euripides
Centaurs do indeed usually have beards, arms too, from what I can see. I think in Greek depictions the beards indicate that they are barbarians perhaps?? (not much better than the animals they replace?)
There is also a story of Admetus having to harness a wild boar and a lion together, which is relevant as the conflict between dual natures (and indeed the need to master them, together) seems to be a recurring theme in Greek mythology.
http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z12.5.html
The fine/poor horse is also interesting as there are two stories about the origin of Centaurs:
There is another myth which atributes the fatherhood of Centaurs ot Ixion, whose punishment was to be placed on a burning solar wheel, eternally spining across the heavens!!!
There are quite a few Greek representations of Hermes driving a chariot, of course, sometimes with horses and sometimes with a winged figure
A version of another Greek myth says that the chariot was invented by Erichthonius ,who had had inherited his father, Vulcan's lameness and found it necessary to invent some easy means of locomotion... " Hephaestus/Vulcan, the smith god, who fashioned the universe, cast his seed upon the earth (Gaea), who bore the boy child, Erichthonius. Gaia, his mother, then rejected him. Athena, who had no children of her own, adopted him and tended to him lovingly. Athena hid Erichthonius in a box, which she entrusted to the daughters of Cecrops under strict orders not to open it. Filled with curiosity, the girls opened the basket and there they saw the child, with two snakes guarding him, the body of the child terminated in a dragon/serpent's tail. Out of fright at what they saw, the Cecrops sisters jumped off the Acropolis to their deaths. He grew up to be king of Athens..." ( though this story seems to be conflated with the description of Cecrops himself, who in another version are frightened by the snakes, not the dragon tail).
But again there's that man/beast dichotomy. And are those snakes left by Athena connected to Hermes' fighting snakes?
There is also a story of Admetus having to harness a wild boar and a lion together, which is relevant as the conflict between dual natures (and indeed the need to master them, together) seems to be a recurring theme in Greek mythology.
http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z12.5.html
The fine/poor horse is also interesting as there are two stories about the origin of Centaurs:
wikipedia said:Centaurus was the founder of the Centaur race - a breed of half-men, half-horse warriors that inhabited northern Greece. Centaurus was said to be the son of the god Apollo and the nymph Stilbe, daughter of the River God Peneus. Centaurus had a twin brother named Lapithus, founder of the Lapiths. Whereas Lapithus was a noble warrior, Centaurus was born deformed, and spent his adulthood among the mares of Thessaly, mating with them and spawning the Centaurs.
There is another myth which atributes the fatherhood of Centaurs ot Ixion, whose punishment was to be placed on a burning solar wheel, eternally spining across the heavens!!!
There are quite a few Greek representations of Hermes driving a chariot, of course, sometimes with horses and sometimes with a winged figure
A version of another Greek myth says that the chariot was invented by Erichthonius ,who had had inherited his father, Vulcan's lameness and found it necessary to invent some easy means of locomotion... " Hephaestus/Vulcan, the smith god, who fashioned the universe, cast his seed upon the earth (Gaea), who bore the boy child, Erichthonius. Gaia, his mother, then rejected him. Athena, who had no children of her own, adopted him and tended to him lovingly. Athena hid Erichthonius in a box, which she entrusted to the daughters of Cecrops under strict orders not to open it. Filled with curiosity, the girls opened the basket and there they saw the child, with two snakes guarding him, the body of the child terminated in a dragon/serpent's tail. Out of fright at what they saw, the Cecrops sisters jumped off the Acropolis to their deaths. He grew up to be king of Athens..." ( though this story seems to be conflated with the description of Cecrops himself, who in another version are frightened by the snakes, not the dragon tail).
But again there's that man/beast dichotomy. And are those snakes left by Athena connected to Hermes' fighting snakes?