And here Art supports Mythology; for clearly the representation of the
Centaurs in semi-animal form cannot be dissociated from their name of
Pheres; the same idea must lie at the root of both. If then the name
Pheres was given to the Centaurs because of their violence or lust, the
animal portion of them in the representations of early Greek Art should
have been such as to express one or both of those qualities. But what
do we find? In discussing the development of the horse-centaur in art,
Miss Harrison[648] points out that though in horse-loving Athens, by
the middle of the fifth century B.C., the equine element predominated
in the composite being, ‘in archaic representations the reverse is the
case. The Centaurs are in art what they are in reality, _men_ with
men’s legs and feet, but they are shaggy mountain-men with some of the
qualities and habits of beasts; so to indicate this in a horse-loving
country they have the hind-quarters of a horse awkwardly tacked on
to their human bodies.’ Now the particular ‘qualities and habits of
beasts,’ if such there be, in the Centaurs must be their violence
and lust. Are these then adequately symbolised by ‘the hind-quarters
of a horse awkwardly tacked on to their human bodies’? In scenes of
conflict, in the archaic representations, it is the human part of the
Centaur which bears the brunt of the fight, and the weapon used is a
branch of a tree, the primitive human weapon; the Centaur fights as a
man fights. If he had been depicted with horns or teeth or claws as his
weapons of offence, then the animal part of him would fairly symbolise
his bestial violence; but who could discover a trace of pugnacity in
his equine loins and rump, hind legs and tail? Or again if pugnacity
is not the particular quality which caused the Centaurs to be named
‘Beasts’ and to be pourtrayed in half-animal form, is it their lewdness
which art thus endeavoured to suggest? Surely, if the early artists
had understood that the name Pheres was a contemptuous designation of
a tribe bestial in their lust, Greek taste was not so intolerant of
ithyphallic representations that they need have had recourse to so
cryptic a symbol as the hind-quarters of a horse. But if it be supposed
that, while a sense of modesty, unknown to later generations, deterred
those early artists from a more obvious method of expressing their
meaning, the idea of the Centaurs’ lewdness was really present to
their minds, then Chiron too falls under the same condemnation and is
tainted with the same vice as the rest. ‘A black-figured vase,’ says
Prof. Ridgeway, _à propos_ of the virtues, not of the vices, of this
one Centaur, ‘shows the hero (Peleus) bringing the little Achilles to
Chiron, who is depicted as a venerable old man with a white beard and
clad in a long robe from under the back of which issues the hinder
part of a diminutive pony, the equine portion being a mere adjunct to
the complete human figure[649].’ So far then as the animal part is
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