Incitatus Dio (155-235 AD) indicated that the horse was attended to by servants and was fed oats mixed with gold flake, and that Caligula made the horse a priest. The accuracy of the received history is generally questioned. Historians such as Anthony A. Barrett suggest that later Roman chroniclers such as Suetonius and Dio Cassius were influenced by the political situation of their own times, when it may have been useful to the current emperors to discredit the earlier Julio-Claudian emperors. Also, the lurid nature of the story added spice to their narratives, winning them additional readers. One suggestion is that
Xanten Horse-Phalerae ('while Pliny was Prefect of the cavalry'). This suggests that these horse-phalerae belonged to a cavalryman under his command when Pliny was stationed in Germania Inferior in approximately 50 AD. The set of horse-trappings is made of about 60 silvered-bronze phalerae and forms part of a decorative equestrian harness that is only partly preserved. Organic material such as leather has not survived but enough roundels have to enable a partial reconstruction of the set in the museum. One of the phalerae has the bust of a Roman Emperor, but it is difficult to determine which emperor is represented from the