The Satyrs first—they are (what else should they, could they be?) the _Satrae_[968]; and these Satrae-Satyrs have many traits in common with the more mythological Centaurs. The evidence of the coins of Macedonia is instructive. On the coins of Orreskii[969], a centaur, a horse-man, bears off a woman in his arms. At Lete close at hand, with a coinage closely resembling in style, fabric, weight the money of the Orreskii and other Pangaean tribes, the type is the same in _content_, though with an instructive difference of form—a naked Satyr or Seilenos with the hooves, ears and tail of a horse seizes a woman round the waist. These coins are of the sixth century B.C. Passing to Thasos, a colony of the Thracians and like it rich in the coinage that came of gold mines, we find the same type. On a series of coins that range from _circ._ 500-411 B.C. we have again the Satyr or Seilenos bearing off the woman. An instance, for clearness’ sake one of comparatively late date[970], is given in fig. 117. This interchange of types, Satyr and Centaur, is evidence about which there can be no mistake. Satyr and Centaur, slightly diverse forms of the horse-man, are in essence one and the same. Nonnus[971] is right: ‘the Centaurs are of the blood of the shaggy Satyrs.’ It remains to ask—who are the Centaurs? * * * * * There are few mythological figures about which more pleasant baseless fancies have been woven; woven irresponsibly, because mythologists are slow to face solid historical fact; woven because, intoxicated by comparative philology, they refuse to seek for the origin of a myth in its historical birthplace. The Centaurs, it used to be said, are Vedic Gandharvas, cloud-demons. Mythology now-a-days has fallen from the clouds, and with it the Centaurs. They next became mountain torrents, the offspring of the cloud that settles on the mountain top. The Centaurs have possession of a wine-cask, the imprisoned forces of the earth’s fertility are left in charge of the genius of the mountain. The cask is opened, this is the unlocking of the imprisoned forces at the approach of Herakles, the sun in spring, and this unlocking is the signal for the mad onset of the Centaurs, the wild rush of the torrents. Of the making of such mythology truly there is no end. Homer[972] knew quite well who the opponents of Peirithoös were, not cloud-demons, not mountain torrents, but real wild _men_ (φῆρες), as real as the foes they fought with. He tells of the heroes Dryas, father of Lycurgus, and Peirithoös and Kaineus: ‘Mightiest were they, and with the mightiest fought, _With wild men mountain-haunting_.’ No one has, so far as we know, reduced the mighty Peirithoös, Dryas and Lycurgus to mountain torrents or sun myths. Why are their mighty foes to be less human? Again in the Catalogue of the Ships[973] we are told how Peirithoös ‘Took vengeance on the shaggy mountain-men, Drave them from Pelion to the Aithikes far.’