Horses, Heroes, and Sacrifice 3. Centaurs It is difficult to discuss horses and hippomorphism in Greece without mentioning the figure of the centaur, so I will not conclude this work without doing so. There is no real reason to suspect that the figure is of IE origin, and its treatment is different from that of horses themselves, yet some traces of the IE equine ideology outlined above may still be observable in it.
A note on the shape of the centaur is necessary, since they are not always depicted in the form with which we are most familiar. Our earliest references involve no real description at all. Observe the evidence from both the Iliad and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes: They were very brave men, and they did battle with the very brave mountain-dwelling [centaurs] and destroyed them terribly.
Homeric Hymn to Hermes — The best early evidence from which we can draw any real conclusions comes from material art, which represents some centaurs with human feet and genitals in the front. It has been suggested that these were late models, which represent evolutions of a centaur form that was not hippomorphic at all. Thus it remains reasonable to look to centaurs for evidence of Greek attitudes toward horses. As in the case of the IE horse the association between centaurs and sexuality is very common, but in the case of the centaurs that sex is almost always violent.
A connection between centaurs, sexual assault, and semen is also demonstrated by Nonnos, who incorporates this motif into his depiction of horned centaurs sprung from the semen of Zeus: Once Cypris [Aphrodite] ran like the winds fleeing the pursuit of her amorous father, so that she might not see an unlawful fatherly bedmate, and her father Zeus gave up his pursuit of the union, leaving untouched the swifter, unattainable, and unwilling Aphrodite.
Instead of the bed of Aphrodite, he ejaculated on the earth, pouring forth the love-shower of child-producing plows. The earth received the marital dew of the son of Cronos and hurled forth the strange horned race. Nonnos Dionysiaca XIV — Like the centaur, the sexual symbolism of the PIE horse and the Greek horse thereafter is also intimately connected to erotic power and with semen, but the centaur exhibits this connection in a particularly extreme and violent form.
The myth of the wedding of Peirithoos is another well-documented example of the violent sexual nature of centaur mythology. This wedding is said to have led to the famous battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, which is frequently depicted in literature and which is an important enough artistic motif to appear on the Parthenon, the Hephaisteion, and the temple to Zeus at Olympia.
At this wedding the centaur Eurytion attempted to rape the bride, and the other centaurs followed by attempting to rape the other women and boys in attendance. Zeus was in disbelief, so tested Ixion by fashioning an eidolon, or copy, of Hera, like that fashioned of Helen, and Ixion did indeed have sex with it. From this union was born a man named Kentauros, who had sex with the mares around Mount Pelion, and from them the race of the centaurs was born. Since chariot wheels spin due to the force of horses this form of punishment is ironic.
Unlike Greek mythological horses, however, the centaur is almost always male, as confirmed by a story about Zeuxis told by Lucian. In it Lucian describes a painting of a female centaur done by Zeuxis and compliments it not only because of its quality, but because of the ingenuity involved in contriving something so very novel: I want to give you an example from a painter.
Zeuxis, that most excellent of painters, did not depict popular or common themes heroes, gods, or wars, for example but always endeavored to create novelty, and when he created something new and unusual he demonstrated the precision of his skill.
Among his daring works, this Zeuxis created a female centaur, one who, moreover, nursed twin centaur children, babies. The unruliness and incivility of the centaur are used in Greek myth to represent that which is wild and essentially uncontrollable, a purpose to which the symbolic connection between horses and men is apparently more fit than that between horses and women; hence female centaurs are ignored except as an occasional novelty.
It is useful to dwell for a moment on the anomalous centaur, Chiron, the legendary trainer of Achilles, about whom there is no story of violent sex. Hesiod says that he is the child of Phillyra, [ 10 ] and other sources add that he is the child of Cronos who mated with this Phillyra, a daughter of Oceanos, while he had taken the form of horse.
Although he represents a particularly dangerous and uncontrollable expression of the forces discussed throughout this work, the centaur does, in a way, exhibit the same thematic nexus of hippomorphism, sex, and power that was seen in the hero.
It is in this twisted manifestation of the very elements of heroic identity, expressed hippologically, that the centaur achieves his identity, a reflection of the hero that is nevertheless grotesquely anti-heroic. Footnotes [ back ] 1. Centaurs have occasionally been linked to the Indian gandharvas, celestial beings who have partially animalistic forms.
The similarities in the names makes this connection tempting, but an etymological link is simply not present. Although the sounds are similar, there is no reason to expect the Greek unvoiced velar stop the k sound to have a counterpart in the Sanskrit voiced velar the g sound , nor is there any reason, in this word, for the Greek unvoiced, unaspirated dental stop the t sound to have a counterpart in the Sanskrit voiced, aspirated stop the dh sound.
On the possibility that folk etymology could be hindering our recognition of an etymological relationship, MacDonnel Trachiniae —; Apollodorus Bibliotheca II 7. Diodorus Siculus IV It is perhaps significant that the bride at this ceremony was Hippodamia, the horse tamer. This is not the same Hippodamia who was discussed in Chapter 4, the wife of Pelops, but it does seem that in both instances the name of the woman is particularly well suited to the myth.
The novelty and fantastic potential of the medium of animation was exemplified in the depiction not only of centaurs, who could not at that time be realistically depicted in other media, but by the depiction of a female centaur and children. Representations of them are not, however, entirely unknown.
For example, the Pella Archaeological Museum houses a fourth-century mosaic depicting a female centaur. Ovid Metamorphoses VI