In classical mythology, the marriage of Peleus to Thetis was celebrated with a banquet with (almost) all the gods of Olympus. The gods each gave something precious. Poseidon, king of the seas, gave the immortal horses Balius and Xanthos. Later the horses, which both had the gift of speech, granted to him by Hera, passed to his son Achilles, who used them in the War of Troy. Here they were ruled by Automedon, Achilles’ charioteer, as Henri Regnault illustrates in this oil on canvas from 1868, preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
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