post bellator equus positis insignibus Aethon/ it lacrimans guttisque umectat grandibus ora. – Virgil’s Aeneid

For months I’ve been haunted by the crying warhorse in Virgil’s Aeneid. Aethon (Blaze) mourns the death of his master with tears.

“After his splendid trappings are put aside, the warhorse Aethon walks crying and wets his face with abundant tears.”

I know the love and loyalty of animals. They huddle near their humans when they sense sadness. Pallas’s father, Evander, is beside himself with grief, but no more so than Aethon. As for that complicated hero, pius Aeneas, he grieves, orders a splendid funeral, and makes an inspiring speech about returning the body and rekindling the war. But then rage takes over: he is furious about the slaughter of his young protégé, and adds human sacrifices, their captives, to the other spoils on the pyre.

One thinks of other horses in literature. In the Iliad, Homer describes the crying horses of Achilles as they mourn the death of his best friend Patroclus. Later, in Suetonius’s biography of Julius Caesar in De Vita Caesarum (The Twelve Caesars), the horses mourn for Caesar, knowing death is at hand.

I’m sure that other horses in poetry cry, but my question is: Have you seen a horse cry?