The Cloud-Born Centaurs

"... put kind medicines on it,
good ones, which they say you have been told of by Achilleus,
since Cheiron, most righteous of the Centaurs, told him about them."
-- Homer, poet, Iliad, Book XI: 830-832, 8th century B.C.

"Decide no suit until you have heard both sides speak." -- Hesiod, poet, The Precepts of Chiron, 8th century B.C. (quoted in Plutarch's Morals)

"The son of bold Ixion, Pirithous wedding Hippodame, had asked as guests the cloud-born centaurs to recline around the ordered tables, in a cool cave, set under some shading trees. Thessalian chiefs were there and I [Nestor] myself was with them there." -- Ovid, poet, Metamorphoses, Book XII, 1st century B.C.

"The Centaurs, however, becoming drunken assaulted the female guests and lay with them by violence, whereupon both Theseus and Lapiths, incensed by such a display of lawlessness, slew not a few of them and drove the rest out of the city. Because of this the Centaurs gathered their forces, made a campaign against Lapiths, and slew many of them, the survivors fleeing into Mt. Pholoe in Arcadia and ultimately escaping from there to Cape Malea, where they made their home. And the Centaurs, elated by these successes, made Mt. Pholoe the base of their operations, plundered the Greeks who passed by, and slew many of their neighbours." -- Diodorus Siculus, historian, The Library of History, Book IV, 71:3-4, 1st century B.C.

"Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats: some had horses' feet: while others united the hind quarters of a horse with the body of a man, resembling in shape the hippocentaurs." -- [Lucius C.] Alexander "Polyhistor", tutor, 1st century B.C.

"In the sanctuary of Theseus is also a painting of the battle between the Centaurs and the Lapithae. Theseus has already killed a Centaur, but elsewhere the fighting is still undecided." -- Pausanias, geographer, Description of Greece, Book I: Attica, 2nd century

"956 B.C. There was a war between the Lapithae and the people of Thessaly, who are called Centaurs." -- Isaac Newton, alchemist/mathematician, Revised History of Ancient Kingdom's, 1721

Centaurs Identified In Antiquity

Centaurus

Pholus

Asbolus

Nessus

Cyllarus

Hylonome

Chiron