| The most famous centaurs are those from Greek mythology. In these myths, the centaurs were a race of creatures that were half man and half horse. They were sired by Ixion and a cloud. By definition, the centaur is a creature, half man and half horse. However, there are many variations of the centaur. Some had a human body terminating in human legs and feet with equine body and hind legs extended behind the waist. Another variation gave the centaur wings. Some times they have equine ears and sometimes they have both equine and human genitalia. Other variations include the onocentaur, bucentaur, and leontocentaurs. Aside from Chiron and to a lesser degree Pholos, the centaur population as a whole was associated with drunkenness and physical, especially sexual, violence. Nevertheless, the people of antiquity were too fond of horses to consider the union of horse and man as a degraded compound. In fact, the centaur is the only of the fancied monsters of this time to be given any good traits. Before the appearance of the Greek centaur there are earlier examples of man-horse creatures. For example, there are sculptures and tablets from the near east that pictured the centaur as guardian spirit. It is depicted as a hunter using a bow as it's principle weapon. After the Greek period it became a very popular symbol in art right through the middle ages, featured in the Bayeux Tapestry for example. The centaur from Greek myth can be found in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Apollodorus' Library, Ovid's Metamorphoses (book 12), Virgil's Aeneid (book 6), and Pausanias' Description of Greece |
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