upcScavenger » Greek Legendary Creatures » Wiki: Centaur

Centaur

( Greek Legendary Creatures )

Centaur Centaurs Greek Perseus

Rank: 100%

Wiki
Comments
Media

A centaur ( ; ; ), occasionally hippocentaur, also called Ixionidae (), is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse that was said to live in the mountains of Thessaly. In one version of the myth, the centaurs were named after Centaurus, and, through his brother Lapithes, were kin to the legendary tribe of the Lapiths.

Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as being as wild as untamed horses, and were said to have inhabited the region of Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly, the Foloi oak forest in Ancient Elis, and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia. Centaurs are subsequently featured in Roman mythology, and were familiar figures in the medieval bestiary. They remain a staple of modern fantastic literature.

Etymology

The Greek word kentauros is generally regarded as being of obscure origin. Scobie quotes The etymology from ken + tauros, 'piercing bull', was a euhemerism suggestion in Palaephatus' rationalizing text on Greek mythology, On Incredible Tales (Περὶ ἀπίστων), which included mounted archers from a village called Nephele eliminating a herd of bulls that were the scourge of Ixion's kingdom. Another possible related etymology can be "bull-slayer".Alexander Hislop, in his polemic The Two Babylons: Papal Worship Revealed to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife (1853, revised 1858), theorized that the word is derived from the Semitic Kohen and "tor" (to go round) via Phonetics the less prominent being lost over time, with it developing into Kh en Tor or Ken-Tor, and being transliterated phonetically into Ionic Greek as Kentaur, but this is not accepted by any modern philologist.

Mythology

Creation of centaurs

The centaurs were usually said to have been born of Ixion and Nephele. As the story goes, Nephele was a cloud made into the likeness of Hera in a plot to trick Ixion into revealing his lust for Hera to Zeus. Ixion seduced Nephele and from that relationship centaurs were created. Another version, however, makes them children of Centaurus, a man who mated with the Magnesian mares. Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele (inserting an additional generation) or of Apollo and the nymph Stilbe. In the latter version of the story, Centaurus's twin brother was Lapithes, ancestor of the .

Another tribe of centaurs was said to have lived on Cyprus. According to Nonnus, the Cyprian Centaurs were fathered by Zeus, who, in frustration after Aphrodite had eluded him, spilled his seed on the ground of that land. Unlike those of mainland Greece, the Cyprian centaurs were ox-horned.Nonnus, Dionysiaca 5.611 ff., 14.193 ff. & 32.65 ff.

There were also the Lamian Pheres, twelve rustic (spirits) of the Lamos river. They were set by Zeus to guard the infant Dionysos, protecting him from the machinations of Hera, but the enraged goddess transformed them into ox-horned Centaurs unrelated to the Cyprian Centaurs. The Lamian Pheres later accompanied Dionysos in his campaign against the Indians.

The centaur's half-human, half-horse composition has led many writers to treat them as , caught between the two natures they embody in contrasting myths; they are both the embodiment of untamed nature, as in their battle with the Lapiths (their kin), and conversely, teachers like Chiron. They are often depicted as wild, untamed, virile, lascivious, and displaying great feats of strength such as carrying rocks or boulders.

Centauromachy

The Centaurs are best known for their fight with the who, according to one origin myth, would have been cousins to the centaurs. The battle, called the Centauromachy, was caused by the centaurs' attempt to carry off Hippodamia and the rest of the Lapith women on the day of Hippodamia's marriage to Pirithous, who was the king of the Lapithae and a son of Ixion. Theseus, a hero and founder of cities, who happened to be present, threw the balance in favour of the Lapiths by assisting Pirithous in the battle. The Centaurs were driven off or destroyed.Plutarch, Theseus 30Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.210. pp. 69–70. Another Lapith hero, Caeneus, who was invulnerable to weapons, was beaten into the earth by Centaurs wielding rocks and the branches of trees. In her article "The Centaur: Its History and Meaning in Human Culture", Elizabeth Lawrence claims that the contests between the centaurs and the Lapiths typify the struggle between civilization and barbarism. The Centauromachy is most famously portrayed in the metopes of the Parthenon by Phidias and in the Battle of the Centaurs, a relief by Michelangelo.

Origin of the myth

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 Sea, to nomads who were mounted on horses. The theory suggests that such riders would appear as half-man, half-animal. Bernal Díaz del Castillo reported that the also had this misapprehension about Spanish cavalrymen. The Lapith tribe of Thessaly, who were the kinsmen of the Centaurs in myth, were described as the inventors of horse-riding by Greek writers. The Thessalian tribes also claimed their horse breeds were descended from the centaurs.

Robert Graves (relying on the work of Georges Dumézil,Dumézil, Le Problème des Centaures (Paris 1929) and Mitra-Varuna: An essay on two Indo-European representations of sovereignty (1948. tr. 1988). who argued for tracing the centaurs back to the Hindu Gandharva), speculated that the centaurs were a dimly remembered, pre-Hellenic fraternal earth cult who had the horse as a totem.Graves, The Greek Myths, 1960 § 81.4; § 102 "Centaurs"; § 126.3;. A similar theory was incorporated into Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea.

Variations

Female centaurs

Though female centaurs, called centaurides or centauresses, are not mentioned in early Greek literature and art, they do appear occasionally in later antiquity. A mosaic of the 4th century BC is one of the earliest examples of the centauress in art.Pella Archaeological Museum Ovid also mentions a centauress named Hylonome who committed suicide when her husband Cyllarus was killed in the war with the Lapiths.Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.210 ff.

India

The Kalibangan cylinder seal, dated to be around 2600–1900 BC, found at the site of Indus-Valley civilization shows a battle between men in the presence of centaur-like creatures.

(2026). 9781108168694, Cambridge University Press. . ISBN 9781108168694

Other sources claim the creatures represented are actually half human and half tigers, later evolving into the Hindu Durga. These seals are also evidence of Indus-Mesopotamia relations in the 3rd millennium BC.

In a popular legend associated with Pazhaya Sreekanteswaram Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, the curse of a saintly Brahmin transformed a handsome Yadava prince into a creature having a horse's body and the prince's head, arms, and torso in place of the head and neck of the horse.

Kinnara kingdom, another half-man, half-horse mythical creature from Indian mythology, appeared in various ancient texts, arts, and sculptures from all around India. It is shown as a horse with the torso of a man where the horse's head would be, and is similar to a Greek centaur.Devdutt Pattanaik, "Indian mythology : tales, symbols, and rituals from the heart of the Subcontinent" (Rochester, USA 2003) P.74: .K. Krishna Murthy, Mythical Animals in Indian Art (New Delhi, India 1985).

Russia

A centaur-like half-human, half-equine creature called Polkan appeared in Russian folk art and lubok prints of the 17th–19th centuries. Polkan is originally based on Pulicane, a half-dog from Andrea da Barberino's poem I Reali di Francia, which was once popular in the Slavonic world in prosaic translations.

Artistic representations

Classical art

The extensive Mycenaean pottery found at Ugarit included two fragmentary Mycenaean terracotta figures which have been tentatively identified as centaurs. This finding suggests a Bronze Age origin for these creatures of myth.Ione Mylonas Shear, "Mycenaean Centaurs at Ugarit" The Journal of Hellenic Studies (2002:147–153); but see the interpretation relating them to "abbreviated group" figures at the Bronze-Age sanctuary of Aphaia and elsewhere, presented by Korinna Pilafidis-Williams, "No Mycenaean Centaurs Yet", The Journal of Hellenic Studies 124 (2004), p. 165, which concludes "we had perhaps do best not to raise hopes of a continuity of images across the divide between the Bronze Age and the historical period." A painted terracotta centaur was found in the "Hero's tomb" at Lefkandi, and by the Geometric art, centaurs figure among the first representational figures painted on Greek pottery. An often-published Geometric period bronze of a warrior face-to-face with a centaur is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In Greek art of the Archaic period, centaurs are depicted in three different forms.

Some centaurs are depicted with a human torso attached to the body of a horse at the withers, where the horse's neck would be; this form, designated "Class A" by Professor Paul Baur, later became standard.
"Class B" centaurs are depicted with a human body and legs joined at the waist to the hindquarters of a horse; in some cases centaurs of both Class A and Class B appear together.
A third type, designated "Class C", depicts centaurs with human forelegs terminating in hooves. Baur describes this as an apparent development of Aeolis art, which never became particularly widespread.Paul V. C. Baur, Centaurs in Ancient Art: The Archaic Period, Karl Curtius, Berlin (1912), pp. 5–7.

There are also paintings and motifs on AmphoraMaria Cristina Biella and Enrico Giovanelli, Il bestiario fantastico di età orientalizzante nella penisola italiana (Belfast, ME: Tangram, 2012), 172-78. ; and J. Michael Padgett and William A. P. Childs, The Centaur's Smile: The Human Animal in Early Greek Art (Princeton University Press, 2003). and Dipylon cups

Martin Nilsson (2026). 9780520335899, University of California Press. . ISBN 9780520335899

which depict winged centaurs.

Centaurs were also frequently depicted in Roman art. One example is the pair of centaurs drawing the chariot of Constantine I and his family in the Great Cameo of Constantine ( circa AD 314–16), which embodies wholly pagan imagery, and contrasts sharply with the popular image of Constantine as the patron of early Christianity.The Great Cameo of Constantine, formerly in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens and now in the Geld en Bankmuseum, Utrecht, is illustrated, for instance, in Paul Stephenson, Constantine, Roman Emperor, Christian Victor, 2010:fig. 53.Iain Ferris, The Arch of Constantine: Inspired by the Divine, Amberley Publishing (2009).

Medieval art

Centaurs preserved a Dionysus connection in the 12th-century Romanesque carved capitals of Mozac Abbey in the Auvergne. Other similar capitals depict harvesters, boys riding goats (a further Dionysiac theme), and guarding the chalice that held the wine. Centaurs are also shown on a number of Picts carved stones from north-east Scotland erected in the 8th–9th centuries AD (e.g., at Meigle, Perthshire). Though outside the limits of the Roman Empire, these depictions appear to be derived from Classical prototypes.

Modern art

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 sculptor Bill Willers by combining a study human skeleton with the skeleton of a Shetland pony, is entitled "Do you believe in Centaurs?". According to the exhibitors, it was meant to mislead students in order to make them more critically aware.

Cartography

Depictions of centaurs in a mythical land located south beyond the world's known continents appear on a map by Urbano Monti from 1587, sometimes called Monti's Planisphere. Largest Early World Map - Monte's 10 ft. Planisphere of 1587 . David Rumsey Map Collection. November 26, 2017. Close-up of 1st image , Close-up of 2nd image .

In heraldry

Centaurs are common in European heraldry, although more frequent in continental than in British arms. A centaur holding a bow is referred to as a sagittary or sagittarius.Arthur Fox-Davies, A Complete Guide to Heraldry, T.C. and E.C. Jack, London, 1909, p 228.

Literature

Classical literature

Jerome's version of the Life of St Anthony the Great, written by Athanasius of Alexandria about the hermit monk of Egypt, was widely disseminated in the Middle Ages; it relates Anthony's encounter with a centaur who challenged the saint, but was forced to admit that the old gods had been overthrown. The episode was often depicted in The Meeting of St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit by the painter Stefano di Giovanni, who was known as "Sassetta".National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC: illustration . Of the two episodic depictions of the hermit Anthony's travel to greet the hermit Paul, one is his encounter with the demonic figure of a centaur along the pathway in a wood.

Lucretius, in his first-century BC philosophical poem On the Nature of Things, denied the existence of centaurs, based on the differing rates of growth of human and equine anatomies. Specifically, he states that at the age of three years, horses are in the prime of their life while humans at the same age are still little more than babies, making hybrid animals impossible.Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, book V, translated by William Ellery Leonard, 1916 ( The Perseus Project.) Retrieved July 27, 2008.

Medieval literature

Centaurs are among the creatures which 14th-century Italian poet Dante placed as guardians in his Inferno. In Canto XII, Dante and his guide Virgil meet a band led by Chiron and Pholus, guarding the bank of Phlegethon in the seventh circle of Hell, a river of boiling blood in which the violent against their neighbours are immersed, shooting arrows into any who move to a shallower spot than their allotted station. The two poets are treated with courtesy, and Nessus guides them to a ford. In Canto XXIV, in the eighth circle, in Bolgia 7, a ditch where thieves are confined, they meet but do not converse with Cacus (who is a giant in the ancient sources), wreathed in serpents and with a fire-breathing dragon on his shoulders, arriving to punish a sinner who has just cursed God. In his Purgatorio, an unseen spirit on the sixth terrace cites the centaurs ("the drunken double-breasted ones who fought Theseus") as examples of the sin of gluttony.

Modern day literature

C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series Narnian Centaurs as wise and courageous creatures, who are gifted in fields such as astronomy and medicine.Kaleta, p. 77. John Updike's 1963 novel The Centaur contains numerous references to mythological centaurs.Leuker, "B.3. Early modern period", para. 9. The author depicts a rural Pennsylvanian town as seen through the optics of the myth of the centaur. An unknown and marginalized local school teacher, just like the mythological Chiron did for Prometheus, gave up his life for the future of his son who had chosen to be an independent artist in New York.

In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, centaurs inhabit the Forbidden Forest near Hogwarts, and are talented archers and healers; they are also known to their proficiency in astrology. The centaurs in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians are portrayed as wild party-goers, with the exception of Chiron, who serves as the main director of activities at the series' demigod training facility.

Gallery

File:Centaur mosaic - Google Art Project.jpg| Battle of Centaurs and Wild Beasts (120-130 CE), originally for the dining-room of Hadrian's Villa, now Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. File:Centaur lekythos Met 51.163.jpg|Diosphos Painter, white-ground lekythos (500 BC) File:Sarcofago con centauromachia, II secolo, da procoio di pianabella, 01.JPG|Bas relief from an ancient Roman sarcophagus depicting a Centauromachy File:Sandro Botticelli 063.jpg|Botticelli, Pallas Athena and Centaur (1482–83) File:Canova - Theseus defeats the centaur - close.jpg|Antonio Canova, Theseus Defeats the Centaur (1805–1819) File:Bova1860.jpg|Prince Bova fights Polkan, Russian lubok (1860) File:Centaur nymph Marqueste Tuileries.jpg|Centaur carrying off a nymph (1892) by Laurent Marqueste (Tuileries Garden, Paris) File:Brooklyn Museum - Centauress - John La Farge - overall.jpg| Centauress, by John La Farge File:Centaure Malmaison crop.jpg|A bronze statue of a centaur, after the Furietti Centaurs File:Augustin Courtet, Centauress and Faun. 1849. Bronze. Lyon, Parc de la Tête d’or. Photo, Jamie Mulherron.jpg|Augustin Courtet, Centauress and Faun (1849), Lyon, Parc de la Tête d'or File:Cup with musician Centaur (Byzantine, 12-13th c, Kremlin) 03 by shakko, levels, cropped for centaur.jpg|Byzantine Empire, 12th-13th century. Silver artwork from cup, depicting the centaur as a lute-playing musician. Collection of the Kremlin.

Centaur

( Greek Legendary Creatures )

Account

Navigation

Statistics

Centaur ( Greek Legendary Creatures )

Account

Navigation

Statistics

Centaur

( Greek Legendary Creatures )