Centaurs: The Original Frat Boys

Once upon a time when I was a wee-jabberwock I would spend my time with my friends in the section of our yard under my apple tree known as The Centaur Training School, where we trained with quarter staffs (aka branches we picked up off the ground).  Suffice it to say my childhood image of centaurs was very much a combination of Disney's Fantasia and  the constellation of Sagittarius, Chiron.  So I've done some research recently and  it turns out Chiron is really the exception to the rule when it came to centaurs.  Chiron (K-eye-ron) valued knowledge and learning.  He was a healer and became such a celebrated tutor everyone wanted their sons to be taught by him.  Chiron taught his pupils music, hunting, medicine, how to ride, play harp and throw javelins. His students included great heroes such as Heracles and Achilles.  Chiron even gave up his immortality to save Prometheus (Morford 60).

Aside from Chiron though, centaurs were pretty much the Frat boys of Greek Mythology!
Centaurs are the representations of wild passion.  They love fighting, feasting and making merry, especially with women, in fact, "the centaurs were male in the extreme, and even their attributes of drunkenness and lust correspond to certain Greek notions of undiluted masculinity" (duBois 31).  According to scholars Pidar, the poet, was the first account of how Centaurs came to be.  It starts with the lusty fellow, Ixion, "the first to shed kindred blood" (Morford 444).  Although Zeus forgave him and allowed him a place in the heaven's Ixion tried to rape Hera.  Per Hera's request, Zeus fashioned a cloud to look like Hera and Ixion slept with it.  The cloud gave birth to a human looking child, Centaurus, who grew up to be a wild man that detested the binds of social contracts, marriage in particular.  Centaurus mated with the mares of the Mt. Pelion slopes and thus the race of Centaurs came into being.

Given their passionate and wild origins, it's no wonder centaurs were not known for being good party guests.  They often got carried away with drink and women - sometimes literally carrying away the women!  The centaur Nessus tried to carry away Heracles' wife, Deianira, and rape her once - once!  Heracles shot Nessus with an arrow dipped in Hydra poison and as he died, Nessus told Deianira to take some of his blood and if she ever doubted Heracles' faithfulness to put the cloak, soaked in Nessus' blood, on him and he would fall back in love with her.  When Deianira discovered that her husband had a mistress she put the cloak soaked in Nessus blood on Heracles who died almost immediately - turns out the centaur's blood is super poisonous due to the poison of the arrow.  And thus Nessus had his revenge!

Female centaurs were rarely mentioned or seen in classical stories and art (this could be why Centaurs stole human women quite a lot).  The only ancient account of female centers, according to scholars, is in Ovid's metamorphoses.  Ovid highlights Hylonome, "loveliest lady centaur in all the deep woods" (Ovid 338).  According to Ovid, Hylonome and her husband Cyllarus were exceptional from the typical centaurs as both were quite beautiful "as far as centaurs can" be, Hylonome would weave flowers in her hair and bathe in the river to look her best for her lover, not so unlike the centaurette's of Disney's Fantasia (Ovid 338).  She fought side by side with her lover and when he was pierced by a javelin Hylonome held and kissed him 'til his last breath, where upon she threw herself on the same javelin that had killed her beloved.  This romantic story makes Hylonome easily my new favorite character of Greek mythology.

Between the lack of centaurette's and the ungentleman like behavior of the majority of centaurs, the actual mythology is very different from the Disney Fantasia version of centaurs that I grew up with...

Although, I now like to think that my favorite centaurette and her mate are Hylonome and Cyllarus.
 

Resources:

DuBois, Page.  Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-history of the great chain of being.  Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 1982. Print.

Hinds, Kathryn.  Sphinxes and Centaurs.  New York: Cavendish Square, 2014. Print.

Morford, Mark P.O. and Robert J. Lenardon. Classical Mythology. Third Edition. New York: Longman, 1985. Print.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing, 2010.  books.google.com. Web. 23 September 2014.

Pindar. Pythian Odes II. Trans. Sir J. E. Sandys. Harvard University Press, 1968. Print.