Caesar placed in the center of his forum a statue of himself astride the legendary horse Bucephalus, the favorite horse of Alexander the Great. Caesar's statue has been lost, but the descriptions given by Suetonius and Livy reveal the extraordinary portrait Caesar had created of this horse, which was portrayed with human feet:
[Equus Caesaris traditur] similis humanis pedes priores habuisse, hac effige locatus ante Veneris Genetricis aedem. (Pliny, N.H. 8.155)
[Caesar] utebatur ... equo insigni, pedibus prope humanis et in modum digitorum ungulis fissis, quem natum apud se, cum haruspices imperium orbis terrae significare domino pronuntiavisset, magna cura aluit nec patientem sessoris alterius primus ascendit; cuius etiam instar pro aede Veneris Genetricis postea dedicavit. (Suetonius, Julius Caesar 61)
Equestrian statues were a signal mark of honor; see this statue of an Augustan prince, possibly Marcellus, and this statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius.