Incitatus

Incitatus was Roman Emperor Caligula's favorite horse. He lived in Ancient Rome around 40 CE. His name means "fast-moving" in Latin.

John Victor Adams' drawing of Caligula and Incitatus.

There is a story that Caligula made his horse a senator, but it is probably not true. According to historian Mary Beard, no ancient historian who was alive at the same time as Caligula ever said Caligula really made Incitatus a senator, and it is likely that he only told a joke about doing it.^[1]

Ancient historians do say Caligula gave his horse many gifts. In 121 c.e.,^[2] in his book The Twelve Caesars, the historian Suetonius says of Incitatus: "Besides a stall of marble, a manger of ivory, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones, he even gave this horse a house, a troop of slaves and furniture, for the more elegant entertainment of the guests invited in his name; and it is also said that he planned to make him consul."^[3][4]

In fiction

In Robert Graves' 1934 book I, Claudius, the fictional Caligula does make the fictional Incitatus a senator and gives him an ivory trough to eat out of.^[5] This is one of the ways Graves shows that Caligula has become mentally unstable. After Caligula dies, Claudius treats Incitatus like a normal horse again.^[6]

A talking version of Incitatus appears as a villain in Rick Riordan's 2018 young adult novel The Burning Maze.