Cen'taurs

Cen'taurs ('bull-killers'), a wild race of men who inhabited, in early times, the forests and mountains of Thessaly, and whose chief occupation was bull-hunting. Homer, the first who mentions them, describes them merely as savage, gigantic, and covered with hair. They do not appear as monsters, half-man and half-horse, until the age of Pindar. The most ancient account of the Hippocentaur, sometimes considered as distinct, but more often confounded with the Centaurs, is that they were the offspring of Magnesian mares and Centaurus, himself the offspring of Ixion and a cloud. The Centaurs are celebrated in Greek mythology on account of their struggles with the Lapithæ (q.v.), and with Hercules. The most famous was Chiron, the teacher of Achilles and other heroes. In works of art the Centaurs were represented as men from the head to the loins, with the rest of the body that of a horse. It is worth mentioning that the Mexicans, who had no native horses, when they first saw the Spaniards on horseback, believed that the horse and man together made but one animal.