“Tyndareus allegedly called Helen’s suitors together and had them swear over the testicles of a castrated horse that they would defend Helen….
After they took the oath, they buried the horse on site as Pausanias writes in talking about Laconia. Indeed, it was a common practice of the ancients to take oaths over the testicles of sacrificial animals. This is why when Herakles made a treaty with the sons of Neleus, they swore an oath over the testicles of the sacrificed boar and the dual pledge to provide confirmation of the oath, as Hekataios writes in his Phoroneus.”
Tyndarus dicitur procos Helenae convocasse, qui super equi execti testibus iurarunt se Helenam defensuros … post illud iuramentum Tyndarus equum in eo loco infodit, sicuti scripsit Pausanias in Laconicis. fuit enim antiquorum consuetudo ut super testibus victimarum plerunque iuraretur, cum foedera inter aliquos percuterentur. idcirco ubi Hercules foedus iniit cum liberis Nelei, fide ultro citroque data, sue mactato, super eius testibus et ipse et illi iurarunt atque confirmarunt iuramentum insuper factum, ut scripsit in Phoroneo Hecataeus.
“An immediate slap or kick following a mistake or offense corrects a horse and sends him where he needs to go but whippings and screaming and pulling the reins later, after time has passed, seems to have some other function than teaching, which in fact causes pain without instruction. In the same way, wickedness which is beaten down and reined in through criticism each time it stumbles and fails might be made humble, and fearful of a god who is not a procrastinating judge when setting right the actions and passions of human beings.
A justice that falls on the wicked with a slow foot and in its own time, as Euripides says, is more mechanical than thoughtful because it is random, late, and ill-fit to the deed. This is why I don’t see any use in what people call the slow grinding of the gods’ mills, a process that renders punishment obscure and blunts any fear of being bad.”
An number of these are very close to their Greek equivalents
Aelian Varia Historia 5.52
“Nature has produced animals which have the greatest range of voices and sounds, in the same way, in fact, as she has made people. Just as the Skythian speaks one way and the Indian speaks another, or the Aithiopian has his own language and the Sakai have theirs. And the language of Greece is different from Rome. Indeed, it is the same with animals who in various ways utter the a sound or an song native to their tongue. One roars, another moos, a neigh comes from another, a bray from one, a bleat or maaaa from another. A howl is dear to one; a bark to another; while some growl. There are those who scream, whistle, hoot, sing, croon and tweet. There are endless gifts proper to different animals by nature.”
“Snorting is neighing. A snorting echo. This, I believe, means neighing. But neighing is not the same as snorting. It is the sound that comes through horses’ noses when they prance.”
“Once, nature provided a song to kites as great as that of swans. But when they heard the horses neighing they fell in love and tried to mimic it. As they tried to imitate them, they lose their own voice. They never learned to neigh and they forgot how to sing.
The imitation of something different deprives you of what is yours.”
The most common representation of horse sounds in Ancient Greek is seems to be based off a root with uncertain origins. I suspect it might have, at least to some speakers, represented a similar vocalism to that of English neigh.
Hesychius
“khremetismos: the sound of horses.”
χρεμετισμός· ἡ φωνὴ τῶν ἵππων
Cf. Zonaras Χρεμετισμός. ἡ τῶν ἵππων βοή
Herodian = Schol. T ad Il. 21.575b
“Then he heard the barking” Aristarchus says that some have “dog-howling” [kunulagmon]. Stesichorus also seems to read this, for he says (fr. 78) “the endless dog-howling”, We don’t know of any other examples of the compound. For howling [ulagmos] is elsewhere the name properly applied for hearing dogs, just as neighing is for horses.
Anyone who has spent time with horses knows that they do not make only one type of sound. There are two basic lexical items for equine snorting: the somewhat uncommon φρυάγμα and the slightly more common φριμαγμος. Both are understood by ancient authors to be onomatopoetic representations of nasalized snorting. But some sources make one or the author a synonym of neighing. All of these words seem to be nominalized abstracts from (what ancient speakers considered) animal-sound roots.
Zonaras
“Snorting [phrimagmos]: whinnying [khrêtismos]
Φριμαγμός. ὁ χρεμετισμός.
Lexicon Vindobenese, khi 5
“Whinnying [krêtismos] and snorting [phruagmos] are poetically applied to horses.
χρεμετισμὸς καὶ φρυαγμὸς ποιητικῶς ἐπὶ ἵππων.
Schol in Lyk. 244
“Snorting is neighing. A snorting echo. This, I believe, means neighing. But neighing is not the same as snorting. It is the sound that comes through horses’ noses when they prance.”
“Snorting [phrimasseo] This means to prance with pleasure, to leap, the whole herd. The verb snorting is onomatopoetic from the sound of goats. The verb is also applied to horses. It is onomatopoeia from their sound.”
“Phruagmos: this is a meaningless sound, mixed with fierce breath, emitting through the nose of horses and mules. They do this especially when they are responding to the treatment of those taming them”
2.3: “When Alexander gazed at a likeness of himself in Ephesus painted by Apelles, he didn’t praise it to the worth of its craftsmanship. After his horse approached and neighed toward the horse in the image as if it were real, Apelles said “King, your horse seems to appreciate art much more than you do.”
4.28: “I am unable to resist laughing at Alexander the son of Philip if, indeed, when he heard what Democritus says in his writings–that there are endless numbers of universes–he was upset that he wasn’t even master of the one we all share. How much would Democritus have laughed at him, do I even need to say, when laughter was his job?”
2.3: “When Alexander gazed at a likeness of himself in Ephesus painted by Apelles, he didn’t praise it to the worth of its craftsmanship. After his horse approached and neighed toward the horse in the image as if it were real, Apelles said “King, your horse seems to appreciate art much more than you do.”
4.28: “I am unable to resist laughing at Alexander the son of Philip if, indeed, when he heard what Democritus says in his writings–that there are endless numbers of universes–he was upset that he wasn’t even master of the one we all share. How much would Democritus have laughed at him, do I even need to say, when laughter was his job?”
