[Meaning someone] having multicoloured horses.
*ai)olo/pwlos: poiki/lous i(/ppous e)/xwn.
Same entry, according to Adler, in the
Ambrosian Lexicon (298); differently -- highlighting the speed of the horses -- in other lexica. See further below.
This epithet is used principally of the Phrygians:
Homer,
Iliad 3.185 (= 2.798a), and the Homeric
Hymn to Aphrodite 137. (Of Castor in
Theocritus,
Idylls 22.34; contextless in
Cercidas fr. 8.1.) They were famous for their horses, as was, of course, the Trojan plain, where they were a gift of Zeus in payment for Ganymede; cf. E. Delebecque,
Le Cheval dans l’Iliade (Paris,1951) esp. 27-30. In the
Iliad the ill-fated
Asius of Arisbe (
Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos 1.1398-1400) was inordinately proud of his horses and chariot (12.96-173, 13.384-401), as was the Trojan Pandarus (5.192-204). We cannot tell which of their possible characteristics is described by this compound adjective: they were piebald in colour or some other variegation; they were good at turning, i.e. exceptionally nimble in circling the enemy (cf. the native Americans in the Indian Wars); their motion in pulling the chariot was undulant; the undulating motion of their galloping feet was particularly swift; a mass of horses was a mass of different colours. On a Linear B tablet from Cnossos either a stallion or a bull is named
a3-wo-ro, probably “Piebald” or “Roan” from his colour (cf.
alphaiota 252 note). See
alphaiota 253 for these meanings of
ai)o/los.
No. of records found: 1
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