Sagittarius, the Archer, is supposed to be a centaur, one of a fabulous race seen on the plains of Thessaly and about the woods of Mount Pelion. This race was supposed to possess the body of a horse and the head and shoulders of a man but none of them had ever amounted to much or accomplished anything of worth in the world, with the grand exception of one centaur, whose name was Chiron. Chiron lived in a stone cave near the summit of Mount Pelion and it was here that all the heroes of Greece--Hercules, Jason, Castor and Pollux, Aesculapius, Achilles and others--spent their early lives, for Chiron was famous for his knowledge and served these young men as a tutor. He not only taught them all the manly arts but he aided them in various enterprising adventures, such as marking out the constellations for the heroes when they went with Jason in the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece. One day Hercules unfortunately opened the fatal wine-jar, and the odor, floating about on the breezes, attracted hordes of common centaurs who fought ferociously to gain possession of it. Hercules managed to kill most of them with the arrows he had dipped in the blood of the poisonous hydra, but his old master was also accidentally wounded by one of the terrible barbs. Any wound, however slight, inoculated with this poison, was certain to prove fatal, but the centaur Chiron was immortal and could not die. Retiring to his cave, he prayed to the gods to deprive him of his immortality so that he might be released from his suffering, and to accept him as an atonement for Prometheus, the gigantic Titan "Forethought," who wished for immortality so that he might always be an aid to man. This Titan, in his eagerness to aid mankind, had once displeased the gods by secretly climbing up to heaven, lighting a reed at the fire of the sun, and bringing down the holy flame as a gift to the human race. He thus was the founder of civilization. "Resentment stung the Thunderer's inmost soul, And his heart chafed in anger, when he saw The fire far-gleaming in the midst of man." --_Hesiod._