with the broth. The naked king climbed into it and sat there, dipping his
mouth in to sup, while the gobbets of boiled meat were distributed among the
spectators.^24 There is no mention of a role for the queen, but the combination
of royal horse sacrifice and royal copulation with the victim makes a striking
parallel with the ancient Indian rite.
There is much evidence for horse sacrifice among Indo-European (as well
as Finno-Ugric and Turkic) peoples.^25 It has no necessary connection with
kingship, but it is related that the assumption of the Swedish kingship by the
pagan Svein was ratified by the sacrifice, dismemberment, and consumption
of a horse.^26 Puhvel has drawn attention to the Arvernian royal name
Epomeduos, which combines ‘horse’ (*ekwo-) with the ‘mead’ that occupied
us above.^27 The Roman sacrifice of the October Equus, which took place in
honour of Mars on the Ides of October, shows vestigial associations with
royalty. The Campus Martius, the scene of the action, was the old ager
Tarquiniorum (Livy 2. 5. 2), the horse’s severed tail was taken quickly to the
Regia so that the warm blood could drip on the sacred hearth there, and its
head was fixed on the wall of the Regia (if the men of the Via Sacra succeeded
in defending it from the men of the Subura). Dumézil noted another point of
detail that makes a link between the October Equus and the As ́vamedha. The
Roman event began with a chariot-race, and it was the right-hand horse of
the winning pair that was chosen for sacrifice. Similarly for the Indian rite it
was prescribed that the victim must ‘excel on the right part of the yoke’.^28
The motif of sexual congress between a man and a mare is documented
sporadically elsewhere, though not in a way that clarifies its relevance to
kingship. A rock drawing of the Bronze Age at Bohuslän in Sweden shows an
ithyphallic winged man with a bird mask and a sword approaching a mare
from the rear. The Gaulish horse goddess Epona is said to have been born
after one Fulvius Stella, who did not care for women, copulated with a mare.^29
(^24) Giraldus Cambrensis, Topographia Hiberniae 3. 25; Koch–Carey (2000), 273; cf. F. R.
Schröder, ZCP 16 (1927), 310–12; de Vries (1961), 243 f.; Puhvel (as n. 23, 1970), 163 f.; (1987),
273 f.; Campanile (1981), 35; McCone (1990), 117 f.; Watkins (1995), 265 f. In the As ́vamedha
too the king has contact with the sacrificial horse-flesh: he sniffs the odour of the smoking fat,
thus freeing himself from sin (Rm. 1. 13. 30). At the end of the ceremony he takes a purifying
bath (MBh. 14. 90. 16, 91. 29).
(^25) Cf. Grimm 47–9; Unbegaun (1948), 418; de Vries (1956), i. 364–6; M. Green (1986), 171 f.;
Davidson (1988), 55 f.; EIEC 278 f.
(^26) Hervarar saga 16. For Altaic horse sacrifices connected with kingship cf. E. R. Anderson,
JIES 27 (1999), 379–93.
(^27) J. Puhvel (as n. 23, 1970), 164, 167.
(^28) Festus p. 190. 11 L.; S ́B 13. 4. 2. 1; W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals (London 1899),
242, 247; G. Dumézil, Revue des études latines 36 (1959), 130 f.
(^29) Gelling–Davidson (1969), 68 f.; Agesilaus FGrHist 828 F 1 ap. Plut. Parall. min. 312e.
418 11. King and Hero