HORSES consecrated to the Sun. We read in the second book of Kings, that Josiah took away the Horses which the Kings of Judah his predecessors had consecrated to the Sun. We know the Sun was worshipped over all the East, and that the Horse, the swiftest of tame beasts, was consecrated to this Deity, who was represented as riding in a chariot drawn by the most beautiful and swiftest Horses in the world, and performing every day his journey from East to West, in order to communicate his Light to mankind. In Persia, and among the Messagetæ, Horses were sacrificed to the Sun.
Ovid. Fast. l. 1. Herodot. l. 1. c. 55.Placat equo Persis radiis Hyperiona cinctum;
Ne celeri detur victima tarda Deo. Xenophon describes a solemn Sacrifice of Horses, which was made with ceremony to the Sun: they were all of the finest, and were led with a white chariot, crowned, and consecrated to the same God. We may believe that the Horses which Josiah removed out of the Court of the Temple, were appointed for the like Sacrifices.
The Rabbins inform us, that these Horses were every morning put to the chariots Rabb. Salom. & Kimchi.dedicated to the Sun, whereof there is mention made in the same book, and that the King, or some of his Officers, got up and rode to meet the Sun in its rising, as far as from the eastern gate of the Temple to the suburbs of Jerusalem.
Others are of opinion, that the Horses mentioned in the book of Kings, were of wood, stone, or metal, erected in the Temple in honour of the Sun. Others, that they were Horses which none were permitted to ride, or fasten to the yoke, but were free, and left to themselves, like those which Julius Cæsar let loose, and set at liberty, after his passage of the Rubicon. The PersiansSuet. in Julio. Dion. Nicol. in Severo. Tacit. de Mor. Germ. had likewise such Horses, as well as the ancient Germans. Those belonging to the Persians were of the colour of Tygers; those of the
8 U Ger- Germans were all white1. They were never employed in any profane use, and people took presages of what was to come from their neighing and their motion.
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Footnotes
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Translators’ note. Herodian calls them Διὸς Ἵπποι. The Romans thought it an irreligious insolence in Camillus to use white Horses in his Triumph. Maxime conspectus ipse est curru equis albis juncto urbem invectus, parumque id non civile modo sed humanum etiam visum, Jovis Solisque equis æquiparatum Dictatorem in Religionem etiam trahebant. Liv. l. 5. ↩