Go Horse – The legend of the centaur

Literally the term Centaur means: “who pierces the bull” and the myth wants that they lived in the forests clinging to the slopes of Classical Greece . They were human-like creatures in the upper part of the body and of a horse in the lower part. As with any other species descending or aspiring to Olympus, the myth tells several legends about the origin of the species. According to the simplest ones, the centaurs were born from the love between Ixion (the king of the Lapiths) and the goddess Hera, wife and elder sister of Zeus. In another version of the legend it is instead narrated that Ixion had believed he was lusting with Hera, but, in reality, he had impregnated Nephele, a woman specially created by Zeus by modeling a cloud. Discover now all our trips, tours, holidays and horse trekking in Greece. From here the versions split: in the first one, the relationship between Nefele and Ixion was successful and Centaurus, the progenitor of his species, was born. In the second, however, Zeus did not send the cloud in the likeness of his wife to please Ixion, but to literally catch him out. The deception apparently worked and Ixion, discovered in an attempt to cornify Zeus, was tied to one of the fire wheels of Apollo’s chariot and sentenced to perpetually spin in the sky. The reality, of course, was different. The Centaurs were bearded and savage men , belonging to tribes of the mountains of eastern Greece , who lived in such symbiosis with their horses, that they seemed one thing with their own animal. Thus the legend of the Horse-men was created.