Essays on Centaur

Essay 2: The Classical Centaur in Classical Times.

(Ed. Note:  Citations from The Catalogue of Centaur Art and Literature will be linked in the future)

Græco-Roman Centaurs — specifically, the two-armed and four-legged hippokentauroi or horse-centaurs: the "high," "ideal" or "awesome" centaurs — as distinct from the diminished callicantzaris of modern Greek folklore — were familiar to both Greek mythmakers and Roman mythologists. The concept of this bimanous quadruped may have had its origins in more ancient and general indo-european roots, but of course, the Greeks (if not originating the centaur motif themselves) would have been the heirs to those roots, and the Romans were certainly the cultural heirs to the Greeks.

-400—-600 was a time of artistic experimentation. In early Greek art the centaur had two depictions: one was that of the full body of a man with the hindquarters and barrel of a small horse behind. The other depiction — that of a full body of a horse (though it is still sometimes shown as quite diminutive) with the trunk or torso of a human — became more generally accepted. However, the Thessalian tribe of centaurs were not described as hybrids of man and horse until relatively late, and then in Greek literature. The evidence of the art samples I have seen gives credence to the notion that the artists were trying to show that the barbarians were "as wild as horses" and yet retain their appearances as human. The more imaginative artists , may have come upon the combinating technique that produced the classical centaur: some of the more detailed drawings show the forelegs of the centaurs with both human feet and horse hooves, almost "phasing" or shimmering between the two ideomorphs of human and horse. It looks like a literal superposition .

Wild centaurs were described as enemies of Herakles by Hesiod in Shield of Herakles and the famous Kiron, Chiron or Cheiron is named as the son of the nymph Philyra in Theogony as early as the 8th Century BCE. (The spellings "Kiron," "Chiron," "Cheiron" are all used in ancient literature, generally in that order of appearance through time.) But the first description in literary form of centaurs as hybrid creatures was by Pindar in his Pythian Odes. Pindar lived contemporaneously with the famous battle of Marathon (ca. 5th century BCE).

Even the word "centaur" (originally pronounced "kentaur" — the "s" sound we use today is the product of a relatively recent Gothic influence) has had varying origins claimed. There are, apparently three schools of argument: the incautious "dictionary" etymology has been to associate "kentaur" with ken(tein) tauros= bullprodder (where any claim has been made); an alternate proposal associates the word with kent(ein) auros= air pricker, referring to Pindar's version of the ancestry of the centaurs. The third, previously mentioned, was Dumèzil's association of the Scythian "gandharvas" with kentauros. Take your pick.

There is less ancient textual description of the manner and characteristics of centaurs than one would like. But centaurs were popular subjects for vase painters during the last few centuries before the common era, along with many other forms in the visual arts, including metopes of the Parthenon; and in the performing arts, including lost plays by Apollophanes (Centaurs) and Aristophanes (Centaur). Illustrations contemporary with the productions show centaurs being costumed by pairs of actors, much as horses are portrayed today at costume parties.

Pindar took the centaurs to be the grandchildren of Ixion and Nephele (a cloud nymph), who produced the man-shaped monster Centaurus, who in turn mated with the finest mares of Magnesia. Chiron, however, was the son of Cronus and Philyra and either born a centaur or punished with the half-equine shape for rebelling against the Olympian gods. Chiron, who Pindar called "the divine beast," was held to be immortal; the others were not.

Ovid flourished around the beginning of the common era. In his Fasti, he relates in Latin of the death of Chiron due to a bathetic accident. Ovid also tells of the death of Pholus and battles between the Lapiths and the Centaurs (relatives!) at the wedding of Pirithous in Book XII of his Metamorphoses. Metamorphoses contains the first literary reference to a centaur female as a girl-horse, although there is an earlier artistic depiction of a centaur Medusa as a woman-horse, and a later Lucian describes in Zeuxis or Antiochus the pioneering artist Zeuxis (fl. -413) and his centaur matron of twins. Before this, centauresses were conventionally considered to have human form, or their form was not mentioned. This supported the general mythical theme of the counterpoint of the male Centaurs with the female Amazons. It is notable that Chiron's four children, Carystus, Endeis, Melanippe and Ocyrhoë, did not have half-equine forms; although Ocyrhoë was transformed into a horse as punishment for her foretelling the greatness of Heracles. Barthell gives a long list of centaurs mentioned by Ovid.

Around +191, Philostratus (of Lemnos), both elder and younger, wrote Imagines. The second book contains a short essay on female centaurs. Reading the translation by A. Fairbanks, you do get the feeling that all female centaurs are beautiful and bountiful. The essay is delightful — in some ways Philostratus precedes and parallels Disney's treatment of the "centaurettes" in Fantasia some seventeen hundred years later. Also about that time Callistratus described centaurs on the walls of a temple.

The rest of the references to centaurs I have found dating from classical times were generally mentioned in passing or in works of art (often fragments) or derivations from earlier work. We learn that centaurs are fond (and can guzzle a lot of) the fermented grape; and that depictions of centaurs were inlaid — or layed-up or layed-out as the case may be — on chests, boxes or amphoras. With a recapitulation by Apollodorus in the late classical period (100—300 A. D.) toward the end of the Roman Peace, very little other text containing substantial references to centaurs survives the destruction of the fabled Library at Alexandria.

According to Brewer, educated late-classical people believed that centaurs did actually exist, once, thousands of years earlier. Their uneducated contemporaries held that some still existed somewhere in the hills of Greece or an inaccessible district of the Roman Empire. But the reintroduction of centaur in any major way would have to wait until the rediscovery of the classical world by the Renaissance Europeans.

-- David Alway

Revised 23 April 1997, original version published December, 1990 in The North American Therianthropic Journal.