In Greek mythology, the centaurs (Greek: Κένταυροι) are a race part human and part horse, with a horse's body, including all four legs, and a human head and torso with arms. The human portion is joined at the waist to the horse's shoulders where the head and neck would be.
The general character of centaurs is that of wild, lawless and inhospitable beings, the slaves of their animal passions. Two exceptions to this rule were Pholus and Chiron, who expressed their "good" nature, wise and kind centaurs. They are variously ...
The armchair anthropologist and writer Robert Graves speculated that the Centaurs of Greek myth were a dimly-remembered, pre-Hellenic fraternal earth cult who had the horse as a totem. A similar theory was incorporated into Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea.
Other sources speculate that the idea of centaurs came from the first reaction of a non-riding culture, as in the Minoan Aegean world, to nomads who were mounted on horses. The theory goes that such riders would appear as half-man, half-animal. Horse taming and horseback culture evolved first in the southern steppe grasslands of Central Asi ...
Centaurs have appeared many times and in many places in modern times, in for example Artemis Fowl, Fantasia, the Narnia books, In the Service of Dragons, and Harry Potter.
In fantasy novels the view of centaurs has been changed from barbarism to an honorable race that practices breeding and other actions relative to that of animals.
Though the Greek word kentauros is said to be composed of a single morpheme— perhaps not a Greek one in its origin—, a suffix -taur has been invented by writers and game designers in the late 20th century for other fantasy animal-huma ...
