DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.803#0147
140 THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
invpo's a bull. The novel sight of a man seated on
the back of a horse, and galloping over the plains
with more than human velocity, might easily suggest
to the minds of an ignorant peasantry, the idea of an
animal composed partly of a man and partly of a
horse; and it was from this simple origin, according
to some explanations, that the fable of the Centaurs
sprung. We must remark, that we place no confi-
dence in the proposed etymology of the word Cen-
tauros, and almost as little in the explanation of the
story. The Centaur Chiron in Homer was a model
of justice, and the poet appears to have had no idea of
the monstrous combination of two animals. Pindar,
in his second Pythian Ode, first makes us acquainted
with the Hippo-Centaur, or half horse and half man.
Though it cannot be imagined that the Greeks ever
regarded this tradition otherwise than as a fable, so
far as the double nature of the animal was con-
cerned *, yet it is curious to observe with what care
and devotion they recorded the particulars of this
fiction in their poems, sculpture, paintings, and other
monuments of art.
The Centaurs were invited to the nuptials of p!n*
thous, king of the Lapithaj. During the marriage
feast, one of the Centaurs, named Eurytion, or Eury-
tus, with the characteristic brutality of his nature,
and elated by the effects of wine, offered violence to
the person of Hippodamia, the bride -f. This out-
rageous act was immediately resented by Theseus,
the friend of Pirithous, who hurled a large vessel at
* " Ne forte ex bomine et veterino semine equorum
Coofieri credas Centauros posse."
Lucret, lib. v. 88.
" Quis enim Hippocentaurum fuisse, aut Ghimecram putet.
Cic. de Natura Deorum, lib. »•c'
+ Diod. Sicul. lib. y. c, 70. Ovid. Met, lib. xii. v. 218.
invpo's a bull. The novel sight of a man seated on
the back of a horse, and galloping over the plains
with more than human velocity, might easily suggest
to the minds of an ignorant peasantry, the idea of an
animal composed partly of a man and partly of a
horse; and it was from this simple origin, according
to some explanations, that the fable of the Centaurs
sprung. We must remark, that we place no confi-
dence in the proposed etymology of the word Cen-
tauros, and almost as little in the explanation of the
story. The Centaur Chiron in Homer was a model
of justice, and the poet appears to have had no idea of
the monstrous combination of two animals. Pindar,
in his second Pythian Ode, first makes us acquainted
with the Hippo-Centaur, or half horse and half man.
Though it cannot be imagined that the Greeks ever
regarded this tradition otherwise than as a fable, so
far as the double nature of the animal was con-
cerned *, yet it is curious to observe with what care
and devotion they recorded the particulars of this
fiction in their poems, sculpture, paintings, and other
monuments of art.
The Centaurs were invited to the nuptials of p!n*
thous, king of the Lapithaj. During the marriage
feast, one of the Centaurs, named Eurytion, or Eury-
tus, with the characteristic brutality of his nature,
and elated by the effects of wine, offered violence to
the person of Hippodamia, the bride -f. This out-
rageous act was immediately resented by Theseus,
the friend of Pirithous, who hurled a large vessel at
* " Ne forte ex bomine et veterino semine equorum
Coofieri credas Centauros posse."
Lucret, lib. v. 88.
" Quis enim Hippocentaurum fuisse, aut Ghimecram putet.
Cic. de Natura Deorum, lib. »•c'
+ Diod. Sicul. lib. y. c, 70. Ovid. Met, lib. xii. v. 218.