centaur

 

(sĕn'tôr) , in Greek mythology, creature, half man and half horse. The centaurs were fathered by Ixion or by Centaurus, who was Ixion's son. Followers of Dionysus, they were uncouth and savage, but some, such as Chiron, became friends and teachers of men. Their half-brothers, the Lapiths, engaged them in a battle that was described by Ovid, depicted on the Parthenon, and sculpted by Michelangelo.

Centaur
A bronze statue of a centaur, after the Younger Centaur.
Creature
Name:	Centaur
AKA:	Centaurus
Classification
Grouping:	Legendary creature
Sub grouping:	Hybrid
Similar creatures:	Minotaur, satyr, harpy
Data
Mythology:	Greek
Region:	Greece
Habitat:	Land

In Greek mythology, the Centaurs (Greek: Κένταυροι) are a race of creatures composed of part human and part horse. In early Attic vase-paintings, they are depicted as the torso of a human joined at the (human's) waist to the horse's withers, where the horse's neck would be.

This half-human and half-animal composition has led many writers to treat them as liminal beings, caught between the two natures, embodied in contrasted myths, and as the embodiment of untamed nature, as in their battle with the Lapiths, or conversely as teachers, like Chiron.

The centaurs descended from Centaurus, who mated with the Magnesian mares. Centaurus was the son of either Ixion and Nephele (the cloud made in the image of Hera) or of Apollo and Stilbe, daughter of the river god Peneus. In the latter version of the story his twin brother was Lapithus, ancestor of the Lapiths, thus making the two warring peoples cousins.

Centaurs supposedly inhabited the mountains of Erymanthus in Thessaly, or Clyon's countryside.

Centauromachy

The Centaurs are best known for their fight with the Lapithae, caused by their attempt to carry off Hippodamia and the rest of the Lapith women, on the day of her marriage to Pirithous, king of the Lapithae, himself the son of Ixion. The strife among these cousins is a metaphor for the conflict between the lower appetites and civilized behavior in humankind. Theseus, a hero and founder of cities, who happened to be present, threw the balance in favor of the right order of things, and assisted Pirithous. The Centaurs were driven off or destroyed.^[1][2][3]. Another Lapith hero, Caeneus, who was invulnerable to weapons, was beaten into the earth by Centaurs wielding rocks and the branches of trees. Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as wild as untamed horses. Like the Titanomachy, the defeat of the Titans by the Olympian gods, the contests with the Centaurs typify the struggle between civilization and barbarism.

The Centauromachy was portrayed in sculpture by Michelangelo.

Theories of origin

The most common theory holds that the idea of centaurs came from the first reaction of a non-riding culture, as in the Minoan Aegean world, to nomads who were mounted on horses. The theory goes that such riders would appear as half-man, half-animal. (Bernal Díaz del Castillo reported that the Aztecs had this misapprehension about Spanish cavalrymen.)^[4] Horse taming and horseback culture arose first in the southern steppe grasslands of Central Asia, perhaps approximately in modern Kazakhstan.

The Lapith tribe of Thessaly, who were the kinsmen of the Centaurs in myth, were described as the inventors of horse-back riding by Greek writers. The Thessalian tribes also claimed their horse breeds were descended from the centaurs.

Of the various Classical Greek authors who mentioned centaurs, Pindar was the first who describes undoubtedly a combined monster. Previous authors (Homer etc) only use words such as Pheres (Beasts) that could also mean ordinary savage men riding ordinary horses. However, contemporaneous representations of hybrid centaurs can be found in archaic Greek art.

Writer Robert Graves has speculated that the Centaurs of Greek myth were a dimly-remembered, pre-Hellenic fraternal earth cult who had the horse as a totem.^{[citation needed]} A similar theory was incorporated into Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea.

The Greek word kentauros could be etymologized as ken - tauros = "piercing bull". Another possible etymology can be "bulls slayer". Some say that the Greeks took the constellation of Centaurus, and also its name "piercing bull", from Mesopotamia, where it symbolized the god Baal who represents rain and fertility, fighting with and piercing with his horns the demon Mot who represents the summer drought. (In Greece, Mot became the constellation of Lupus.) Later in Greece, the constellation of Centaurus was reinterpreted as a man riding a horse, and linked to legends of Greece being invaded by tribes of horsemen from the north. The idea of a combined monster may have arisen as an attempt to fit the pictorial figure to the stars better.

Alexander Hislop in his book The Two Babylons theorized that the word is derived from the Semitic Kohen and Tor via phonetic shift the less prominent consonants being lost over time ,with it developing into Khen Tor or Ken-Tor, and being transliterated phonetically into Ionian as Kentaur.

Female Centaurs

Though female centaurs are not mentioned in early myth and art, they do appear occasionally in later myths and art.

Philostratus the Elder, Imagines 2. 3 (trans. Fairbanks) (Greek rhetorician C3rd A.D.) :

"[Description of an ancient Greek painting in Naples :] Kentaurides. You used to think that the race of Kentauroi (Centaurs) sprang from trees and rocks or, by Zeus, just from mares - the mares which, men say, [Kentauros] the son of Ixion covered, the man by whom the Kentauroi though single creatures came to have their double nature. But after all they have, as we see, mothers of the same stock and wives next and colts as their offspring and a most delightful home; for I think you would not grow weary of Pelion and the life there and its wind-nurtured growth of ash which furnishes spear-shafts that are straight and at the same time do not break at the spearhead. And its caves are most beautiful and the springs and the Kentaurides (female Kentauroi) beside them, like Naides [water nymphai] if we overlook the horse part of them, or like [horse-riding] amazons if we consider them along with their horse bodies; for the delicacy of their female form gains in strength when the horse is seen in union with it. Of the baby Kentauroi here some lie wrapped in swaddling clothes, some have discarded their swaddling clothes, some seem to be crying, some are happy and smile as they suck flowing breasts, some gambol beneath their mothers while others embrace them when they kneel down, and one is throwing a stone at his mother, for already he grows wanton. The bodies of the infants have not yet taken on their definite shape, seeing that abundant milk is still their nourishment, but some that already are leaping about show a little shagginess, and have sprouted mane and hoofs, though these are still tender. How beautiful the Kentaurides are, even where they are horses; for some grow out of white mares, others are attached to chestnut mares, and the coat’s of others are dappled, but they glisten like those of horses that are well cared for. There is also a white female Kentauroi that grows out of a black mare, and the very opposition of the colours helps to produce the united beauty of the whole."

Ovid, Metamorphoses 12. 210 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :

"[In the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs :] Nor did his beauty ransom [the centaur] Cyllarus, fighting that day, if hybrids such as he be granted beauty. His beard was just beginning, a golden beard, and golden tresses fell down on his shoulders reaching to his flanks. High-mettled grace shone in his face; his neck, chest, shoulders, hands and every manly part seemed like a sculptor’s much-praised masterpiece. Unblemished too his equine shape, nor less fine than his man’s. With horse’s head and neck he’s make fit mount for Castor, so high stood his chest-muscles, so rideable his back. Jet black he was, the whole of him, save that his tail was white and legs were milk-white too. Many a centauress would be his mate, but one had gained his heart, [she-centaur] Hylonome. In the high woods there was none comelier of all the centaur-girls, and she alone by love and love’s sweet words and winning ways held Cyllarus, yes, and the care she took to look her best (so far as that may be with limbs like that). She combed her glossy hair, and twined her curls in turn with rosemary or violets or roses, and sometimes she wore a pure white lily. Twice a day she bathed her face in the clear brook that fell from Pagasae’s high forest, twice she plunged her body in its flow, nor would she wear on her left side and shoulder any skin but what became her from best-chosen beasts. Their love was equal; on the hills they roamed together, and together they would go back to their cave; and this time too they went into the Lapithae’s palace side by side and side by side were fighting in the fray. A javelin (no knowing from whose hand) came from the left and wounded Cyllarus, landing below the place where the chest joins neck--slight wound, but when the point was pulled away, cold grew his damaged heart and cold his limbs. Hylonome embraced him as he died, caressed the wound and, putting lips to lips, she tried to stay his spirit as it fled. And when she saw him lifeless, she moaned words that in that uproar failed to reach my ears; and fell upon the spear that pierced her love, and, dying, held her husband in her arms."

Persistence in the medieval world

Centaurs preserved a Dionysian connection in the 12th century Romanesque carved capitals of Mozac Abbey in the Auvergne, where other capitals depict harvesters, boys riding goats (a further Dionysiac theme) and griffins guarding the chalice that held the wine.

Modern Day

The John C. Hodges library at The University of Tennessee hosts a permanent exhibit of a "Centaur from Volos", in its library. The exhibit, made by combining a study human skeleton with the skeleton of a Shetland pony is entitled "Do you believe in Centaurs?" and was meant to mislead students in order to make them more critically aware, according to the exhibitors.^[5]

A centaur is one of the symbols associated with Iota Phi Theta Fraternity Incorporated.

A centaur is also the mascot of Delta Lambda Phi National Social Fraternity. Whereas centaurs in Greek mythology were generally symbolic of chaos and unbridled passions, Delta Lambda Phi's centaur is modeled after Chiron and represents honor, moderation and tempered masculinity.

Centaurs in modern fiction

Centaurs have appeared in many places in modern fiction: Artemis Fowl, Avatar's Perdition: Black Sword Chronicle, The Chronicles of Narnia books, Harry Potter, the trilogy Titan, Wizard, Demon and they also featured prominently in the Xanth series. Additionally, the Centaur Inn was the hotel in William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors.

See also

Other hybrid creatures appear in Greek mythology, always with some liminal connection that links Hellenic culture with archaic or non-Hellenic cultures:

• Harpy
• Minotaur
• Mermaids
• Satyrs
• Sphinx
• Typhon

References

1. ^ Plutarch, Theseus, 30
2. ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses xii. 210
3. ^ Diodorus Siculusiv. 69, 70
4. ^ Stuart Chase, Mexico: A Study of Two Americas, Chapter IV (University of Virginia Hypertext), accessed 24 April 2006.
5. ^ Anderson, Maggie (August 26 2004). "Library hails centaur’s 10th anniversary" 97 (7 or 8). Retrieved on 2006-09-21. 

M. Grant and J. Hazel, Who's Who in Greek Mythology, David McKay & Co Inc, 1979

Rose, Carol (2001). Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 72. ISBN 0393322114. 

External links

• Theoi Project on Centaurs in literature
• [1] on female centaurs
• "MythWeb" article on centaurs
• Harry Potter Lexicon article on centaurs

Donate to Wikimedia