Taraxippus

In Greek mythology, the Taraxippus (plural: taraxippoi, "horse disturber", Latin equorum conturbator) was a presence, variously identified as a ghost or dangerous site, blamed for frightening horses at hippodromes throughout Greece. Some taraxippoi were associated with hero cult or with Poseidon in his aspect as a god of horses (Poseidon Hippios) who brought about the death of Hippolytus.Pausanias, the ancient source offering the greatest number of explanations, regards it as an epithet rather than a single entity.

The most notorious of the taraxippoi was the Taraxippos Olympios at Olympia. Pausanias describes the site:

The race-course [of Olympia] has one side longer than the other, and on the longer side, which is a bank, there stands, at the passage through the bank, Taraxippos, the terror of the horses. It is in the shape of a round altar and there the horses are seized by a strong and sudden fear for no apparent reason, and from the fear comes a disturbance. The chariots generally crash and the charioteers are injured. Therefore the drivers offer sacrifices and pray to Taraxippos to be propitious to them.

Horse- and chariot-races were a part of funeral games from Homeric times. The use of a hero's tomb or an altar as the turning-post of a racetrack originates in rituals for the dead. In the Iliad, Achilles kills Hector in retribution for the death of his friend Patroclus, then drives his chariot around the funeral pyre three times, dragging the Trojan prince's body. This magical encircling may originally have been a binding propitiation of the dead, to assure their successful passage into the afterlife and keep them from returning.

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