“Cavallo Donato does not look in the mouth” is one of those proverbs that survive the centuries and often generate doubts: the meaning explains that when you receive a gift it is good not to criticize or judge its quality but accept it with gratitude. Its history was born in late ancient Latin culture, passes through humanistic philology and reaches us, but does not cross the history of the Trojan horse in any way. In antiquity, when a horse was a value of value (it represented a means of transport, it was important for work and indicated a certain social status), the first thing that an expert buyer controlled was the mouth, from the dentition, in fact, he estimated the age and therefore the price: a young animal was worth more, one old less.
From this reality the saying is born: If the animal is a giftputting the hand between the lips to examine the value is rude. Receiving a gift does not mean measuring its material value, but recognizing the gesture and intention of those who offer it.
The proverb already appears in late ancient Latin, it is the most authoritative and early testimony known so far. In the Preface to the comment to the letter to the EphesiansSan Girolamo writes – explicitly presenting it as vulgar proverbium, Popular said – «… Ut vulgare proverbium est: Equi tooth installments donate».
The Latin maximum is attested in two forms: the one to the negative imperative, “Noli Equi Dues Intasicere donati”, closer to the classic Latin, and the passive gnomic yield, “Equi donon donon dents non-Inspiciuntur”, widespread in late medieval and school era. Both transmit the same precept, even with different registers.
Between Renaissance and early modern age the proverb circulates widely in the collections of sentences: it appears in the great Erasmian repertoire of Ega and passes in English with John Heywood (Proverbs1546), which fixes it in the formula that has become canonical: “No man oaught to Lake a Geuen Hors in the Mouth”. The nineteenth -century edition of the work even reports a printed antecedent around 1510.
It is worth clarifying a misunderstanding: the saying has nothing to do with the Trojan horse. The phrase is literal and derives solely from the veterinary custom to estimate the age and quality of a horse by observing their teeth.
