The Battle of the Beast and Centaurs

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CENTAURI (Kentauroi), that is, the bullkillers, are according to the earliest accounts a race of men who inhabited the mountains and forests of Thessaly. They are described as leading a rude and savage life, occasionally carrying off the women of their neighbours, as covered with hair and ranging over their mountains like animals. But they were not altogether unacquainted with the useful arts, as in the case of Cheiron. (Hom. Il. i. 268, ii. 743, in which passages they are called phêres, that is, thêres, Od. xxi. 295, &c.; Hesiod. Scut. Herc. 104, &c.) Now, in these earliest accounts, the centaurs appear merely as a sort of gigantic, savage, or animal-like beings; whereas, in later writers, they are described as monsters (hippocentaurs), whose bodies were partly human and partly those of horses. This strange mixture of the human form with that of a horse is accounted for, in the later traditions, by the history of their origin. Ixion, it is said, begot by a cloud Centaurus, a being hated by gods and men, who begot the hippocentaurs on mount Pelion, by mixing with Magnesian mares. (Pind. Pyth. ii. 80, &c.) According to Diodorus (iv. 69; comp. Hygin. Fab. 33), the centaurs were the sons of Ixion himself by a cloud; they were brought up by the nymphs of Pelion, and begot the Hippocentaurs by mares. Others again relate, that the centaurs were the offspring of Ixion and his mares; or that Zeus, metamorphosed into a horse, begot them by Dia, the wife of Ixion. (Serv. ad Aen. viii. 293; Nonn. Dionys. xvi. 240, xiv. 193.) From these accounts it appears, that the ancient centaurs and the later hippocentaurs were two distinct classes of beings, although the name of centaurs is applied to both by ancient as well as modern writers. The Centaurs are particularly celebrated in ancient story for their fight with the Lapithae, which arose at the marriage-feast of Peirithous, and

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