July 31, 2026 Categories: Letters To The Editor
Letters To The Editor - May 15, 2026
The High Horse of Alexander the Great
When I saw the classic illustration you published of Alexander the Great on an elephant to accompany my article (“Daf – Premonitions and Attempted Assassinations,” May 8), I said to myself, “Uh, oh. I had assumed the illustration would be of Alexander on a high horse – or any horse.” Then I looked up the Gemara again and found that Alexander actually got out of a chariot – not off a horse or an elephant. Who would have imagined that the great warrior was traveling around in a chariot, with no inkling that he would eventually be highlighted in an article about assassinations?
I can only come up with three responses: (1) chariots in those days were generally drawn by horses, (2) my running a draft through a few top-level rabbis and through one of the most prominent artificial intelligence devices failed to pick up the fact that the Talmud refers to a chariot rather than to a beast used for riding, and (3) Alexander the Great was associated with a war horse more than with any other mode of transportation. In fact, his horse had a name and a legend, and was more famous than virtually every human being of his era who was not a king or a general or a pope or a rabbi. Few human beings of that era – or any era – would be remembered by name so many centuries after dying.
For the record, Bucephalus was known as one of the most famous horses of classical antiquity. It was the legendary warhorse of Alexander the Great, known for its ferocity, black coat, and a white star on its forehead. When Alexander was a child, he famously tamed the uncontrollable horse, cementing a bond that lasted through campaigns from Greece to India. If you Google “picture of horse and Alexander the Great,” you will see beautiful illustrations of Alexander on a high horse, sometimes standing on its hind legs (yes, a real high horse), and some depicting statues higher than the tallest living horses.
Above all, this shows how great Alexander really was (in this case, the additional facet as a standout horseman from childhood), even greater than most people realize, which makes his show of deference to Shimon the High Priest all the more impressive!
Rabbi Aaron Reichel Kew Gardens, New York City
Editor’s note: For the record, the illustration used with Rabbi Reichel’s article in last week’s Jewish Press came courtesy of the Met Museum’s Open Access project. It showed a painted and partly gilded enamel-on-copper depiction of Alexander the Great by Colin Nouailher from 16th-century France, based on a woodcut by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen.
