Talk:Bucephalus

Comments
Info in box currently says "Height	Black with a white star" - obviously that should be "Markings" instead of "Height," but I don't know how to edit the box in the lead of the article. Also note that this coloring (as described in the beginning of "The taming of Bucephalus" section and accompanying image "Alexander taming Bucephalus") does not match the depiction "portrayed in the Alexander Mosaic" in the "Alexander and Bucephalus" section. --Apegrrl (talk) 13:04, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Any guide to pronunciation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.220.127.37 (talk) 02:42, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Good article. -Nice,August 4,2005 at 3:55 PM.

Interesting & Informative.

A horse devouring flesh? What kind of bullshit is that? -Alex, 74.133.188.197 08:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC).
 * Not bullshit at all. See this. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.79.243 (talk) 00:26, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

In "The Greek Riding Horse" by M.H Morgan (a companion to his translation of Xenophon's "The Art of Horsemanship"), the author refers to Bucephalus as being "of the best Thessalian breed, black with a white star and very large". He references Plutarch's, "Life of Alexander" for this.


 * Buciphalas: It is reported that the word Buciphala is derived from the Greek words ‘Bous’ which means ox and Kephale’ which means ‘head’.This interpretation does not seem to be satisfactory as the head of the great horse does not resemble the head of an ox in any of its pictures.  But the derivation of this word from Sanskrit appears to be more appropriate. The word is closer to the two Sanskrit words – Puchchi and Phala. Puchichi which is also called Bu:chi means ‘one which has a tail’- a bird. Busi also appears to be closer to the Sanskrit word ‘ Pakshi’,  one which has wings-a bird. The word Phala means ‘forehead ‘ in Sanskrit. It looks as though the forehead of the horse was covered with the mask of a bird such as an  an eagle, so that when the horse jumped upon his foes it looked like an eagle pouncing on its prey. Actually in his first encounter with the horse Alexander noticed that the horse was getting uncontrollable because of shadows and the surrounding crowd. Perhaps he later used to cover the forehead of the horse with a leather bag which looked like the head of an eagle, thereby preventing it from seeing in any direction except straight ahead and also causing confusion among the enemy horses. Perhaps with a bird- like head, upright mane and with a tail raised upwards it must have caused panic among the other horses.

“Alexander knew that horses as prey animal often feared shadows. So he lead him by the reins in all directions letting the horse see the movement of the sun and shadows, making it feel that there was nothing to fear in this strange field surrounded by strangers."I The word puchi in Tamil language and bUchi  in Telugu language means an insect which can fly. There is an ancient nursery song in Telugu in which a mother tries to make her baby stop crying, by  calling out for the ‘buchi-man’ ( perhaps a  fellow who used to jump over walls and roof tops by attaching wings and a long tail to his body  and kidnap little children.  The song goes like this-“O, Buchi man come here, weave a basket and take this child away in your basket”. In Hindi language’ Panchi’ means a bird. According to Wikipedia Buciphala Changula is a species of a sea- duck which is also called as the Golden eye.The word Puchi occurs in the name of the country Compuchia also.The Sanskrit connection is more plausible because Aristotle  the learned teacher of Alexander was greatly influenced by Sanskrit Philosophy and Sanskrit literature and Alexander himself was the son of a Naga woman whose racial origins are in the Eastern Himalayas. Ref.I. WWW.Pathos.org-The legend of BuciPhalus                                  banda krishna satyanarayana  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Banda.krishna (talk • contribs) 07:02, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Alexander's best friend ( = Hephaestion?)
"The only other person to ride Bucephalus after Alexander tamed him was his best friend." -- I.e., Hephaestion? -- 201.50.251.197 15:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It is false, only Alexander rode Bucephalus. It didn't let any other man ride him, so I've erased that sentence. --Bucephala 20:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Alternate description
I've seen depictions of Bucephalus with a horn (like a unicorn) and/or a tail like a peacock. There is a legend that Bucephalus fought his cousins, the wild unicorns, along with Alexander. ...At least that's what I've read, and I read some of this in The Enchanted World: Magical Beasts by TIme Life Books. Is there any truth to these legends? Should they be included? 24.14.198.8 18:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC) Chris G.

References in literature
Bucephalus is referenced in Herman Melville's Billy Budd. There is a Cultural References section, but is this worthy of mention? I understand that if every reference is included, that section will get long. 97.125.50.92 (talk) 07:11, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * True enough; but if you characterize the use Melville makes of his reference to Bucephalus, then it won't be trivial. Does it add to the reader's understanding of Bucephalus? --Wetman (talk) 14:30, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

reference to "named after"
What does it mean that the town of Phalia and or the region of Mandi Bahauddin are named after the horse Bucephalus? 76.87.81.33 (talk) 01:45, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It means that the modern form of the name "Phalia" is believed by some to originate from "Bucephalus". Whether or not this is really the case would require demonstration of intermediate forms over history. {The poster formerly knopn as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.79.243 (talk) 00:32, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Can we kill the trivia section?
The "in popular culture" and related sections are getting ridiculously long. Can we just remove them per WP:TRIVIA? Montanabw (talk) 23:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 10:28, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Why is "Bucephalus" spelled in Cyrillic letters at the beginning?
Shouldn't the name be in Greek? Is this some sort of FYROM prank? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.145.132.29 (talk) 07:46, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Unsourced 2400 year inflation calculation?
So I just took out this parenthetical:

(approximately $182,000 in 2017 dollars)

...which followed "13 talents" in the description of the original sale of the horse. I considered just adding "dubious" or whatever, but after reading the guidelines I felt it really just needed to go. Here are my reasons:

1. The link to the page for "talents" describes a multitude of widely-varying weights (seriously everything from 8.5g to 37kg), and doesn't describe values for any of them. The text doesn't say "talents of gold" or "talents of silver" so...

2. The very concept of trying to adjust inflation from the 4th century BC to the 21st century CE is ridiculous. What, we have an idea of the price in talents of some basket of goods and then normalized that to 2017 dollars? How much did a Toyota Camry cost back then anyway?

3. Even if we had a rough idea of that, the precision is just absurd. We know that it's 182k instead of 178k? We know that's in 2017 dollars and not 2008 dollars? Seriously...

4. There is absolutely no citation here, nor any explanation of how this was calculated. My best guess is somebody assumed a metal, looked up a spot price and did some math. Which is hilariously stupid.

5. In summation, we have basically no concept whatsoever of how much value "13 talents" represented in this story. And it's debatable whether that's even translatable to today's money. How many iPhones was that horse worth? Really?

Maybe if somebody wanted to produce a source of "talents" being used in other transactions and say something like "for comparison this would have bought a small farm at the time" or such that would be fine. But let's not make silly faux-precise inflation calculations across millennia based on unknown units with no citations.

Namesakes of Bucephalus
Father Brown of the public TV series of the same name, rode a bicycle named Bucephalus. 96.82.150.137 (talk) 19:56, 5 May 2023 (UTC)