bits of iron from a horse’s bridle were found among the ashes of the pyre and the urn for the bones.
In the eighth century a. Many of the tombs contained elaborately painted cosmetic boxes (pyxids) with lids with handles in the shape of one to four horses. In Athenian society at the beginning of the 6th century BC. C., the second highest property classification was a group known as the gentlemen (hippeis). Thus, it now seems clear from the grave goods in these early burials that our recognition of the horse as a symbol of high social and political status must go back several centuries, to the 9th or 8th century BC.
Throughout the 6th century BC, Athens was ruled by several great aristocratic families who prided themselves on their nobility. One expression of that pride was the association of the proper name with horses, and several prominent Athenians had names beginning or ending with the word hippos. Perhaps the oldest example is Hippothon, one of the ten eponymous heroes of Athens and son of Poseidon. The two sons of the tyrant Peisistratos were named Hippias and Hipparchos, and the father of Pericles himself bore the name Xanthippos.
These ancient aristocratic families did not disappear with the advent of democracy in the late 6th century, and the association with horses in Athenian nomenclature continued well into the classical period. There are literally hundreds of late examples of equine names. In his work The Clouds (423 BC), Aristophanes clearly and specifically addresses the deliberate use of some form of the word horse in a personal name as an indicator of aristocratic pretensions and upbringing. Thus, he paints a revealing picture of the tensions between aristocrats and commoners in democratic Athens. Strepsiades opens the play with a discussion of his marriage and the birth of his son, Pheidippides:
Damn the middleman who made me marry your mother! She lived so happily in the country, an ordinary life, but good and easy, without problems, without worries, rich in bees, sheep and olive trees. So I actually had to marry Megakles’s niece, Megakles’s son; I was from the country, she was from the town; she was a haughty, extravagant woman, a true Coesyra. The day of the wedding, when I lay down next to her, I smelled the stench of a glass of wine, cheese and wool; she smelled of essences, saffron, voluptuous kisses, the love of spending, good humor and lascivious delights.
Later, when we had this child, what would he be called? It was the cause of many fights with my beloved wife. She insisted on having some reference to a horse in her name, which should be called Xanthippos, Charippos or Kallippides. She wanted to name him Philonides after her grandfather. We argued a lot and finally agreed with Pheidippides… She used to pet him and cajole him, saying: “Oh, what a joy it will be for me when you are grown up, to see you in your chariot driving your steeds towards the village.” And I told him: “When like your father, you will go, dressed in a skin, to look for your Phelleus goats.” Poor me! He never listened to me and his madness for horses has shattered my fortune.
This same class distinction, actually defined by horses, is found in a speech by Lysias. The defendant, in claiming an invalid’s pension, must show that the use of a borrowed horse is necessary and not an expression of wealth or a claim to prestige: But the strongest proof, gentlemen, that I ride horses out of misfortune and not by insolence, as this man alleges, it is this: If I were a man of means, I would ride a saddled mule, and not ride other men’s horses. But, as a matter of fact, as I cannot acquire anything of the kind, I am obliged, from time to time, to use other men’s horses.