The Coming of the Greeks
early tholoi were found the complete skeletons of teams of
horses. 20 Archaeologists have also discovered or identified a
surprising number of bronze bits from the LH period. In addi-
tion, the horse and chariot appear frequently in terracotta fig-
urines and in vase paintings all through the Mycenaean Age. 21
The literary evidence on the horse in Heroic Greece is per-
haps more familiar than the archaeological. With or without
chariots, horses are prominent in many of the myths: the sto-
ries of Bellerophon and Pegasus, Phaethon, the Lapiths and
Centaurs, the Trojan Horse, Pelops's chariot race, and others.
The importance of horses to the heroes of the Iliad is sometimes
overlooked but can readily be verified by attentive reading. 22
Heroic names—Hippolytus, Hippodamia, Leucippus (almost
a mythological "John Doe")—are in themselves an index of the
horse's value in Mycenaean times. 23 It is no surprise that after
surveying the literary evidence, Edouard Delebecque described
Heroic Greece as "la civilisation du cheval." 24
The military importance of the chariot in the Late Helladic
Aegean is established above all by the Linear B tablets. Scribes
at both Knossos and Pylos inventoried parts of chariots (espe-
cially pairs of wheels) in one set of tablets and whole chariots
in another. At Knossos both sets of tablets were found in the
- On this and other osteological evidence, see ibid., 34—35; al-
though found in 1958, the Marathon skeletons have not yet been pub-
lished. The Dendra discoveries were made in 1976 and also await publica-
tion.
- All of the artistic evidence has been meticulously cataloged, and
most of it illustrated, by Crouwel in ibid.; on pages 101—109 he describes
and classifies the bronze bits.
- For documentation, see especially Delebecque, Le Cheval dans
I'lliade. Cf. also Greenhalgh, Early Greek Warfare, 7—8; G. J. Stagakis,
"Odysseus and Idomeneus: Did they have Charioteers in Troy?" Historia 27
(1978): 255-73; Stagakis, "Homeric Warfare Practices," Historia 34
(1985): 129-52.
2 3. For a full list of the hippophoric names in the Trojan War, see
Delebecque, Le Cbeval dans I'lliad, 43.
- Ibid., 45.
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