(Ed. Note: Citations from The Catalogue of Centaur Art and Literature will be linked in the future)
"Now don’t give away anything," said Walt Disney, when discussing with his animators the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony Number Six, "the Pastoral," in Fantasia, "You want [the fact that the nude bathing girls are really female centaurs wading in the ponded brook] as an additional surprise." (As quoted in John Culhane's Walt Disney's Fantasia, published by Harry N. Abrams, 1983.)
With these words a transplanted midwesterner set in motion the most well known sight-gag concerning centaurs in animation history. Although Philostratus in his Imagines anticipated Disney by some 1700 years, I call the ability of a centaur (male or female) to induce this confusion on a human observer the Fantasia Effect.
An odd but instructive way to classify centaurs and their related brethren is to divide them into one of four broad sets as one might divide up diamonds into groups:
1. Centaurs with the Fantasia Effect of the First Water. As a diamond of the first water cannot be seen in H2O, this group includes the classical centaurs whose upper torsos are dead ringers for the human head and body. Also, if the artist/author populates his or her world with elves (or other two-legged beings) with (say) pointed ears, or whose differing attributes might easily be hidden by some other bodily attribute such as hair, then these centaurs may also be considered relatively "of the first water." [Chang Feng would be a member of this group.]
2. Centaurs with the Fantasia Effect of the Second Water. These include centaurs or related chimera where there are obvious differences, but they can be obscured by clothing, posture or a combination of these. An example might be a full mane on the back, small horns on the head, auxiliary windpipes, etc. Also, centaurs with large pointed ears, if they cannot be confused with elves, but the ears can be concealed by hat, headband or hair. [Tico Alvares would likely be of this group.]
3. Centaurs with the Fantasia Effect of the Third Water. Heavily modified but attractive centaurs, whose relation to human is easy to see. Centauroids with large antlers, bull or cow horns (bucentaurs), or antelope horns; centaurs with the extension of the animal fur or coat on their upper bodies and/or faces; fairy centaurs with prominent antennæ, very long ears, etc. The difference cannot be hidden at all without permanent or semi-permanent major cosmetic or surgical works (polling horns, shaving the body, ear reduction surgery, etc.). [Berenice Wilson would be an example of this group.]
4. Centaurs with the Fantasia Effect of the Fourth Water. Animal headed centaurs. The real Pug-Uglies (or Mug-Uglies) also belong here. [Donna Barr's Steinling character would be of this group.]
Perhaps I can put it more succinctly: A first-water centaur can fool you even if you are looking for it; a second-water centaur can fool you if you are not looking for it; a third-water centaur generally cannot fool you, though you wouldn't object to talking to him or her; and the fourth-water centaur might be hard to relate to.
One might put several degrees to each class. I think a good-natured competition would arise among centaurs or centauresses, if enough human judges of the opposite sex could be found.
Just what does a centaur look like? How does it behave? What is the race's (feigned) past? And the same for it's anatomy and its physiology?
A centaur is what convention says it is. The rub is that you may pick among several conventions that have been developed, sometimes independently, or devise your own. Here I will try to list some of the more prominent attributes of centaurs not already discussed. I will discard some alternates which are minor or are not (in my mind) particularly sympathetic. Some of these have already been discussed in conjunction with the indefinitely delayed production of the book "The Joy of Horsing Around / A Pillow Book for Centaurs."
In modern literature, the physical origin of centaurs generally has been
made out to be one of these:
Many centaurs exist in isolation, especially those in The Last of the Centaurs type of stories. If they exist in groups, they seem to have a simpler pastoral society. In some cases their society seems to be what the artist or author believes is the ideal; in others the society is quite violent (perhaps also the author's or artist's ideal). In others they are exaggerations of the human. Less sympathetically, the centaur society is seen as in the final throes of decadence.
These two are most closely related and have a large set of variants. I exclude those creatures which do not have at least six jointed limbs (two arms with a grasping hand and four legs generally used for walking).
Most centaurs are completely mammalian. The classical Græco-Roman centaur is horse bodied; but some earlier centaurs (of Babylonian or Assyrian origin) are lion-bodied. The sagittaries are often winged or have winglike structures on their backs, and have a leonine form. Some Hellenic centaurs had human front legs and feet and human genitalia, and there seems to have been a competition (including mixtures of the versions) with the current type with four equine legs becoming the standard.
The following feral creatures have been used in modern literature or art as the base for a centaur: horse, zebra, lion, leopard (combined with horse), unicorn, tiger, large cats in general, dog, rat, llama, bull or cow, goat, onager, dragon (not wyvern), deer, elk or moose, antelope, giraffe, camel, and several combinations of the above. In this researcher's opinion, the weirdest combination was Lela Dowling's WindyCon XXXX program book cover illustration of a centaur with a winged-cow body, and a cat-girl's upper torso playing a fiddle. And — Hey, Diddle Diddle — flying over the moon of course. For the brute-force number of different creatures crammed into a single centauroid, the award goes to the creature described in the song "Miss-Conception" by Lackey and Fish, with the attributes of about 15 species.
Hair color has a wide variation among centaurs, too; and in some cases, as in Varley's Gaea books, are blinding in their combination. The centaur's tail can also be much more prominent than the normal feral equivalent. Some have extraordinarily long or elaborated tails (as does Chang Feng, and as in Disney's Fantasia). Varieties of centaurs may have more than four legs, as in Ellison's Medea story collection, sometimes many more. Many varieties have cloven hooves, as in Walter Jon William's Knight Moves.
In general the feral part of the centaur is larger than the human part. How much larger is a matter of taste. My observations indicate that either the human torso is drawn to be much larger than normal or the horse body is made quite a bit smaller. So in most artists' renditions the ratio between the size of animal and human parts approaches 1:1 in a centaur. That is quite different than when the two are taken separately (say as in an equestrian statue). Contrary as I am, my preference is for centaurs with a full-sized feral body and a normal human body. But I seem to be in a minority.
Most centaurs I have seen drawn in detail are depicted with a human navel; but this is by no means the rule. Some centaurs are set so that the "human" hips ride quite high on the fore-shoulders of the feral creature; in other cases the human runs directly into the animal body with very little waist. There are degrees in between. I mildly favor the proportionately long waisted side. In some cases there is a prominent, sharp division between human and feral, say along the edges of muscles; in others, the hair of the equine gradually shortens to the skin of the human trunk.
Centaurs most often are described to have two sets of lungs and hearts. There is a question as to whether the human set is necessary; the most telling argument for the second set is cosmetic: a centaur's human torso should "breath," which increases the strength of the "Fantasia effect" in that individual. Centaurs may have one or two sets of digestive systems. When there are two sets, they are independent (as much as can be): the human stomach eats human food, the horse stomach eats food tolerated by horses. [See C. S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles.] When there is one set, I generally prefer that the food consumed is a mixture of foods tolerated by both horse and human (e.g.: cereals), but what is digestible is more human like than horse, except in quantity. In very large centaurs breathing is thought to be a problem; however, many centaurs are portrayed with a normal human nose and mouth.
Reproduction is usually taken to be similar to the equine's, as in Mary Rosenblum's "The Centaur Garden." The normal convention is for the genitals to be positioned where the horse's would be; however, the alternate convention of positioning the (male) organ in front where a human's would be has support in art and literature, as implied in some of Boris Vallejo's work, and described in Angela Carter's War of Dreams. In some descriptions both sets or three sets exist, as in Chalker's The Hot-Wired Dodo or Varley's Gaea books, respectively. Offspring are usually precocious, both as horse (or other feral creature) and as human.
With the exception of the bucentaurs, most centaurs are very intelligent, even though they may not look it.
While in some cases centaurs age quite quickly with a lifespan similar to the horse as in Arno Schmidt's The Egghead Republic; the more conventional view is that centaurs age at the same rate, or much more slowly than humans, as in Piers Anthony's Xanth series, and in a few cases are immortal or nearly so (the example of Kiron in Jessica Amanda Salmonson's The Swordwoman).
Male centaurs are often strikingly larger than the females (this is not true of horses) both in the human and equine parts. They are generally athletic and some are extremely muscular and imposing. Many grow beards, which become quite prominent as they become elderly.
The convention, dating back to Philostratus, is that Female centaurs are good looking. They are taken to be sexually attractive to both men and stallions. They are athletic; but not usually overpoweringly muscular. Their hair is usually long and well groomed, their flanks being glossy.
There are two contrary conventions as to the voluptuousness of female centaurs. That is, they are either quite angular and flat-chested due to the amount of running they do (Thomas Burnett Swann's description); or they are endowed beyond all but the rarest of human women, and are prodigiously bountiful, as Philostratus originally mentioned, and Chalker and Anthony have elaborated upon. Some types of female centaurs have both breasts and udders, some lack udders; and some lack breasts.
Some centaurs (especially males) rarely wear anything. Others wear only that which is immediately useful or functional. The most usual things carried are weapons of war or of the hunt (especially bows, quivers, spears, knives, and more traditionally, cudgels (usually made out of treelimbs) and large rocks. The principle exception to this rule are staffs (of magical power or authority) and musical instruments: usually the cithara (harp), flute or panpipes, horns of all types, and the tambour. The female centaur usually limits herself to a blouse or somewhat revealing garment and wears them only when in the potential presence of humans.
Centaurs move with an awkward grace. In some instances they do not have full control over their physical movements. However they are preternaturally speedy and have unusual endurance, so do not mind getting into a race with other centaurs or other species. Centaurs have very few inhibitions in personal relations, and what they consider normal in that vein often gets them into deadly trouble in other societies. Alternately, a few centaurs are said to be very prim, but these are rare. Male centaurs enjoy the company of females, especially women and mermaids, and like to carry them on their backs; perhaps because they cannot run away like a female centaur can. This is also true of female centaurs and male humans, though this is not as frequently portrayed.
When pressed by encroaching "civilization," centaurs generally react badly. Many become hermits.
Generally the relationship between centaurs and animals are quite good and are even intimate. Relations between horses and centaurs is a case in point. It is notable that there is often a small animal (usually a bird or butterfly) associated with centaurs (usually females) in portraits.
-- David Alway
Revised 23 April 1997, original version published April, 1991 in The North American Therianthropic Journal.