I’m studying for a test on riding horses, which is funny because you can’t write on an exam paper all you have to know about them in order to even approach them. But memorizing the parts of the horse, of the saddle, even of the hoof, is the unglamorous but necessary work of living with horses. And I’m reading the Iliad, so I can’t help but see horses everywhere—stamping on the plains of Troy, dragging men’s chariots, drinking from the waters of Simois. Horses aren’t just horses in the Iliad; they’re often considered on the same plane of existence as their masters; the muses catalogue their prowess and goings on, as if they were heroes too.
