49 Fun Facts About Centaurs

What two creatures combine to make a centaur?

A centaur has the head and torso of a man on the body and legs of a horse; the tribe was said to roam the mountains of northern Greece.

Which Greek region was the centaurs' traditional home?

Thessaly: the centaurs haunted the wooded mountains of Magnesia in north-eastern Greece; other tales place some in the Foloi oak forest of Elis in the Peloponnese.

Who were the usual mythical parents of the centaurs?

Nephele was a cloud shaped like Hera, made to expose Ixion's lust.

Which lyric poet's ode for Hieron of Syracuse tells how Ixion fathered the centaur race?

Pindar's second Pythian ode, addressed to Hieron of Syracuse, tells how Ixion lay with a cloud in Hera's shape and so became father of Centaurus and the centaur race.

What was Ixion's eternal punishment for lusting after Hera?

Zeus ordered Hermes to bind him to the winged wheel in Tartarus.

Which Roman poet has Nestor recount the Lapith-centaur wedding brawl at length?

In Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 12, Nestor tells the Greeks at Troy the story of the wedding brawl in more than 300 lines, the fullest ancient account of the fight.

In another version, Centaurus fathered the race by mating with what?

In Pindar's version Centaurus, Ixion's son, mated with the Magnesian mares in the foothills of Magnesia, and the horse-bodied centaurs were the result.

What was unusual about the centaurs of Cyprus, according to Nonnus?

Zeus fathered them by spilling his seed after Aphrodite eluded him.

Which tribe fought the centaurs in the Centauromachy?

The Lapiths, a Thessalian tribe, fought the centaurs in the Centauromachy; in one origin myth the two peoples were cousins, descended from the brothers Lapithes and Centaurus.

At whose wedding did the centaurs try to carry off the bride and start the battle?

The wedding of the Lapith king Pirithous to Hippodamia; the drunken centaur Eurytion seized the bride, and Theseus, Pirithous's friend, helped drive the centaurs off.

How did the centaurs kill the invulnerable Lapith hero Caeneus?

No weapon could pierce him, so they hammered him into the ground.

Which Renaissance artist carved the relief Battle of the Centaurs?

Michelangelo carved the marble relief Battle of the Centaurs around 1492, aged about 17, in Lorenzo de' Medici's circle in Florence, and kept the piece all his life.

On which side of the Parthenon are the Centauromachy metopes?

They are the best preserved; fifteen are in the British Museum.

What is the most common theory for the origin of the centaur myth?

Bernal Díaz reported the Aztecs made the same misapprehension about Spanish cavalry.

Who was Chiron's father?

Cronus took the form of a horse to impregnate the nymph Philyra.

Which god found the abandoned infant Chiron and taught him medicine and archery?

Apollo took in the infant Chiron, abandoned by his mother out of shame at his horse shape, and taught him medicine, archery, music and prophecy.

Which of these heroes was among Chiron's pupils?

Achilles was entrusted to Chiron by his father Peleus and raised on the centaur's mountain; Asclepius, Jason, Actaeon and Aristaeus also studied under him.

Whom did Zeus free from punishment when Chiron gave up his immortality?

Prometheus: crippled by an incurable wound, the immortal Chiron asked to die, and Zeus allowed Prometheus, the fire-thief, to take over his immortality and go free.

Which hero received an ash spear from Chiron as a wedding gift?

Chiron gave Peleus an ash spear at his wedding to Thetis; his son Achilles later carried it at Troy, where no other Greek could wield it.

What smell drove the centaurs mad and into Pholus's cave when Heracles visited?

Heracles slew most of them and the rest fled to Cape Maleas.

How did the peaceful Pholus die?

He dropped it on his foot while marvelling that so small a thing could kill a centaur.

Which centaur tried to violate Heracles' wife Deianeira and was shot by the hero?

Nessus, ferrying Deianeira across the river Evenus, tried to assault her and was shot by Heracles; dying, he told her his blood was a love charm, a lie that later killed Heracles.

What poison in the shirt that killed Heracles was actually at work?

The centaur's blood on the shirt carried the Lernaean Hydra's venom from the arrow that had killed him; Deianeira sent it to Heracles as a love charm, fearing he loved the captive Iole.

Which centauress in Ovid killed herself when her husband Cyllarus died in the wedding war?

Hylonome, the most beautiful of the centauresses in Ovid's Metamorphoses, threw herself on the spear that had killed her mate Cyllarus in the wedding brawl.

What is a centaur holding a bow called?

A sagittary is the heraldic name for a centaur drawing a bow, from Latin sagitta, arrow; the zodiac's archer Sagittarius is the same figure.

What is an onocentaur part-human and part what?

An onocentaur, from Greek onos, donkey, has a human upper body on an ass's hindquarters; medieval bestiaries often gave it only two legs.

Which two sea personifications are depicted as ichthyocentaurs?

Aphros and Bythos, whose names mean sea foam and sea depth, appear as ichthyocentaurs, fish-tailed centaurs, lifting Aphrodite's shell on a Roman mosaic from Zeugma.

What was the bucentaur?

The Bucentaur was the ceremonial barge of Venice's doges; each Ascension Day it carried the doge out to the Lido to wed Venice to the sea by casting a ring into the water.

Which Florentine painted Pallas and the Centaur around 1482?

Botticelli painted Pallas and the Centaur around 1482 for the Medici, the goddess gripping the centaur's hair as he reaches for his bow; it is in the Uffizi.

In Dante's Inferno, which centaurs guard the river of boiling blood in the seventh circle?

In Canto XII Chiron, the centaurs' captain, and Pholus patrol the bank of the Phlegethon shooting sinners who rise too far; Chiron assigns Nessus to carry the poets across the ford.

What did the Hays office demand of the female centaurs in Disney's Fantasia?

The male centaurs were also toned down to seem less intimidating.

Where do the centaurs of the Harry Potter books live?

The centaurs live in the Forbidden Forest beside Hogwarts, where Harry first meets Firenze, Ronan and Bane in Philosopher's Stone; they are archers, healers and star-readers.

How are centaurs who associate with humans regarded by their kind in Harry Potter?

Centaurs who serve humans are seen as traitors to their kind; Firenze was driven from the herd and nearly killed in Order of the Phoenix after agreeing to teach Divination at Hogwarts.

How does Rick Riordan portray most centaurs in Percy Jackson?

Most of Riordan's centaurs are wild party-goers, the Party Ponies who turn up with paintball guns and root beer; Chiron is the exception, activities director at Camp Half-Blood.

Which author gave centaurs two stomachs, needing both a man's and a horse's breakfast?

C. S. Lewis: in The Silver Chair the centaurs of Narnia, wise and gifted in astronomy, have a man's stomach and a horse's stomach and so eat two breakfasts.

Omega Centauri, the sky's brightest globular cluster, may be the stripped core of what?

Omega Centauri's huge mass, about four million suns, and its several stellar populations suggest it is the surviving core of a dwarf galaxy captured and stripped by the Milky Way.

How many stars make up the Alpha Centauri system?

Three: Alpha Centauri A (Rigil Kentaurus) and B (Toliman) orbit each other closely, while the red dwarf Proxima Centauri circles the pair at a much greater distance.

How far away is Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun?

Proxima Centauri is about 4.24 light-years away, a faint red dwarf invisible to the naked eye; its companions Alpha Centauri A and B, at about 4.37 light-years, are the nearest naked-eye stars.

Which constellation do Alpha and Beta Centauri point to as the southern pointer stars?

Alpha and Beta Centauri, the Pointers, lie east of Crux, and a line through them leads to the Southern Cross, distinguishing it from the False Cross in Carina and Vela.

Between which planets does an astronomical centaur orbit?

Astronomical centaurs are small bodies orbiting between Jupiter and Neptune, crossing the giant planets' paths on unstable orbits; they show traits of both asteroids and comets, hence the hybrid name.

Who discovered 2060 Chiron, first of the astronomical centaurs, in 1977?

Charles Kowal found 2060 Chiron at Palomar Observatory on 18 October 1977; a cometary coma was detected in 1989, and stellar occultations since 2011 have hinted at a ring system.

What was the Centaur rocket stage the first to burn?

Centaur was the first rocket stage to burn liquid hydrogen with liquid oxygen; it first flew in May 1962 and has served as the upper stage of Atlas and Titan rockets and, as Centaur V, of Vulcan.

What lies in the westernmost part of the archer constellation Sagittarius?

The centre of the Milky Way, with the black hole Sagittarius A*, lies in the westernmost part of Sagittarius near its border with Scorpius and Ophiuchus; the constellation's brighter stars form the Teapot.

Which Roman poet denied centaurs could exist because horses and humans mature at different rates?

Lucretius argued in On the Nature of Things (Book 5) that a horse is in its prime at three while a three-year-old human is still a child, so the two natures could never grow together.

Which American novelist's 1963 book The Centaur views a rural Pennsylvania town through the myth?

John Updike's The Centaur, which won the 1964 National Book Award, casts schoolteacher George Caldwell of Olinger, Pennsylvania as Chiron and his son Peter as Prometheus.

Which English king's attributed arms showed three lion-centaur sagittaries?

King Stephen's attributed arms, Gules three sagittaries Or, are said to recall that the Sun was in Sagittarius when he seized the throne in December 1135; the figures are sometimes drawn as lion-centaurs.

In Dante's Purgatorio, the centaurs who fought Theseus are cited as examples of which sin?

Gluttony: on Purgatory's sixth terrace a voice from a tree cites the cloud-born, double-breasted centaurs who fought Theseus while drunk, alongside the Hebrews who drank too greedily with Gideon.

On which mountain did Chiron mainly live with his wife, the nymph Chariclo?

Chiron lived in a cave on Mount Pelion in Thessaly with the nymph Chariclo; their children included the daughters Hippe, Endeis and Ocyrhoe and a son, Carystus.

Which centaur in Prince Caspian reads the stars and joins Caspian's war council?

Glenstorm, a centaur prophet in Prince Caspian, tells Caspian that the stars foretell the end of Miraz's rule and brings his three sons to fight; Roonwit appears in The Last Battle.