49 Fun Facts About Centaurs

Which James Bond actor played the centaur Chiron in the 2010 film Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief?

Pierce Brosnan spends his first scenes as Mr. Brunner, Percy's Latin teacher, before the mild schoolmaster is revealed as Chiron, trainer of heroes at Camp Half-Blood.

Which Greek region was the centaurs' traditional home?

Thessaly's wooded mountains were the centaurs' country until they lost their great battle with a neighbouring tribe and were driven out, which is why later tales find them in the Peloponnese.

The centaurs were said to spring from Ixion's union with what, shaped by Zeus to look like Hera?

A cloud: Zeus moulded it into Hera's likeness to test his guest, and Ixion, pardoned for murder and welcomed to the gods' table, walked straight into the trap.

Which lyric poet's ode for Hieron of Syracuse tells how Ixion fathered the centaur race?

Pindar holds Ixion up to the tyrant as a warning: in his second Pythian ode the punished sinner calls out to all mortals to repay a benefactor with kindness.

What was Ixion's eternal punishment for lusting after Hera?

Bound to a spinning fiery wheel, Ixion at first whirled across the sky; later tradition moved the wheel to the underworld. In one telling Zeus struck only after he boasted of bedding Hera.

Which Roman poet has Nestor recount the Lapith-centaur wedding brawl at length?

Ovid gives the tale to Nestor in Metamorphoses 12 as an eyewitness: the old king, claiming more than two hundred years of life, says he was a wedding guest and fought the centaurs himself.

Which hero was smuggled as a newborn to Chiron's cave to hide him from his usurping uncle Pelias?

Jason: his parents staged a funeral, wailing as if the baby had died, and sent him away by night; after twenty years with the centaur he came home to claim the throne Pelias had seized.

The poet Nonnus wrote of horned centaurs born on which island when Aphrodite slipped from Zeus's grasp?

Cyprus was Aphrodite's own island, and in Nonnus's epic its soil bore the ox-horned centaurs when Zeus, eluded by the goddess, spilled his seed on the ground.

In which Pixar film is the mother of two elf brothers dating a centaur police officer called Colt Bronco?

Onward is set in a fantasy suburb where technology has made magic obsolete, so Colt Bronco patrols by police car, and the brothers, who dislike him, lead him on a mountain-road chase.

At which Lapith king's wedding, with his friend Theseus among the guests, did centaurs try to carry off the bride?

Pirithous had invited the centaurs as kin: he and they were both said to descend from Ixion, so the brawl over his bride Hippodamia was a family feud before it was a war.

How did the centaurs finally kill Caeneus, the Lapith hero no weapon could wound?

Buried him under tree trunks: Caeneus was born a girl, Caenis, whom Poseidon turned at her own wish into a man no blade could pierce, so the centaurs smothered what they could not stab.

Which Renaissance artist carved the relief Battle of the Centaurs?

Michelangelo carved it as a teenager under Lorenzo de' Medici's patronage and kept it all his life; in old age he said the sight of it made him regret every hour not given to sculpture.

Which museum holds fifteen of the Parthenon's carved panels of Lapiths battling centaurs?

The British Museum has fifteen, removed by Lord Elgin's team in the early 1800s, when Athens was under Ottoman rule; Greece has long campaigned to bring the Parthenon sculptures home.

Scholars usually trace the centaur myth to a people's first sight of what?

Riders on horseback: to people who had never ridden, horse and rider could look like a single creature, the very mistake the Aztecs were reported to make on first meeting Spanish cavalry.

Which Titan fathered the centaur Chiron while in the shape of a stallion?

Cronus sired him on the nymph Philyra, which made Chiron an immortal half-brother of Zeus and set him apart from the other centaurs, the unruly brood descended from Ixion.

Which god was said to have taught the young Chiron hunting and healing?

Apollo and his sister Artemis were said to have schooled Chiron, and the lessons came full circle: Apollo later brought his own infant son Asclepius to the centaur to be raised as a healer.

Which hero of the Trojan War was handed over as a child to be raised by Chiron?

Achilles was reared by the centaur, in Apollodorus's telling, on the innards of lions and wild boars and the marrow of bears instead of milk.

In one telling, whose release from punishment did Chiron buy by giving up his immortality?

Prometheus: in agony from a wound that would not heal, the immortal Chiron chose to die in his place, and the fire-thief chained for defying Zeus went free.

Which hero received an ash spear from Chiron at the wedding where Eris threw her golden apple?

Peleus was given the spear at his wedding to the sea-nymph Thetis; it later went to Troy with his son, and Homer says no other Greek there could handle it.

What smell drove the centaurs mad and into Pholus's cave when Heracles visited?

Fragrant wine: in one telling the jar belonged to all the centaurs in common, so Pholus hesitated to open it, and when Heracles insisted the scent brought its owners charging to the cave.

How did the peaceful Pholus die?

Wounded by one of Heracles' venomous arrows, but by accident: handling a spent one after the fight, Pholus cut himself and died, and his guest buried him at the foot of Mount Pholoe.

Which centaur tried to violate Heracles' wife Deianeira while ferrying her across a river?

Nessus was killed for it, in most tellings by one of Heracles' arrows; dying, he told Deianeira his blood was a love charm, a lie that would one day kill the hero.

The shirt that killed Heracles was soaked in a centaur's blood tainted with which poison?

The centaur's blood on the shirt carried the Lernaean Hydra's venom from the arrow that had killed him; Deianeira sent it to Heracles as a love charm, fearing he loved the captive Iole.

How does the centauress Hylonome die after her mate Cyllarus falls in the wedding battle?

On the spear that killed him: she falls on it and dies holding him, a love story the poet sets amid the slaughter, pausing to show her combing her hair and wearing flowers to please him.

What is a centaur holding a bow called?

A sagittary shares its root with Sagittarius, Latin for archer, and Shakespeare sends a 'dreadful Sagittary' into battle against the Greeks in Troilus and Cressida.

Which swift-footed huntress shot dead the centaurs Rhoecus and Hylaeus when they tried to assault her?

Atalanta, abandoned at birth and suckled by a she-bear, grew up a hunter who was never without her bow; she went on to join the heroes of the Calydonian boar hunt.

Lynels, lion-headed centaur-like beasts with horns, are recurring enemies in which Nintendo game series?

The Legend of Zelda has used Lynels since its first game, whose manual warned that Link's little shield could not stop the creature's sword; in Breath of the Wild they are among the most powerful foes.

Which city's ruler sailed out each Ascension Day aboard the Bucentaur to 'marry' the sea by dropping a ring into it?

Venice's doge dropped the ring with the words 'We wed thee, sea'; the gilded state barge sailed for centuries until the French destroyed the last one in 1798, stripping it for its gold.

Which Florentine painted Pallas and the Centaur around 1482?

Botticelli shows the goddess hauling the centaur by a lock of his hair, read as virtue reining in animal instinct; her dress is patterned with the Medici's three-ring emblem, a clue to who ordered it.

In Dante's Inferno, centaurs patrol a river of boiling blood that punishes which sinners?

The violent stand in the blood, tyrants up to the eyebrows, and the centaurs shoot any who rise too high; their captain Chiron lends one of his troop to carry the living Dante across the ford.

The Hays office made which Disney film hang garlands over the chests of its bare-breasted female centaurs?

Fantasia's Pastoral Symphony was censored twice: garlands covered its 'centaurettes' in 1940, and later releases cut Sunflower, a black servant centaur drawn as a racial stereotype.

Where do the centaurs of the Harry Potter books live?

The Forbidden Forest herd keeps proudly aloof from wizards, yet in Deathly Hallows the centaurs gallop out of the trees to fight the Death Eaters at the Battle of Hogwarts.

Which centaur is driven from his herd for agreeing to teach Divination at Hogwarts?

Firenze took the post when Dumbledore needed a replacement for the sacked Sybill Trelawney, and his own herd, seeing service to humans as treachery, attacked and banished him.

How does Rick Riordan portray most centaurs in Percy Jackson?

As wild party-goers: the Party Ponies love root beer and paintball guns, yet in The Sea of Monsters they storm Luke's ship, the Princess Andromeda, to rescue Percy, brought there by their cousin Chiron.

Which author gave centaurs two stomachs, needing both a man's and a horse's breakfast?

C. S. Lewis explains in The Silver Chair that after a full cooked breakfast a centaur must graze for an hour or so, which is why asking one to stay for the weekend is 'a very serious thing indeed'.

Omega Centauri, the sky's brightest globular cluster, may be the stripped core of what?

A dwarf galaxy: Omega Centauri is about ten times as massive as other big globular clusters and holds several generations of stars, signs that it is the core of a small galaxy stripped of its outer stars.

What did astronomers announce in 2016 circling Proxima Centauri, the faint third star of the Alpha Centauri system?

An Earth-mass planet: Proxima b circles the star every 11 days, at a distance where water could stay liquid on its surface, which makes it the nearest planet beyond the Solar System where life could be looked for.

Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, is what kind of star?

A red dwarf: though it is the Sun's nearest neighbour, just over four light-years away, Proxima is so small and dim that it cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Alpha and Beta Centauri are known as the Pointers because a line through them leads to which star pattern?

The Southern Cross lies just along the line from the two stars; the Ngarrindjeri people of South Australia saw the pair as two sharks chasing a stingray, the Cross itself.

Between which planets does an astronomical centaur orbit?

Astronomical centaurs are small bodies orbiting between Jupiter and Neptune, crossing the giant planets' paths on unstable orbits; they show traits of both asteroids and comets, hence the hybrid name.

What did astronomers discover around Chariklo, the largest known centaur, in a surprise announced in 2014?

Two rings: as Chariklo crossed in front of a star, the starlight flickered briefly just before and just after, betraying rings that only the four giant planets had been known to have.

The Centaur upper stage that launched the Voyager probes was the first rocket stage to burn what?

Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen: the mix was so hard to tame that the first Centaur exploded 54 seconds after liftoff in 1962, yet later ones sent Surveyor, Viking and Voyager on their way.

What lies in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius?

The centre of the Milky Way lies that way, veiled by dust that blocks visible light; astronomers probing it in infrared and radio waves found Sagittarius A*, a black hole of about four million suns.

The Roman poet Lucretius argued centaurs were impossible because a horse and a human differ in what?

How fast they mature: a horse is in its prime at three, Lucretius wrote, when a boy that age is still an infant at the breast, and the horse half would be failing with age just as the human half reached manhood.

Which American novelist's 1963 book The Centaur views a rural Pennsylvania town through the myth?

John Updike wrote it as a homage to his own father, a small-town Pennsylvania schoolteacher, recasting him as the wise centaur of myth; it won the 1964 National Book Award for Fiction.

Which Hogwarts teacher is carried off by a herd of centaurs after insulting them to their faces?

Dolores Umbridge, lured from the castle by Hermione, screamed 'Filthy half-breeds!' at the herd and attacked one of them, so the centaurs seized her and carried her away.

In Dante's Purgatorio, the centaurs who fought Theseus while drunk are held up as a warning against which sin?

Gluttony: on Dante's sixth terrace the penitents starve beneath fruit trees they cannot reach, and a voice from the branches recalls the centaurs' brawl to show that the sin covers drink as well as food.

On which mountain did Chiron mainly live with his wife, the nymph Chariclo?

Pelion was Chiron's mountain, and in Homer the one two young giants tried to heap on Mount Ossa to climb to heaven, the attempt behind the phrase 'to pile Pelion on Ossa'.

The star-gazing centaur Glenstorm offers himself and his three sons for war against the usurper Miraz in which Narnia book?

Prince Caspian: when the boy and his friends come looking for allies, Glenstorm, a prophet who has read the stars, asks at once when the battle is to be joined, before anyone has even thought of a war.