Gregory Nagy sees horses and chariots, and particularly the chariot of Achilles, as embodying the concept of
ménos, which he defines as "conscious life, power, consciousness, awareness," associated in the Homeric epics with
thūmós, "spiritedness," and
psychē, "soul," all of which depart the body in death.
[77] The gods endow both heroes and horses with
ménos through breathing into them, so that "warriors eager for battle are literally 'snorting with
ménos.'"
[78] A
metaphor at
Iliad 5.296 compares a man falling in battle to horses collapsing when they are unharnessed after exertions.
[79] Cremation frees the
psychē from both
thūmós and
ménos so that it may pass into the afterlife;
[80] the horse, which embodies
ménos, races off and leaves the chariot behind, as in the
philosophical allegory of the chariot from
Plato.
[81] The anthropological term mana has sometimes been borrowed to conceptualize the October Horse's potency,
[82] also expressed in modern scholarship as
numen.
[83] The physical exertions of the hard-breathing horse in its contest are thought to intensify or concentrate this
mana or
numen.
[84]
In honoring the god who presided over the
Roman census, which among other functions registered the eligibility of young men for military service, the festivals of Mars have a strongly
lustral character. A lustration was performed in the Campus Martius following the census. Although lustral ceremonies are not recorded as occurring before the chariot races of the Equirria or the October Horse, it is plausible that they were, and that they were seen as a test or assurance of the lustration's efficacy.
[85]