Introduction
The centaur is customarily depicted as a creature with the head, arms and torso of a human and the body of a horse with four equine legs. The centaur has also been depicted in Greek vase paintings, however, in the form of a human body terminating in human forelegs and feet or hooves with an equine barrel and hind legs extending behind the waist and buttocks.
Significance of Study
- 1. Babylonia Centaur Accounts
It is thought that the concept of the centaur may have originated in Babylonia, in present-day Iraq, during the Kassite dynasty (ca. 1595-1155 B.C.).[1] The Kassites came to Babylonia from the Zagros Mountains in present-day Iran and among their surviving artefacts is a type of stone monument, known as a kudurru or narû, which contains inscriptions in cuneiform text and sculptured relief imagery with figurative scenes. Among the different beings and composite creatures depicted on these stones are those that are half-man and half-horse
The Hittites, who controlled much of Anatolia in present-day Turkey and neighbouring regions between ca. 1650 and 1200 B.C., may have brought the centaur to Mycenaean Greece through their trade relations with the Mycenaeans.[3] Alternatively, the concept of a centaur may have evolved independently in Greece rather than being imported from another culture with one theory being that the centaur could represent the first reactions of the horseless inhabitants of ancient Greece to horse-riding invaders who believed that the horse and rider to be one being.[4]
There is a marked difference between the representation of the centaur Chiron (and, to a lesser extent, the centaur Pholus) and the rest of the centaurs in Greek culture with Chiron being ‘perceived as wise, benevolent to mankind, and universally beloved’.[5] In the epic poem Iliad, by the 8th century B.C. poet Homer, Chiron is ‘a celebrated healer and friend to man (4.218-19), the teacher of heroes (11.831), the maker of sophisticated weapons (16.143-44; 19.389-91), and, in summation, “the most righteous of the Centaurs” (11.831)’.[6] The centaur population as a whole, in contrast, was associated with drunkenness and physical, particularly sexual, violence.
Ancient Mesopotamia
Figures depicting a centaur armed with bow and arrow on Mesopotamian boundary stones date as far back as the second millennium BC. In early legends, this figure may not yet have been tied to a constellation, but the depiction of an archer-centaur overlapping a scorpion matches the position of Sagittarius and Scorpius in the night sky.
A boundary stone cataloged as S12/London-101 shows a centaur with two tails (one being that of a scorpion) and two heads (one being the same as the panther-head of Nergal).
The Babylonians identified Sagittarius as the god Nergal, a centaur-like creature firing an arrow from a bow. It is generally depicted with wings, two heads, one panther head and one human head, as well as a scorpion’s stinger raised above its more conventional horse’s tail.
“Long before the more famous centaurs of Greek myth, the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians imagined a different kind of half-human creature of a much more fearsome sort, borne of the will of a chaotic, primeval deity, which were the scorpion-men. According to the Enuma-Elis, the primordial sea-serpent goddess Tiamat created an army of scorpion-men to fight the young gods, led by Marduk, who had murdered her husband Abzu (because Abzu himself had attempted to murder the young gods). Unlike in Egypt, Mesopotamian gods were mostly human-like, and so the beastly scorpion-men represented a force of chaos. Defeated by Marduk, they were apparently reduced to perpetual sentry-duty for the gods, since they are found guarding the gates of the underworld at Mount Mashu through which the sun-god Shamash rose and set every day. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh meets a pair, a male and his wife, at the mountains of Mashu guarding the gates to the underworld. Despite their colossal and intimidating appearance, they do not hinder Gilgamesh from proceeding, but rather voice a consideration on human fate and advise Gilgamesh on the dangers that lie ahead. Apparently they were invoked as guardian entities against evil and chaos by Mesopotamian people which is surprising.
They were depicted as having the upper body of a person, bird-like legs and even wings, and a tail of a scorpion. They were referred to as girtablilu or aqrabuamelu, and I’d like to know if anyone can clarify on the exact meaning of these words.
I’ve always liked scorpions, so I kinda like this myth. Created as agents of chaos, the scorpion-men were were defeated but rehabilitated into a new position, which although obviously subordinate, might not be as bad as being obliterated outright. As higher beings but not all-powerful, perhaps the young gods had no means to, or interest in carrying out such a task, so this would have been a convenient compromise, though this is speculation on my part. Either way they were evidently not seen as simple brute monsters despite what their appearance and chaotic origins would suggest, apparently retaining a somewhat complex and ambiguous personality, actually helping Gilgamesh in his endeavour instead of hostilizing him, which would perhaps have been pointless, maybe because they saw him as no threat. Though created from chaos, the ancient Mesopotamians don’t seem to have regarded them as beings of mindless destruction. Long before the more famous centaurs of Greek myth, the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians imagined a different kind of half-human creature of a much more fearsome sort, borne of the will of a chaotic, primeval deity, which were the scorpion-men. According to the Enuma-Elis, the primordial sea-serpent goddess Tiamat created an army of scorpion-men to fight the young gods, led by Marduk, who had murdered her husband Abzu (because Abzu himself had attempted to murder the young gods). Unlike in Egypt, Mesopotamian gods were mostly human-like, and so the beastly scorpion-men represented a force of chaos. Defeated by Marduk, they were apparently reduced to perpetual sentry-duty for the gods, since they are found guarding the gates of the underworld at Mount Mashu through which the sun-god Shamash rose and set every day. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh meets a pair, a male and his wife, at the mountains of Mashu guarding the gates to the underworld. Despite their colossal and intimidating appearance, they do not hinder Gilgamesh from proceeding, but rather voice a consideration on human fate and advise Gilgamesh on the dangers that lie ahead. Apparently they were invoked as guardian entities against evil and chaos by Mesopotamian people which is surprising.
They were depicted as having the upper body of a person, bird-like legs and even wings, and a tail of a scorpion. They were referred to as girtablilu or aqrabuamelu, and I’d like to know if anyone can clarify on the exact meaning of these words.
I’ve always liked scorpions, so I kinda like this myth. Created as agents of chaos, the scorpion-men were were defeated but rehabilitated into a new position, which although obviously subordinate, might not be as bad as being obliterated outright. As higher beings but not all-powerful, perhaps the young gods had no means to, or interest in carrying out such a task, so this would have been a convenient compromise, though this is speculation on my part. Either way they were evidently not seen as simple brute monsters despite what their appearance and chaotic origins would suggest, apparently retaining a somewhat complex and ambiguous personality, actually helping Gilgamesh in his endeavour instead of hostilizing him, which would perhaps have been pointless, maybe because they saw him as no threat. Though created from chaos, the ancient Mesopotamians don’t seem to have regarded them as beings of mindless destruction.
Who were the Kassites and how are they related to our search for the origins of the war against the centaurs? What we do know is that just after the Hittite Empire sacked Babylon in 1595 B.C., the Kassites swept in, ensconced themselves as a military aristocracy, and proceeded to rule Babylonia for the next five hundred years. Because the Kassites adopted the popular Akkadian language as an effort to assure their Babylonian subjects that they were legitimate rulers, we know very little about them in their own language (the few traces of their original language appear in the names of deities and, curiously, horses). From the scraps scholars have they are fairly confident that the Kassite language was not Semitic, and likely did not even fall into the Indo-Aryan group of languages, what linguists call a “language isolate”, that is a natural human language with no genealogical relationship to any other identifiable language, and this is not for lack of trying to classify it. Nobody actually knows where they came from, and their first appearance in the historical record is when an 18th Century B.C. Kassite invasion of Babylonia was repelled by Samsu-Iluna, son of Hammurabi. It is said they swept out of the Zagros Mountains in Lorestan (western Iraq). Two hundred years later, the Kassites took advantage of the battering of the Babylonians by the Hittites, and wound up in charge for a few centuries, finally succumbing to the neighboring Elamites in the 12th Century B.C. It is noted by Strabo, that the Kassites melted back into the Zagros Mountains from whence they came, but they reappear later, regularly raiding the Achaemenid Persians, fighting for the Persians against Alexander in 331 B.C., contributing 13,000 archers to the army of Elam (a vassal state of Parthia around 300 B.C.), and finally noted by 2nd Century geographer Ptolemy as residing near the Elymean regions. Then they vanish from history.
The Kassites concern us for a number of reasons. It is widely accepted that they introduced the horse to Mesopotamia. The Kassites considered the horse a sacred animal, and may have even worshiped the horse. And they kept drawing pictures of centaurs. Now first, I want you to disabuse yourselves of the modern notion that it isn’t an act of insanity to try and ride a horse. I’ve worked on horse farms, and while the domesticated equine may seem relatively placid these days, I assure you they are not, and to this day maintain a repertoire of nasty little tricks designed to prevent you from mounting them. We only began domesticating them around 4000 B.C. This is because you largely must have a death wish to look at a four-legged beast that is five feet tall, weighs 1000 pounds, runs at 30 miles per hour, and can kick you into next week, and decide that you probably need to get on top of it. Yet somehow, the Kassites thought this was a good idea. And no doubt, after many a would-be rider had his skull crushed while trying to convince a horse to cooperate, they developed a notion that horses were sacred animals. Another thing the Kassites were known for, as they jockeyed with Egypt and Assyria for supremacy in the Near East, was marking the boundaries of their lands with stones. And these stones were frequently adorned with pictures of centaurs. Anthropologists interpret these centaur motifs as representative of guardian spirits, as anthropologists are wont to do whenever they encounter an inexplicable monster, but just perhaps the Kassites were being quite literal and suggesting that anybody who messed with them better be ready for some serious mythological mayhem at the hand of monsters with which they were all too familiar (and perhaps got the whole idea of riding a horse from), that is a strange race of half-men, half horses.
1.2 Homer ‘s recorded Accounts of Centaurs
The earliest references to the Centaurs—which come from the Homeric epics—do not say anything about their appearance, though they do label Centaurs as “beasts” and clearly distinguish between Centaurs and humans.[10] It would seem, then, that Centaurs had at least some animal attributes from the very beginning.
Then Antinous, son of Eupeithes, answered him: “Eurymachus, this shall not be so, and thou of thyself too knowest it. For to-day throughout the land is the feast of the god1—a holy feast. Who then would bend a bow? Nay, quietly [260] set it by; and as for the axes—what if we should let them all stand as they are? No man, methinks, will come to the hall of Odysseus, son of Laertes, and carry them off. Nay, come, let the bearer pour drops for libation into the cups, that we may pour libations, and lay aside the curved bow. [265] And in the morning bid Melanthius, the goatherd, to bring she-goats, far the best in all the herds, that we may lay thigh-pieces on the altar of Apollo, the famed archer; and so make trial of the bow, and end the contest.” So spoke Antinous, and his word was pleasing to them. [270] Then the heralds poured water over their hands, and youths filled the bowls brim full of drink, and served out to all, pouring first drops for libation into the cups. But when they had poured libations, and had drunk to their heart’s content, then with crafty mind Odysseus of many wiles spoke among them: [275] “Hear me, wooers of the glorious queen, that I may say what the heart in my breast bids me. To Eurymachus most of all do I make my prayer, and to godlike Antinous, since this word also of his was spoken aright, namely that for the present you cease to try the bow, and leave the issue with the gods; [280] and in the morning the god will give the victory to whomsoever he will. But come, give me the polished bow, that in your midst I may prove my hands and strength, whether I have yet might such as was of old in my supple limbs, or whether by now my wanderings and lack of food have destroyed it.” [285] So he spoke, and they all waxed exceeding wroth, fearing lest he might string the polished bow. And Antinous rebuked him, and spoke and addressed him: “Ah, wretched stranger, thou hast no wit, no, not a trace. Art thou not content [290] that thou feastest undisturbed in our proud company, and lackest naught of the banquet, but hearest our words and our speech, while no other that is a stranger and beggar hears our words? It is wine that wounds thee, honey-sweet wine, which works harm to others too, if one takes it in great gulps, and drinks beyond measure. [295] It was wine that made foolish even the centaur, glorious Eurytion, in the hall of greathearted Peirithous, when he went to the Lapithae: and when his heart had been made foolish with wine, in his madness he wrought evil in the house of Peirithous. Then grief seized the heroes, [300] and they leapt up and dragged him forth through the gateway, when they had shorn off his ears and his nostrils with the pitiless bronze, and he, made foolish in heart, went his way, bearing with him the curse of his sin in the folly of his heart. From hence the feud arose between the centaurs and mankind; but it was for himself first that he found evil, being heavy with wine. [305] Even so do I declare great harm for thee, if thou shalt string the bow, for thou shalt meet with no kindness at the hands of anyone in our land, but we will send thee straightway in a black ship to king Echetus, the maimer of all men, from whose hands thou shalt in no wise escape alive. Nay, then, be still, [310] and drink thy wine, and do not strive with men younger than thou.”
Homer refers to centaurs in the Iliad as ‘beast men’ or ‘hairy beast men’ (1.268; 2.743), but does not allude to any specifically equine characteristic when discussing them.[7] Pindar (ca. 518-446 B.C.) is the ‘first poet to describe centaurs explicitly as semi-equine and to assign them myths of origin’.[8] Pindar outlines the origin of the centaur race in his lyric poem Pythian 2. The Thessalian king Ixion seduced Nephele, a cloud nymph made by the god Zeus in the image of his wife Hera to deceive Ixion into believing that he was seducing Hera after Ixion had made advances towards her, which resulted in the birth of a son called Centaurus. Centaurus later sired the centaurs by mating with Magnesian mares from Mount Pelion.
Pindar gives a completely different parentage to Chiron in Pythian 3 stating that he was the son of the Titan Cronus and the Oceanid Philyra. Philyra had taken the form of a mare to escape Cronus’ advances towards her, but he became a stallion to pursue and mate with her. Chiron is depicted with a complete human body with or without equines ears and an equine barrel and hind legs attached to his rump in Greek vase paintings and he is usually fully clothed. Chiron had been instructed by the gods Apollo and Artemis and was renowned for his wisdom and skill in hunting, medicine, music and the art of prophecy. Throughout Greek mythology, there are many stories of infant heroes, including Achilles and Heracles (Hercules), being brought to Chiron for tutoring. The parents of Achilles, Thetis and Peleus, marry outside the home of Chiron, which was a cave on Mount Pelion.
The accounts of the deaths of Chiron and Pholus vary, but both were killed by arrows belonging to Heracles that were soaked in the venomous blood of the Lernaean Hydra. Pholus was entertaining Heracles with wine at his cave when the other centaurs, driven into a mad frenzy by the aroma, attacked. Heracles killed most of them with his arrows and the rest fled to seek refuge at Chiron’s cave. Heracles pursued them and shot an arrow that accidentally wounded Chiron. Chiron was immortal, but he surrendered his immortality rather than live in perpetual agony. Pholus was killed when an arrow he was examining fell on his foot.
The death of Heracles himself also involved a centaur and the venomous blood of the Lernaean Hydra. The centaur Nessus was employed in ferrying passengers across the river Evenus in Aetolia. Heracles engaged Nessus’ services to carry his wife Deianira across the river, but Nessus attempted to abduct her and was shot by Heracles with a poisonous arrow. Before dying, Nessus instructed Deianira to save his blood as a charm to ensure Heracles’ faithfulness to her. Daeianira preserved Nessus’ blood, which was tainted with the blood of the Lernaean Hydra, by dipping a tunic into it. Later, Deianira gives Heracles the blood-soaked tunic when she feared that he had taken a lover. The garment clung to Heracles’ skin and burned him so painfully when he wore it, that he built a funeral pyre and immolated himself.
In the first book of the Iliad, Nestor attempts to intervene in the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon. He eventually tells both men to simmer down—Achilles should act insubordinately and Agamemnon shouldn’t take Briseis. Neither of them listen to him. The reason—beyond the fact that neither of them are in a compromising state of mind—may in part be because of the story Nestor tells.
Il. 1.259–273
“But listen to me: both of you are younger than me; for long before have I accompanied men better than even you and they never disregarded me. For I never have seen those sort of men since, nor do I expect to see them; men like Perithoos and Dryas, the shepherd of the host, and Kaineus and Exadios and godly Polyphemos and Aigeus’ son Theseus, who was equal to the gods; indeed these were the strongest of mortal men who lived—they were the strongest and they fought with the strongest, mountain-inhabiting beasts, and they destroyed them violently. And I accompanied them when I left Pylos far off from a distant land when they summoned me themselves; and I fought on my own. No one could fight with them, none of those mortals who now are on the earth. Even they listened to my counsel and heeded my speech.”
ἀλλὰ πίθεσθ’· ἄμφω δὲ νεωτέρω ἐστὸν ἐμεῖο·
ἤδη γάρ ποτ’ ἐγὼ καὶ ἀρείοσιν ἠέ περ ὑμῖν
ἀνδράσιν ὡμίλησα, καὶ οὔ ποτέ μ’ οἵ γ’ ἀθέριζον.
οὐ γάρ πω τοίους ἴδον ἀνέρας οὐδὲ ἴδωμαι,
οἷον Πειρίθοόν τε Δρύαντά τε ποιμένα λαῶν
Καινέα τ’ ᾿Εξάδιόν τε καὶ ἀντίθεον Πολύφημον
Θησέα τ’ Αἰγεΐδην, ἐπιείκελον ἀθανάτοισιν·
κάρτιστοι δὴ κεῖνοι ἐπιχθονίων τράφεν ἀνδρῶν·
κάρτιστοι μὲν ἔσαν καὶ καρτίστοις ἐμάχοντο
φηρσὶν ὀρεσκῴοισι καὶ ἐκπάγλως ἀπόλεσσαν.
καὶ μὲν τοῖσιν ἐγὼ μεθομίλεον ἐκ Πύλου ἐλθὼν
τηλόθεν ἐξ ἀπίης γαίης· καλέσαντο γὰρ αὐτοί·
καὶ μαχόμην κατ’ ἔμ’ αὐτὸν ἐγώ· κείνοισι δ’ ἂν οὔ τις
τῶν οἳ νῦν βροτοί εἰσιν ἐπιχθόνιοι μαχέοιτο·
καὶ μέν μευ βουλέων ξύνιεν πείθοντό τε μύθῳ·
Schol. Ad Il. 23.630b ex. 1-6: “[Nestor] always uses appropriate examples. For, whenever he wants to encourage someone to enter one-on-one combat, he speaks of the story of Ereuthaliôn (7.136-56); when he wanted to rouse Achilles to battle, he told the story of the Elean war (11.671¬–761). And here in the games for Patroklos, he reminds them of an ancient funeral contest.”
ex. ὡς ὁπότε κρείοντ'<—᾿Επειοί>: ἀεὶ οἰκείοις παραδείγμασι χρῆται· ὅταν μὲν γάρ τινα ἐπὶ μονομάχιον ἐξαναστῆσαι θέλῃ, τὰ περὶ ᾿Ερευθαλίωνα (sc. Η 136—56) λέγει, ὅταν δὲ ᾿Αχιλλέα ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, τὰ περὶ τὸν ᾿Ηλειακὸν πόλεμον (sc. Λ 671—761)·
καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἐπὶ Πατρόκλῳ ἄθλοις παλαιοῦ ἐπιταφίου μέμνηται ἀγῶνος.
b(BCE3E4)T
The scholia also assert that such use of stories from the past is typical of and appropriate to elders:
Schol. ad Il. 9.447b ex. 1-2 : “The elderly are storytellers and they persuade with examples from the past. In other cases, the tale assuages the anger…”
μυθολόγοι οἱ γέροντες καὶ παραδείγμασι παραμυθούμενοι. ἄλλως τε ψυχαγωγεῖ τὴν ὀργὴν ὁ μῦθος.
Not just elders of course! Singers and teachers are positioned as authorities who should (and do) use narrative examples to form the characters of the young (the first comment comes in response to Achilles’ playing of the lyre; the second comment is prompted by Phoinix’s tale of Meleager presented to Achilles in the 9th book of the Iliad:
Schol. A ad. Il. 9.189b ex. 1-2: “Klea andrôn: [this is because] it is right to be ever-mindful of good men. For singers make their audiences wise through ancient narratives.”
ex. κλέα ἀνδρῶν: ὅτι ἀειμνήστους δεῖ τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς εἶναι· οἱ γὰρ ἀοιδοὶ διὰ τῶν παλαιῶν ἱστοριῶν τοὺς ἀκούοντας ἐσωφρόνιζον.
Schol. ad Il. 9.447b ex. 1-2 : “The elderly are storytellers and they persuade with examples from the past. In other cases, the tale assuages the anger…”
μυθολόγοι οἱ γέροντες καὶ παραδείγμασι παραμυθούμενοι. ἄλλως τε ψυχαγωγεῖ τὴν ὀργὴν ὁ μῦθος.
For Nestor’s speech, the ancient critics do concede that there is some rhetorical grace in the elder’s choice of detail:
Schol. bT ad Il. 1.271c ex. 3-5: “[Nestor] does not mention that Peleus [Achilles’ father] was Agamemnon’s friend so that he doesn’t appear to be rebuking Achilles if his father obeyed him some, but he does not.”
Πηλέως δὲ οὐκ ἐμνήσθη ὡς ᾿Αγαμέμνονος φίλος, ἵνα μὴ δοκῇ ἐλέγχειν ᾿Αχιλλέα, εἴ γε ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ τι πέπεισται, ὁ δὲ οὔ. b(BCE3E4)T
But in explaining the details of Nestor’s speech—that he is alluding to the mythical battle of the Lapiths vs. the Centaurs—the scholiast may hit upon part of the problem of Nestor’s example:
Schol. T ad Il. 1.266 ex 1-2: “These were the strongest men: but they were the strongest in competing against the remaining beasts”.
ex. | ex. <κάρτιστοι δὴ κεῖνοι—ἀπόλεσσαν:> κάρτιστοι μὲν οὗτοι τῶν ἀνδρῶν· ἐκεῖνοι δὲ κράτιστοι πρὸς τὰ λοιπὰ συγκρινόμενοι θηρία. b(BCE3E4)TT
Unlike Nestor’s other tales, this one does not fit the context. He uses it in an attempt to establish his own heroic bona fides. But what his audience(s) hear is some rambling tale about fighting beasts they are not fighting. The conflict is between men who are supposed to be on the same side.
As an aside, Xenophanes would prefer we avoid talking about Centaurs altogether:
Xenophanes, fr. B1 13-24
“First, it is right for merry men to praise the god
with righteous tales and cleansing words
after they have poured libations and prayed to be able to do
what is right: in fact, these things are easier to do,
instead of sacrilege. It is right as well to drink as much as you can
and still go home without help, unless you are very old.
It is right to praise a man who shares noble ideas when drinking
so that we remember and work towards excellence.
It is not right to narrate the wars of Titans or Giants
nor again of Centaurs, the fantasies of our forebears,
Nor of destructive strife. There is nothing useful in these tales.
It is right always to keep in mind good thoughts of the gods.”
χρὴ δὲ πρῶτον μὲν θεὸν ὑμνεῖν εὔφρονας ἄνδρας
εὐφήμοις μύθοις καὶ καθαροῖσι λόγοις,
σπείσαντάς τε καὶ εὐξαμένους τὰ δίκαια δύνασθαι
πρήσσειν• ταῦτα γὰρ ὦν ἐστι προχειρότερον,
οὐχ ὕβρεις• πίνειν δ’ ὁπόσον κεν ἔχων ἀφίκοιο
οἴκαδ’ ἄνευ προπόλου μὴ πάνυ γηραλέος.
ἀνδρῶν δ’ αἰνεῖν τοῦτον ὃς ἐσθλὰ πιὼν ἀναφαίνει,
ὡς ἦι μνημοσύνη καὶ τόνος ἀμφ’ ἀρετῆς,
οὔ τι μάχας διέπειν Τιτήνων οὐδὲ Γιγάντων
οὐδὲ Κενταύρων, πλάσμα τῶν προτέρων,
ἢ στάσιας σφεδανάς• τοῖς οὐδὲν χρηστὸν ἔνεστιν•
θεῶν προμηθείην αἰὲν ἔχειν ἀγαθήν.
1.3 THE KENTAUROI (Centaurs)
THE KENTAUROI (Centaurs) were a tribe of half-man, half-horse savages who inhabited the mountains and forests of Thessalian Magnesia. They were a primitive race who made their homes in caves, hunted wild animals for food and armed themselves with rocks and tree branches. The Kentauroi were spawned by the cloud-nymphe Nephele after she was violated by the impious Lapith king Ixion. were spawned by the cloud-nymph Nephele after she was violated by the impious Lapith king Ixion. She deposited her double-formed brood on Mount Pelion where they were nursed by the daughters of the immortal kentauros Kheiron (Chiron)
The Kentauroi were invited to attend the wedding of their half-brother Peirithoos (Pirithous) but became drunk at the festivities and attempted to carry off the bride and other female guests. In the battle which ensued most of the Kentauroi were destroyed.