centaurs

Greek These were creatures half human and half horse, sons of Centaurus. Ixion, a Lapith of Thessaly, loved the goddess Hera, wife of Zeus, who became jealous. Zeus fashioned a likeness of Hera out of a cloud and called her Nephele. Ixion, convinced that the beautiful cloud-woman was Hera, mated with her. Nephele produced a son, Centaurus. This son mated with the mares of Thessaly, producing creatures that were half man and half horse—the centaurs. Usually depicted as unruly, the centaurs are notorious in legend for their disorderly behavior among the Lapiths, the mythical people of Thessaly. The result was a battle. The centaurs were expelled from their native Thessaly and took refuge on Mount Pindus, on the frontiers of Epirus. Centaurs are often associated with the Satyrs and Sileni, followers of the wine god, Dionysus. However, Chiron, the most famous of the centaurs, was wise and gentle. The myth of the centaurs probably stems from the time of the migrations and the coming of the horse to Greece in about 2000 b.c. The horse was enormously important to migratory people and was a cult animal in many parts of the world. In remote regions where wild horses lived, there must have been primitive peoples who were so skilled at catching, taming, and riding the horses that the sight of them awed all who saw them. Many may have believed that they were looking at a single, magical creature, with the head and trunk of a human and the hindquarters of a horse.