Bucephalus
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Bucephalus. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A horse of Alexander 's, so frequently named by writers that the term has become proverbial. Alexander was the only person that could mount him, and he always knelt down for his master to bestride him. Burgundiones or Burgundii. A powerful nation of Germany, dwelt originally between the Viadus (Oder) and the Vistula, and were of the same race as the Vandals or Goths. They were driven out of their original abodes by the Gepidae, and the greater part of them settled in the country on the Maine. In the fifth century they settled in Gaul, where they founded the powerful kingdom of Burgundy. Their chief towns were Geneva and Lyons. Byzantium (Constantinople). A town on the Thracian Bosporus, founded by the Megarians, B. c. 658, is said to have derived its name from Byzas, the leader of the colony and the son of Poseidon (Neptune). A new city was built on its site, B. C. 330, by Constantine, who made it the capital of the empire, and changed its name into Constantinopolis.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
bu-sef'a-lus, the favorite warhorse of Alexander the Great. The word is Greek, meaning literally oxhead. When a youth, Alexander won great credit by breaking Bucephalus to ride. He was a colt of unusual spirit, but was afraid of his own shadow,--a fact which Alexander was the first to notice. Alexander kept his head toward the sun. He rode Bucephalus during his Persian campaigns. When the horse died on the banks of the Hydaspes in India, Alexander raised a pillar in his memory and named a military post in the vicinity Bucephalia. See Alexander The Great
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts retell Plutarch's story faithfully, and it still stands: Alexander tamed the colt around 344 BC by turning its head toward the sun, and rode it until it died on the Hydaspes (Jhelum) in 326 BC. What has shifted is the reading of the name. Rather than describing an ox-shaped head, as Aiton's 1910 entry implies with its literal "oxhead," scholars now generally take boukephalos to be a Thessalian breeder's brand — a mark burned on the horse, one of several such categories in the ancient trade. The town Alexander founded in the horse's memory, Bucephala, has never been securely located on the ground, though it is placed somewhere near the Jhelum in the Punjab.
Written for this edition, 2026.