Gothic. The word triggers different and sometimes passionate responses from many people, including those within the community and those who look on from the outside. What exactly does gothic mean? Who are Goths, and what do they believe? How long has Goth been around, and what is its future?

The word “gothic” was first used to identify a group of European tribes from ancient history. Goths are commonly believed to have originated from the Island of Gottland off the Denmark coast. Over time the tribes grew numerous and powerful enough to sack sacked the great Roman Empire in 410, and they ruled Europe for 250 years before slowly fading into ancient history.

It is important to know where the word “gothic” comes from, however there is a notable difference between ancient Gothic culture and the modern gothic phenomenon.

Goths of ancient history were a nomadic people who had a reputation for ruthless violence. Ancient Goths were also a religious people; their beliefs were based around worship of pagan deities.

Today, “gothic” is used to describe a subculture based largely on a certain style of art, literature, and music. Some forms of gothic art and literature date back to the 12th –15th centuries, however gothic music as we know it today is a relatively new development and is responsible for having the greatest impact on the development of gothic subculture.

Modern goths differ from ancient Goths in that they are not part of a dominant culture; they are a part of a subculture. Where ancient Goths had a set religious system, modern gothic subculture is not linked to any particular religion. There are some pagan goths, however many more goths are Christian, Jewish, Catholic, or Aethiest. Modern goths tend to be varied on their social and political views as well. The glue which holds the gothic community together is an affinity for the macabre, a longing for romance, and an appreciation of darker aesthetics.

Historians of modern gothic subculture generally agree that its beginnings were in the late nineteen-seventies, developing as an offshoot of the punk rock movement in the UK and USA. Before we look at gothic subculture it is noteworthy to briefly examine what punk is and how it came about.

Essentially punk grew out of dissatisfaction with popular music of the 1970’s although many saw it as a viable means of political and/or social rebellion.

Mainstream culture of the 70’s was consumed with over-produced, under-motivated rock-n-roll and cheap, uninspired dance music. A war still quietly raged in the steamy (and charred) forests of Vietnam and both America and Britain were in the midst of economic depression. It was from this social and political climate that punk rock grew into angry fruition.

While punk wasn’t exactly a new concept (MC5 in the late 60’s are generally recognized as an important and highly regarded “pre-punk” band), it didn’t catch on until the late 70’s. First-wave bands like the Ramones, Stooges and the Sex Pistols spawned new bands formed by awestruck concertgoers who knew something big was happening.

Mainstream society took notice of punk’s anti-social and rebellious deeds and became somewhat nervous considering the social upheaval it underwent a decade before. Radio stations wouldn’t play punk, clubs won’t have punk shows, and police targeted punk fans whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Punk was raw and full of feeling. People who lived near a scene heard about it through word of mouth or fanzine. Many others never knew about punk until years after the first wave had long passed. Punk gained momentum without the help of the Internet, music videos or mainstream radio exposure. It was underground and punks demanded it stay that way.

By the late seventies the second wave of punk began. By then most in the younger generation had at least heard about if not experienced punk first hand. New fans were coming into the scene and new bands were being formed at a rapid rate. With new bands came new sounds and styles, some of which branched off of or built on commonplace 3-chord song structures.

Industrial music saw its beginnings in the late seventies with the likes of Throbbing Gristle. Kraftwerk and pre-Dare The Human League paved the way for later a genre, which was broadly referred to as new-wave.

A new four piece punk band from Manchester, England called Warsaw appeared in 1977. Like many of their counterparts they didn’t play very well, however there was energy behind the group’s sound, which was powerful and unique. The band’s style subdued over the months and the members soon renamed themselves Joy Division. The name was controversial due to the reference to Nazi Germany forced brothels, however the band members themselves denied any association with national-socialist beliefs, nor did they espouse racism in their lyrics.

What were evoked in Ian Curtis’ lyrics were feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and despair. The group’s music shifted from angry 3-chord punk to subdued 3-chord punk, and then to something altogether new and even more somber.

It was this new sound which caused Joy Division’s manager at the time, Anthony H. Wilson, to refer to them as gothic.

Another band which began as a straightforward punk outfit then gradually changed it’s sound into a darker version of punk was Siouxsie and the Banshees. They, along with Andi Sex of the Sex Gang Children were also referred to as being gothic. UK Decay and Bauhaus were in their development stages and both had a remarkably dark, brooding punk-ish sound.

While some early bands were tagged gothic by their peers, bands and fans didn’t universally adhere to this label. In fact early ‘gothic’ music was commonly referred to as deathrock. Deathrock had a decidedly punk-influenced sound as opposed to what became known as gothic many years later.

In America, particularly the west coast, deathrock grew independently from the British scene. Early US pioneers were the Misfits, 45 Grave and Christian Death (years after the band broke up the founding member Rozz Williams revealed that this was a play on the popular western culture icon Christian Dior – it wasn’t necessarily a religious statement).

In Britain the deathrock scene centered and flourished around a small club called the Batcave. It was here that bands like Bauhaus, Alien Sex Fiend, the Sisters of Mercy, and many more got their start. The Batcave scene is still highly regarded as an integral piece of the modern gothic puzzle.

By the mid to late 80’s deathrock had stepped a little further away from its punk roots. While death rockers continued to oppose to mainstream western culture and commercialism, deathrock music and style began to change slightly. Heavier use of keyboards and drum machines ushered in an entire new group of fans. Gradually the scene goers began referring to themselves and the music they enjoyed as gothic.

Gothic music, like deathrock, was typically somber and somewhat dark. Songwriters used a wide range of instruments although the most common were guitar, bass, drums (or drum machine), and keyboard. Songs were often written and played in slower tempos, and musically dark modes such as Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian were commonplace. As opposed to heavy metal and more common forms of rock-n-roll, gothic musicians rarely used extended solos, wah pedals, flangers, or double-kick drums.

Lyrically, gothic music has its roots in gothic literature. Themes of death, solitude, and romance were common. Gothic lyricists tended to stay away from overt political messages although many did so subtly. Punk lyrics were characteristically singsong with widespread profanity and heavy social or political themes; lyrics found in gothic music placed much consideration on art and style; profanity and slang were not often used.

Styles of gothic music ranged from the light and dreamy to dark and nightmarish. While some bands had limited commercial success (The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees) most remained hidden from the eye of mainstream culture. For the most part however gothic/deathrock music was not easily accessible to the general public – both in terms of the style and sound of the music and the availability of the music.

Gothic fans were ever careful to keep pop culture out of their scene; in fact most would answer “no” if asked whether they were indeed gothic by outsiders. Like punk, gothic subculture retained its distrust and contempt of the mainstream. Goths wished to be left alone, however the unique and interesting qualities of the subculture would soon prove to be too much for the mainstream to ignore.

In the early 90’s neo-industrial bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails began enjoying popular success on commercial radio and MTV. While many Goths listened to these bands, few considered them gothic. Fewer saw what was beginning to happen: the subculture that they enjoyed so greatly was slowly becoming ridden with in influx of fans raised on neo-industrial and dark metal.

As NIN and similar bands had more commercial success, the media began (incorrectly) calling their music and fans “gothic”. Around the same time corporate music labels began a heavy push of what they labeled “alternative” music. NIN fit nicely with this scheme because their music was commercially viable; people who had never heard industrial music could buy Closer and immediately identify as a “gothic industrial” – despite the fact that NIN were hardly a serious industrial band.

Younger people were fascinated by goth’s dark look and dark sounds, however few understood the difference between what Goths considered gothic and what music corporations & MTV were calling gothic. NIN was just the beginning of a commercial siege on the subculture.

About the same time NIN were striking gold in the charts, a little known and quite plain appearing music editor by the name of Brian Warner saw the shift in pop music and felt the time was right to pursue a career in the industry as a performer. He assembled a few musicians from the Florida area (the Spooky Kids) and adopted a stage name of Marilyn Manson. It would be his best decision ever.

Warner’s music was never well received in the gothic community simply because it was not. The Spooky Kids worked in a style that is best-described hard rock or metal, and Warner’s lyrics were sometimes crass, and often based in hatred. His band covered and released a song originally written by Charles Manson, a murderer and man who claimed to be Jesus Christ.

Goths did often write about the macabre, however it was somberly done in the vein of Romanticism. Brian Warner’s lyrics were profane and thrived on anger, alienation, conflict and hatred. The driving force behind Marilyn Manson sought to incite and shock, whereas Goths sought to create art and desired to be left alone. Manson’s art was hate; the art behind gothic subculture was beauty and romance. The importance of distinguishing the difference between Warner’s project and a typical gothic band is great. By the mid-nineties Manson fired the Spooky Kids and signed a major label record deal. His name soon appeared in newspapers and on various television and radio talk shows across America. To the dismay of many in the gothic community, he was often incorrectly labeled by his fans and the media as "goth". The irony here is that Goths did not like Manson, and most of the fans that followed Manson were unaware of what gothic music really was.

As Manson became ever more popular due to MTV exposure and his obnoxious comments offered in interviews, his fan base grew substantially. Other groups began appearing that imitated Marilyn Manson. An entire new subculture was developing based around Brian Warner, yet the media could not see the difference between it and gothic subculture. It was the same to them either way – despite gothic fans becoming increasingly opposed to Manson’s music and following.

Attendance at gothic clubs around the world steadily declined in the mid to late 90’s. Since the popularity of Nine Inch Nails and later false-gothic groups the people who weren’t really into goth jumped on the Industrial or Shock Rock bandwagon. Other active scene goers eventually found jobs and families and were no longer able to remain active in the scene.

Those who did stay in the scene noticed a further shift in the direction of gothic music. DJ’s who worked at gothic clubs began incorporating more EBM, neo-industrial, and dark techno into their playlists. While this was desirable to those who continued to go to the clubs to dance, many in the scene quietly stopped going as a result.

Fetishism became increasingly linked to the gothic subculture due to “documentaries” written by MTV and other outsiders. After Columbine, many wrongly associated the gothic community with violence. The two teens that committed the atrocities, the “Trenchcoat Mafia” as they were called, were in fact not into gothic music – they enjoyed metal and some industrial bands but neither were part of their local gothic scene.

Out of all of the negativity and apathy some very good bands emerged in the mid to late 90’s. Bands such as the Changelings, Faith and the Muse, and the Cruxshadows continued to provide new and quality gothic music for the fans who remained.

A new band began to attract the attention of some disinterested music fans in the late 90’s, however this group went out of their way to disassociate themselves from the gothic scene. Cinema Strange saw the writing on the wall for gothic subculture early on and avoided trying to gain acceptance altogether (http://www.angelfire.com/goth/eckearchive/zillo.htm ).

CS headed a new movement that has been called “newgrave” but is most commonly known as deathrock to fans who know. Their music harkens back to the Batcave days where ripped fishnets and punk-influenced dark-rock ruled the day. What makes Cinema Strange so unique is that they are bringing new life to a forgotten genre. And fans all across the world are responding.

Deathrock scenes have sprouted in California, New York, and Germany. More are sure to emerge in the coming years. The new breed of deathrockers is returning to their roots; no more shiny boots of leather, no whips and chains, no computerized karaoke-industrial, no more scene pretension.

From the Ghoul School’s website (a club in West Hollywood):

We are sick of going to goth clubs and only being able to hear Trance, Techno, Synthpop, and Repetitive beats. This is not a latex titty fetish club - finally a real refuge for goths and death punks.

What is old is new again, and it’s looking even better the second time around.

Myths are stories, usually, about gods and other supernatural beings (Frye). They are often stories of origins, how the world and everything in it came to be in illo tempore (Eliade). They are usually strongly structured and and their meaning is only discerned by linguistic analysis (Lévi-Strauss). Sometimes they are public dreams which, like private dreams, emerge from the unconscious mind (Freud). Indeed, they often reveal the archetypes of the collective unconscious (Jung). They are symbolic and metaphorical (Cassirer). They orient people to the metaphysical dimension, explain the origins and nature of the cosmos, validate social issues, and, on the psychological plane, address themselves to the innermost depths of the psyche (Campbell). Some of them are explanatory, being prescientific attempts to interpret the natural world (Frazer). As such, they are usually functional and are the science of primitive peoples (Malinowski). Often, they are enacted in rituals (Hooke). Religious myths are sacred histories (Eliade), and distinguished from the profane (Durkheim). But, being semiotic expressions (Saussure), they are a "disease of language" (Müller). They are both individual and social in scope, but they are first and foremost stories (Kirk).

The terms legend and folktale are sometimes used interchangeably with myth. Technically, however, these are not the same. How should we distinguish them? Donna Rosenberg, in her book Folklore, Myth, and Legends: A World Perspective, offers some useful guidelines:

A myth is a sacred story from the past. It may explain the origin of the universe and of life, or it may express its culture's moral values in human terms. Myths concern the powers who control the human world and the relationship between those powers and human beings. Although myths are religious in their origin and function, they may also be the earliest form of history, science, or philosophy...

A folktale is a story that, in its plot, is pure fiction and that has no particular location in either time or space. However, despite its elements of fantasy, a folktale is actually a symbolic way of presenting the different means by which human beings cope with the world in which they live. Folktales concern people -- either royalty or common folk -- or animals who speak and act like people...

A legend is a story from the past about a subject that was, or is believed to have been, historical. Legends concern people, places, and events. Usually, the subject is a saint, a king, a hero, a famous person, or a war. A legend is always associated with a particular place and a particular time in history.

According to Aboriginal legend, Bunyips are creatures that lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes. They emerge at night, making terrifying, blood-curdling cries, and devour any animal or human that dare venture near its abode. The Bunyip's favourite prey is said to be women.

Fearing to go near suspected Bunyip haunts, the Aborigines shared their fearsome legends with early white settlers. After hearing such tales, they became fearful of strange, loud noises at night, and seriously considered the existence of the Bunyip Monster.

Descriptions of Bunyips include a wide spectrum of appearances from animal to spirit. Some describe the Bunyip as a gorilla-type animal (kinda like bigfoot, or the Australian Yowie), while others say it is half animal, half human or spirit. Bunyips come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Some are described to have long tails or necks, wings, claws, horns, trunks (like an elephant), fur, scales, fins, feathers...any combination of these.

Although scientists have found no physical evidence of Bunyips, they suggest it could have been a diprotodon, which became extinct 20,000 years ago. It frightened natives even after it's extinction, spawning horror stories that have made it such a feared creature.

Another circulating theory is that the modern Bunyip encounters originated (unintentionally) from wanderers or those who went off into the Australian wilderness during the Great Depression, or to escape hardships or the law. To prevent discovery, they would hide from others by creating a make-shift snorkel out of bone and hiding underwater. If they popped out before the unwanted guests left, it would make for quite a scare on both sides. And the startled cry of the one in hiding could cause the frightened passers-by to think they encountered a Bunyip. As for their affinity for women, this could be explained by the wanderers long periods of time alone, without contact with women, and when one came along, it made for an irresistible opportunity.

Whatever the Bunyip is, was, or was not, it has become a celebrity in children’s literature. After investigating reports, and analyzing alleged Bunyip bones, many Australians now disregard the existence of the Bunyip as purely mythological.

bunyip

A bunyip is a legendary spirit or creature of the Australian Aborigine. Bunyips haunt rivers, swamps, creeks and billabongs. Their main goal in life is to cause nocturnal terror by eating people or animals in their vicinity. They are renowned for their terrifying bellowing cries in the night and have been known to frighten Aborigines to the point where they would not approach any water source where a bunyip might be waiting to devour them.

There are many reports by white settlers who have witnessed bunyips, so cryptozoologists may still be searching for these creatures. They may have some difficulty in locating their prey, though, since Aboriginal tribes do not all give the same visual description of the creature. Some say the bunyip looks like a huge snake with a beard and a mane; others say it looks like a huge furry half-human beast with a long neck and a head like a bird. However, most Australians now consider the existence of the bunyip to be mythical. Some scientists believe the bunyip was a real animal, the diprotodon, extinct for some 20,000 years, which terrified the earliest settlers of Australia.

According to Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) in Stradbroke Dreamtime, the bunyip is an evil or punishing spirit from the Aboriginal Dreamtime. Today the bunyip mainly appears in Australian literature for children and makes an occasional appearance in television commercials.

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In the morning of his two hundred and fiftieth year Shepperalk the centaur went to the golden coffer, wherein the treasure of the centaurs was, and taking from it the hoarded amulet that his father, Jyshak, in the year of his prime, had hammered from mountain gold and set with opals bartered from the gnomes, he put it upon his wrist, and said no word, but walked from his mother's cavern. And he took with him too that clarion of the centaurs, that famous silver horn, that in its time had summoned to surrender seventeen cities of Man, and for twenty years had brayed at star-girt walls in the Siege of Tholdenblarna, the citadel of the gods, what time the centaurs waged their fabulous war and were not broken by any force of arms, but retreated slowly in a cloud of dust before the final miracle of the gods that They brought in Their desperate need from Their ultimate armoury. He took it and strode away, and his mother only sighed and let him go.

She knew that today he would not drink at the stream coming down from the terraces of Varpa Niger, the inner land of the mountains, that today he would not wonder awhile at the sunset and afterwards trot back to the cavern again to sleep on rushes pulled by rivers that know not Man. She knew that it was with him as it had been of old with his father, and with Goom the father of Jyshak, and long ago with the gods. Therefore she only sighed and let him go.

But he, coming out from the cavern that was his home, went for the first time over the little stream, and going round the corner of the crags saw glittering beneath him the mundane plain. And the wind of the autumn that was gilding the world, rushing up the slopes of the mountain, beat cold on his naked flanks. He raised his head and snorted.

"I am a man-horse now!" he shouted aloud; and leaping from crag to crag he galloped by valley and chasm, by torrent-bed and scar of avalanche, until he came to the wandering leagues of the plain, and left behind him for ever the Athraminaurian mountains.

His goal was Zretazoola, the city of Sombelenë. What legend of Sombelenë’s inhuman beauty or of the wonder of her mystery had ever floated over the mundane plain to the fabulous cradle of the centaurs’ race, the Athraminaurian mountains, I do not know. Yet in the blood of man there is a tide, an old sea-current, rather, that is somehow akin to the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however far away, as driftwood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered: and this springtide of current that visits the blood of man comes from the fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, of old; it takes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens to ancient song. So it may be that Shepperalk’s fabulous blood stirred in those lonely mountains away at the edge of the world to rumours that only the airy twilight knew and only confided secretly to the bat, for Shepperalk was more legendary even than man. Certain it was that he headed from the first for the city Zretazoola, where Sombelenë in her temple dwelt; though all the mundane plain, its rivers and mountains, lay between Shepperalk's home and the city he sought.

When first the feet of the centaur touched the grass of that soft alluvial earth he blew for joy upon the silver horn, he pranced and caracoled, he gambolled over the leagues; pace came to him like a maiden with a lamp, a new and beautiful wonder; the wind laughed as it passed him. He put his head down low to the scent of the flower, he lifted it up to be nearer the unseen stars, he revelled through kingdoms, took rivers in his stride; how shall I tell you, ye that dwell in cities, how shall I tell you what he felt as he galloped? He felt for strength like the towers of Bel-Narana; for lightness like those gossamer palaces that the fairy-spider builds ‘twixt heaven and sea along the coasts of Zith; for swiftness like some bird racing up from the morning to sing in some city's spires before daylight comes. He was the sworn companion of the wind. For joy he was as a song; the lightnings of his legendary sires, the earlier gods, began to mix with his blood; his hooves thundered. He came to the cities of men, and all men trembled, for they remembered the ancient mythical wars, and now they dreaded new battles and feared for the race of man. Not by Clio are these wars recorded; history does not know them, but what of that? Not all of us have sat at historians’ feet, but all have learned fable and myth at their mothers’ knees. And there were none that did not fear strange wars when they saw Shepperalk swerve and leap along the public ways. So he passed from city to city.

By night he lay down unpanting in the reeds of some marsh or forest; before dawn he rose triumphant, and hugely drank of some river in the dark, and splashing out of it would trot to some high place to find the sunrise, and to send echoing eastwards the exultant greetings of his jubilant horn. And lo! the sunrise coming up from the echoes, and the plains new-lit by the day, and the leagues spinning by like water flung from a top, and that gay companion, the loudly laughing wind, and men and the fears of men and their little cities; and, after that, great rivers and waste spaces and huge new hills, and then new lands beyond them, and more cities of men, and always the old companion, the glorious wind. Kingdom by kingdom slipt by, and still his breath was even. "It is a golden thing to gallop on good turf in one’s youth," said the young man-horse, the centaur. "Ha, ha," said the wind of the hills, and the winds of the plain answered.

Bells pealed in frantic towers, wise men consulted parchments, astrologers sought of the portent from the stars, the aged made subtle propehcies. "Is he not swift?" said the young. "How glad he is," said the children.

Night after night brought him sleep, and day after day lit his gallop, till he came to the lands of the Athalonian men who live by the edges of the mundane plain, and from them he came to the lands of legend again such as those in which he was cradled on the other side of the world, and which fringe the marge of the world and mix with the twilight. And there a mighty thought came into his untired heart, for he knew that he neared Zretazoola now, the city of Sombelenë.

It was late in the day when he neared it, and clouds coloured with evening rolled low on the plain before him; he galloped on into their golden mist, and when it hid from his eyes the sight of things, the dreams in his heart awoke and romantically he pondered all those rumours that used to come to him from Sombelenë, because of the fellowship of fabulous things. She dwelt (said evening secretly to the bat) in a little temple by a lone lakeshore. A grove of cypresses screened her from the city, from Zretazoola of the climbing ways. And opposite her temple stood her tomb, her sad lake-sepulchre with open door, lest her amazing beauty and the centuries of her youth should ever give rise to the heresy among men that lovely Sombelenë was immortal: for only her beauty and her lineage were divine.

Her father had been half centaur and half god; her mother was the child of a desert lion and that sphinx that watches the pyramids; — she was more mystical than Woman.

Her beauty was as a dream, was as a song; the one dream of a lifetime dreamed on enchanted dews, the one song sung to some city by a deathless bird blown far from his native coasts by storm in Paradise. Dawn after dawn on mountains of romance or twilight after twilight could never equal her beauty; all the glow-worms had not the secret among them nor all the stars of night; poets had never sung it nor evening guessed its meaning; the morning envied it, it was hidden from lovers.

She was unwed, unwooed.

The lions came not to woo her because they feared her strength, and the gods dared not love her because they knew she must die.

This was what evening had whispered to the bat, this was the dream in the heart of Shepperalk as he cantered blind through the mist. And suddenly there at his hooves in the dark of the plain appeared the cleft in the legendary lands, and Zretazoola sheltering in the cleft, and sunning herself in the evening.

Swiftly and craftily he bounded down by the upper end of the cleft, and entering Zretazoola by the outer gate which looks out sheer on the stars, he galloped suddenly down the narrow streets. Many that rushed out on to balconies as he went clattering by, many that put their heads from glittering windows, are told of in olden song. Shepperalk did not tarry to give greetings or to answer challenges from martial towers, he was down through the earthward gateway like the thunderbolt of his sires, and, like Leviathan who has leapt at an eagle, he surged into the water between temple and tomb.

He galloped with half-shut eyes up the temple-steps, and, only seeing dimly through his lashes, seized Sombelenë by the hair, undazzled as yet by her beauty, and so haled her away; and, leaping with her over the floorless chasm where the waters of the lake fall unremembered away into a hole in the world, took her we know not where, to be her slave for all the centuries that are allowed to his race.

Three blasts he gave as he went, upon that silver horn that is the world-old treasure of the centaurs. These were his wedding bells.

I Had a Devastating Dream During the Full Moon

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I saw a beautiful, spirited Gaelic Centaur Female, a handsome woman attached to a chestnut hunter-jumper (as Philostratus would say).

In a cold gray cell she combs her magnificent red hair. Her green eyes flash as the puny, shrinking human guards chain her, and lead her to the cart.

Confident, and defiant, she is subjected to the insults and abuse of the humans along the way of the prison cart, drawn by grey mules: the town is grey too, grey with smoke and cold damp fog. She reaches the square, and her guards prod this magnificent creature from her last cage: tail hiked, hair swirling, great body almost uncontrolled, ready to flail any man uncareful enough to stray too near to her hooves.

With a menacing grace she reaches the top of the scaffold.

"Is there anything you wish to say?" asks one of those present as the black-hooded man places the noose about her slender aristocratic neck -- but only after the centaur woman's hair has been braided roughly into a seven-foot queue.

Yes.

The petty official nods curtly.  Of course there is.

She holds her delicate visage high.  Her pale shoulders square proudly to her duty and her fate.  Her nostrils flare.

"Say your piece."

She takes what must be her full, antepenultimate breath.

And the town square rings --

Centaurs Forever!!!

King Kong's Daughter

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Five years before, World War II had been won by the Allies. When she was fourteen, the Cold War had just begun with the fall upon Europe of Churchill's Iron Curtain. Anthrina Darrow Driscoll sat reading her new book, Tarzan and the Apemen. Unconsciously, she adjusted her reading glasses (she was somewhat far-sighted), pushing them up to their proper position on her petite nose, and continued to marvel at the latest exploits of Lord Greystoke, despite the fact that she'd bought the cheap pocket-book for another purpose. She sat in the unfinished third floor of the townhouse. The floor was solid, with quality oak planks, smoothed and waxed long ago; but Anthrina scarcely ever used the floor to walk upon. The family never had had servants, so it was deserted and there were no walls or partitions. Just a square hatch on one end (near her) and an unfinished staircase on the other end. Above the floor the eyes saw barrenness of furnishings -- only windows in front and back, and a bookcase standing against a wall six feet from her shoulder -- nothing more. Anthrina liked it up here, away from the prying eyes -- not of New Yorkers, who either didn't care about her and her mother -- or pretended they didn't care. But the tourists -- oh! the tourists! -- they were another matter.

Anthrina shook her honey-blonde tresses -- hair that she surely inherited from her mother -- hair that depended from a head and blue-eyed face that was symmetrical and fetchingly delicate. Her hair was also thick and heavy and descended to her tiny waist. It was a warm August day, and she wore a blouse that came down only to her midriff. The windows were open, and there was a slight draft; and she had loosened the narrow belt to open the garment and permit the air to breathe on the smooth pale skin of her bosom that was only now beginning to swell to the generous proportions of her mother.

She hated going out -- the darn tourists would always stare, and some would gasp and a few would scream at the sight of her. She hated it, except for the sojourns with her step-father. He'd first taken her to the construction sites he worked at when she was six, when she begged him that she might see what he did for a living. She loved those trips, especially when the ironwork was going in. After some consternation as the six-year-old naturally climbed up the beams and pillars without fear, the ironworkers -- especially the Mohawks -- had accepted her. Indeed, when the Nation's building efforts shifted to Liberty ships, the ten-year-old girl had saved the life of a dangling man, about to slip to his death in the yards. She was considered a good luck charm. So Jack Driscoll was compelled, for the morale of his men, to take her to the site every day of the construction season, even if she did nothing but "monkey about" as one of the older men called her activities. To Anthrina, her step-father was a very large, powerful, and kind man. It was only a few months ago that she realized how kind he was, and how different from the stereotype of the "wicked stepparent" he was. The girl wondered why for awhile, and then decided perhaps it was because Mr. and Mrs. Driscoll never had a child of their own, a younger half-sibling competing for attention.

Otherwise, Anthrina lived a cloistered life. She was tutored, and was a reasonably good student, although most of the time she'd much rather be outside. Winter was a confinement to her -- and another attraction to the Tarzan biographies authored by E. R. Burroughs was the depiction of the warm climate of Africa. Another frustration was the onset of her maturity, and the certain knowlege that there were none at all like her from which to choose a suitable mate.

Since the War, Ann Darrow (Mrs. Driscoll, of course, retained her birth-name as her stage name) had not done a movie. She'd worked on Broadway in character parts; but her halcyon years were the late 20s and 30s. Those days were ten years gone. Anthrina's mother made enough money (New York Actor's Guild scale) to support her own personal maid (who did pamper her); but there was no butler, no cook, no housekeeper. Anthrina had learned from her step-father how to perform those functions for herself since she was eight, which did make her feel somewhat independent. Of course cooking for herself was easy. She loved fruits. Bananas when she could get them (of course); but also apples, bunches of grapes, that sort of thing. And grain cereals, breakfast foods, washed down with milk. She did not particularly care for meat, nor most things cooked. She liked carrots, and the insouciance of Bugs Bunny charmed her into keeping a ready bunch for snacking.

Anthrina read on, searching for a reference to Achilles. So far she had found none. Oh, yes, there was a lovely description of a shapely Apegirl -- almost human except for black hair that covered her scantily clothed body -- and an extraordinary long and prehensile tail. And later on Tarzan rescues her.

But nothing about an offspring, no bastard son of Lord Greystoke even hinted at. Anthrina frowned, closed the book and passed it her huge left front hand to place on top of the bookshelf. Who was this person who claimed to be Achilles Clayton?

A little time before the first letter arrived, a startling thing happened. Her mother had just come back by train all the way from Hollywood. An acting role, that Ann had so hoped for, was not to be hers. She was full of unhappiness and grief, and Anthrina comforted her. And, gratefully, Ann told her what really had happened when she'd been abducted by Kong, King of the Apes. It was a relief to hear from her mother's confidence that what Anthrina had guessed as a child was most certainly true. The size and power of her great golden-haired lower body was certainly an inheritance of her sire, just as it was certain her beauty and the feminine shapeliness of her entire self was the gift of her mother.

And then the letter arrived, that Spring, from Wisconsin. It was addressed to her, by her full name: Miss Anthrina Darrow Driscoll. It was a letter of introduction -- from an Achilles Clayton, the son of Jane Clayton. He was living with his grandfather, a professor at the University of Wisconsin. The letter asked if the writer might meet with her.

Anthrina rested her hands atop the broad mountain of sinew and muscles that began where her hips would have been if she were completely human. Though she was much smaller than what her mother had related that her father had been, she was still huge compared to people, and painfully aware that her sudden apparition scared the willies out of most of them. She remembered writing back to the fellow, explaining that for certain physical reasons, she preferred not to meet him. In truth, she'd never heard the name Achilles Clayton at all before.

A week later she received another letter from the same source. Anthrina raised a front-leg arm so its elbow arched over her head and idly rubbed her opposite lower shoulder, as she recalled the boy's (for he was her age) pleadings. He explained that he had similar physical characteristics as she, and that he would have no fear of her. Would she please consent to meet him (he'd be visiting New York to greet his father, arrived from Europe), at least to call upon her? He did not name his father.

His statements were improbable! She certainly did not want to agree to a meeting at all. She sensed that this was a forward fellow, and would quickly beat a retreat the moment she saw her below her torso; but, frankly, he was intriguing. Well, she'd decided, at least it would be a joke (ha! ha!) if he turned and ran -- it would serve him right! Anthrina stretched her other lower arm up languidly, and grasped the large ring depending upon the ceiling that allowed her to brachiate, and swung idly by it. She had demanded that he tell her all about himself.

Now her face was enveloped in a pondering expression, as she reached out and grasped the latest envelope from the window sill with the hand of a back leg -- which, unlike the anthropoid apes, was more human in proportion and as long as her extravagantly long lower arms. This made her lower body almost horizontal when she "knuckle-walked" -- which she did not like to do, as she did not have true "feet" on any of her four lower limbs. The letter had arrived only yesterday, and she passed it to her human hands and opened it once again. Out came the portrait photo of a dark-haired young man. Anthrina sighed. It was really too bad -- she would have jumped at the chance to live out her life with a fellow that handsome. The letter (she read again) told her that he, Achilles, was the bastard son -- she noted that he did not use the euphemism "illegitamate son" -- he was the bastard son of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, also known as Tarzan. It also said that her mother was a princess of the Apemen, and that she could read about her in a particular volume of Tarzan's biography. This was some claim! Anthrina sighed again. Such implausibility! The boy had already told her that his grandfather was a professor in Wisconsin -- but that could not be, for Greystoke's family lived in England! And the Apemen lived in the Tropics -- not in a summer retreat in Northern Wisconsin! Anthrina was nettled and not a bit irritated -- was this cad trying to make a fool of her?

A puff of air blew in unexpectedly from the open window then. She thought she saw something outside, but when she looked directly, there was nothing. Well, whatever it was, it certainly distracted her from her thoughts.

Never mind, she thought. Anthrina took a brush with the other hindleg hand and groomed the lower flanks of her slender but huge body. She mused that the thigh of that hindleg weighed more than her entire human torso. It attached to hips proportioned to a giant human woman rather than a female ape. Her mother's French maid, greatly daring, teased her that she could birth an elephant baby! And though King Kong's daughter had mixed feelings about the sentiment, her mother scolded the maid for being uncouth. Anthrina, however, had had no time to scold this Achilles (whoever he was), and to tell the young man never to write again, when she received a telephone call this very morning. It was a long distance call from northern New York, person-to-person, and the caller, in perfect Received Pronunciation, informed Anthrina that he would arrive this afternoon on the Albany to Manhattan train, in (of all things) a private car. Would she give him directions? Anthrina found herself tongue-tied. Quite unwillingly, she found herself giving directions to the town-house. And then, quite without explaining anything to the querying eye of her mother, she fled to the sanctum here, the third storey.

Now, her mother, Ann, called up.

"Yes, Mother!" she called down.

"You have a gentleman caller!"

Anthrina's hearts leapt. Her thoughts jumbled. Could it be Achilles? Oh it had to be Achilles! So he had come to see her -- just as he'd promised. Who was this young fellow?

She desperately hoped that he wouldn't be scared stiff of her! Oh, she wasn't ready yet! Anthrina felt silly as she pulled down and smoothed her blouse (oh, no time for a change of clothes!) and frantically tied the loose belt looped about her mid-riff -- as her lower body lopingly brachiated down from the upper floor, through the hatch that her father had built just for her.

And then the thought penetrated her flustered mind: one could see the street entry door from the dormer on the second floor. Of course she could sneak a peek at this fellow! She hand-spanned across the twenty foot gap between hatch and window, her mind set to look out.

And when she did, her mind spun. From his picture, this was, indeed, Achilles Clayton. Black haired, he wore a light khaki-colored sportcoat (though no tie), and then below that, another much larger sportcoat out of which came hands covered with hair that were quite a bit larger than the pair of his upper torso. He was tall and slender, and smaller than she. Very tall and slim, but certainly well muscled and straight, why -- he was almost identical to her in general form! He walked erect, in a way Anthrina could not, for he had almost cat-like feet which grew from long hair-covered legs which extended in turn from pocketed khaki-colored pants. And then there was his looping tail, the prehensile tail, the glossy black-haired tail, the long, long tail. Despite herself, Anthrina nearly swooned.

Her gasp for breath brought his attention to her, hanging framed in the open window. He turned. She was petrified at his grace. And she was a little envious of the fact that he'd a tail long enough for both of them and she'd none. The bizarre thing about him that just penetrated her mind: he wore glasses, just as she did!

"Anthrina!" called her mother. She sounded awfully cheery. "Come down. The young man's named Achilles Clayton, by his card, and I don't know how long he'll be waiting."

"I--I--know," Anthrina stammered.

"Miss Driscoll?"

"Y--Y--Yes?"

"I'm sorry, I've not much time. The ship my father's arriving in is due within the hour. Would you care to join me?"

"Lord Greystoke?"

"Yes! He's with my step-mother, Jane, and my half-brother Jack. They're back from Africa, and are to spend the rest of the summer with grandpa -- my step-mother's father -- in Wisconsin.   He has consented to tutor my biological mother.  I would really like you to meet them all!"

Of course Anthrina would love to meet the famous Tarzan of the Apes! By the end of the boy's speech, she was at the door.

Achilles stood and stared. Then he shook himself, while coiling a bit of his tail. "Your mother told me you were an impressive young lady," he eyed her up and down as she filled the great entry door in her sejant position, "but she never told me that you were so beautiful! The sun shines gloriously upon your golden-haired body --"  Nerving himself to come forward, he took her proffered human hand.  He continued, "-- and your hands are so delicate, too. I'm sorry -- I invaded your privacy just a few minutes ago."

"Oh -- so you were that puff of 'breeze' I felt upstairs!" Anthrina scrutinized him wickedly, and then laughed at his disconcerted look.

At her fruity laughter, Achilles looked more relaxed. "Shall we take the elevated route? You do usually brachiate, don't you?"

Anthrina smiled sunnily, raising her left fore hand to grasp the lintel of the door way to follow him. "Of course I do," she said, "and very well, too."

A curious creature is the centaurpede:
He makes for himself an undulating steed.

Ooops! My count has just increased!
To two arms he has at least
Fifty legs fore and fifty legs back
And withers and rumps he has no lack.

You wonder why he looks ill or sorrier?
You haven't yet seen his bill from the farrier.
"Hold your horses," to him is no joke.
It frustrates him to be called "slow poke."

If you ask him politely,
"Are you related to the centaur?"
He'll answer quite rightly,
"Well, I had one as a mentaur!"

And what does he intend for the rest of his life?
He looks for a filly centaurpedess to wife!
Look now, for she's a comely forty meter --
To a good time he knows how to treat her:

They smooch and they cuddle, his Jane and her Felix;
And entwine into love and lie down double-helix.
So, each empassioned hecapodatist
Can say he -- or she -- "rode a tryst:"

Amour is a frolicky potion --
Could be it's an alcoholick emotion!
Then beware these drunken centaurpedes;
Follow not their pretzelled leads!

Below and above they galumph and trot
And fall asleep on an e x t e n d e d spot;
But your head will spin dizzy and out you'll pash,
And I’ll let end this centire on old Ogden Nash.

---

---

The Centaurpede Harpist

I challenged the late Margaret T. Price ("Erin Jahr-Strom") to construct an illustration of a centaurpede after she heard the poem about the fantastical creature. The female character in the poem was named Jane. Margie envisioned her as compactly built as a human, and an equine part that is of small horse or pony dimensions, so that she stands somewhere above six-feet tall, from her foremost hoof to the top of her head. Even with these modest dimensions, her body (head to tail) exceeds 70 feet in length. Jane may have been born a centaurpede, or she may have been a human (or centaur) bard that got transformed when she angered a wizard (probably called him a "horse’s ass" in a song). But she carries on with a determined look, holding her precious harp. Even on flat terrain she must concentrate on her strenuous effort to control her leg movements, as she walks in a progressing, wave-like gait.  And here she's on a slight up-hill incline.

Margaret produced the artwork in sections, each of which consisted of a cycle of the gait. Thus, by duplicating sections, the creature could have multiples of nine pairs of hindlegs, and eight pairs of forelegs. She added special sections for the tail, head-end and middle. Thus Jane could really have as many legs as she wanted.  Margaret also intended to illustrate Felix, a male centaurpede with eyes attentive to the lady; however, her health failed before she could begin this project. Ms. Price died in the summer of 1989 at age 35.

Piers Anthony, inspired by this Centaurpede, credited Margie for the idea, and incorporated it in his Xanth novel, Question Quest. On page 80 Humfrey encounters a 200-legged version, named Margaret, in the Magic Dust Village of Old Xanth, where she carried passengers like an excursion bus.

I reduced, assembled and colored this small "thumbnail" version for your enjoyment.  A full-sized (uncolored) construction kit of the image -- in seven parts plus instructions -- is available to those masochists who beg me especially nicely for it.

Akorax returned from the hunt, following the blazes of his gang's trail, up into the wooded foothills that were prelude to the rocky mountains beyond. Behind the quiver of arrows and his bow that he carried from his brawny human back, and his spear that he carried in his left hand, was the full carcass of a buffalo to share with his men. He made light of his burden, his huge body scarcely straining under the near two-ton load.

Curion, son of Indorex, appeared over the hill, cantering in his direction. Akorax had no sons, although he was old enough to have had tens. A centaur sired his offspring on the two-legged woman unlucky enough to be near when a stallion could not manage to foreswear his own desires. The sons lived with the mother's human tribe for awhile, and then were taken, when they became old enough to be wonton, into the gangs to gallop with them on the range. The centaur-colts remained alive and whole mostly due to the intimidation and coercion of the centaur gangs nearby. On the other hand, centaur daughters from human mothers were no different than their mothers. The centaurs did not care for them -- until they grew up, of course.

So there were no female half-horses -- that is, four-legged women with the lower body something like that of that rare curiosity, the horse. Oh, there were legends of girl centaurs, and legends of their grace and beauty and prowress in making love; but Akorax had always put those stories down as wishful thinking. Wishful thinking by stallions who did not like the outlaw life, of having every human man's hand raised against them, of having to seduce (when they could), or abduct and -- yes -- rape (when they had to) human women to sustain their kind. The rumors of such centaur females -- semi-vir/semi-fer -- grew outrageous over time, of course. There were stories that a single centauress could statisfy dozens of males. And that they were prodigiously fecund. Akorax smiled to himself bitterly as he trotted forward, and shook his head sadly. The tales were as ridiculous and as useless as the Ghost Dance had been to the ancient Native Americans. He sighed. Yet they were seductive. From time-to-time, a single man-stallion would gallop away -- North, South, East or West, it didn't seem to matter -- taken with the urge to search for the elusive four-legged female centaur -- and he was never seen again. Alive, at least.

As Curion came closer, Akorax noticed a light in his nephew's eyes. Was the boy up to some prank? He was known for devilish tricks, like tying together a stallion's hindlegs with his own feathers; but no one teased Akorax, especially not the boys, and not Curion, who, though the tallest of the young, and taller than many of the adult males, had eyes that faced his uncle at the middle of his human chest. He knew that Akorax would beat him to a bloody pulp if he even tried one trick. "Uncle." He saluted, respectfully. "There is wonderful news. A human tribe has come down out of the mountains. And they have -- three -- female centaurs with them. And --"

Akorax raised his thewed right hand. "Begone with your jokes, boy. I will follow you to camp in my own good time."

"But -- but it's --" And here Curion saw the menace in Akorax' eyes, and he turned tail, and ran his gangling body away, back the way he'd come.

Akorax approached the encampment, in a wooded clearing, near a stream fed by the distant mountains.

The first oddity was not that there were human pickets about; but that they were friendly. Akorax wondered if their old muskets even worked -- he preferred the certainty of his bow.

The second oddity was the fact that the fifty stallions and colts of his gang were clustered within the human encampment, amidst the women and children (none of the boys of the tribe were centaurs, Akorax noted).

The final oddity was that he saw Orexen, the gang's elderly shaman, and sire to half the adult males in the gang, speak companionably with a human, old and grizzled himself in age.

"Ah, come here, Akorax, and be welcome." The old cob had a delighted smile on his face -- far more impish than Akorax had ever seen him. "Curion I sent, and he returned quickly, saying that you did not believe his message."

"Yes. All that is true."

"And so was his message, Akorax. Meet Odilon, chief of this tribe of humans from out of the mountains."

"Greetings." Akorax said stiffly. Was the old shaman taken mad?

"Oh, you'll have to see them to believe, from the look of your eyes, stallion. Two are comported yonder, beneath the trees, so that they may be shaded. Odilon tells me that the skin of their undressed foreparts are as delicate as a human girl's."

Akorax saw the cluster of the rumps of dozens of couchant stallions. He stepped to one side, still carrying his load of dead buffalo, to gain a glimpse of their faces. Their eyes were rapt, and their hands together in the gesture of submissive courtship. Their attention was directed absolutely to one or both of the young woman's faces that emerged before them. One had hair that was a glorious sunny blonde, the other had silver white hair. From this distance, Akorax knew these to be the head-ends of two female centaurs: no human woman would be so beautiful, with perfect skin, large eyes, fine features, perfect, regular symmetry of visage, with slender necks that supported the huge child-like heads. The gold laughed and the silver smiled with a twinkle in her eye.

"Those two are Tania and Alula," Odilon spoke, quietly. "We have raised them all since child-hood in the mountains. We have bathed them, and fed them. That is hard when our tribe has little enough for itself from the sparse nuts we gathered and small game we managed to hunt. And we gave them shelter whenever they wished to get out of the rain or the cold -- which was rare, I admit. Now they have just reached nubility, and they now insist on finding proper mates. They would not be stopped when they heard that the centaur stallions roam the high plains. They carried us, us and our baggage, mind you, among the three, to this place, and we would have gone farther if not a raiding party from your gang encountered us. Fortunately, no one died in that encounter." He smiled grimly at what must have been a terribly taut moment. "It seems that at least two of our strange daughters are happy with your lot. I say, let the half-sisters mate with whom they will. We, in our part, wish a benefice for our investment."

"Oh. So you have a bride-price in mind?" Akorax looked absently at the two young, nubile centaur women. Each held a doe-skin vest and cotton shirt (rare and imported!) in her hands, and flaunted undressed shoulders (broad and well-molded) with long and slender arms attached. Neither needed a halter to support their charms -- nor would there be halters big enough among the humans to hold them. From there the two centaur women's muscular torsos tapered to hourglass waists, and their lower bodies were obscured by their admirers. So Odilon's tribe had pampered them. It made sense, if the legends were true.

"An alliance," Odilon announced, his finger pointed upward. "We wish to hunt on the plains, for there the buffalo are many and the humans there are few. Our centauresses can carry us all now, but our tribe would grow, and we would need more true centaur's daughters to carry on our nomadic existence. We would have you hunt with us and protect us -- I am sure centaurs not of your gang would attack us, if only to rape our women. We, in turn, would supply you with a place of refuge and protect your mates. Although a centaur can cast his spear much farther than our men, they are good fighters, and your companions would protect you at close distances, in the woods and the hills --"

A woman, Akorax judged that she was advancing to middle age, yet still beautiful enough to stir him, approached. She walked with determination, a plain need overcoming her fear. Odilon saw her.

"Anaya. This is Akorax. Orexen tells me that he is their Hunt Chief and War Chief. What say you?"

"That if he were smaller and I younger, he would have had no need to rape me."

Akorax stood rooted to the ground by all four legs, apoplectic at this left-handed compliment.

"And I say that Talitha will not join her sisters, and has taken to the hills, and to a little lake from which the stream issues. She says she will not come down until the stallion who sires only fillies comes to her."

"That's you, I think," growled old Orexen. He pushed his finger into the giant centaur's human belly-button. He knew very well that if Akorax weren't his son, he would have been throttled.

"Does she know that a monster lives in the lake?" Odilon was alarmed.

"Yes. She took her bow, arrows, spear and sword with her."

Akorax had to interject -- "A warrior centauress?"

Anaya nodded. "She has always been high-spirited. She continued her training with the armsmen of our tribe even when they pointed out to her it was almost impossible for her to defend herself."

"By the Methodist God, she'll be killed! She went upstream?"

"Yes. It's about a mile up the path." Anaya pointed, and -- with an abruptness that surprised even himself -- Akorax set out in that direction.

Oh damn! he thought as he tried to push himself into a canter. He'd forgotten the carcass! Oh well, let it bounce off if it must -- but the trail was too twisty to follow at a canter anyway, and he was forced back into a trot. Where had this Talitha heard about Akorax's disability? Simple -- from the other stallions! He swore he'd crack a few heads -- later. Just then, the thought came buzzing through his enraged mind that he'd actually never seen this girl. Ha! She could be ugly as a flying monkey for all he knew.

When the shore of the lake came into view, he knew he was too late. The huge front half of a somnolent water dragon rested on the rocks. It was certainly big enough to eat a female centaur. It's eyes were closed. Akorax walked closer, sweating a bit in the sunny afternoon, lungs breathing deeply. Here was a shaft of a spear broken at the head. And here were half-a-dozen arrows, pricking nose and the corner of an eye. No, the dragon was not sleeping. It was dead. He guessed that the iron point of the spear was resting in the monster's brain.

But was Talitha all right? Akorix walked toward the lake -- the path seemed to be the only way to it. On a rock next to a tree were a bulky cotton blouse, a doeskin vest (with only the lowest eyelets strung), a nicked sword half out of a scabbard, and archery equipment -- the quiver was half-empty. The stallion looked over the lake's surface, and there she was near the middle, or at least there was her head-hair -- the most prodigious display of glossy red (some would say dark strawberry blonde) he'd ever seen, floating on the water's surface. It was only a little less impressive than the tresses of the mermaid, frolicking in the upper Missouri, that he'd glimpsed as a boy.

"You're Akorax?" said a small mouth below a button nose and large green eyes peering up from the surface. The voice was throaty. The face was no hag's.

Akorax nodded. "Are you hurt?"

"No. But that beast's breath stank filthily! I was a fool to come up here without an escort. I'm certainly glad he came at me head-on. What's that on your back?"

Oh, damn, again! She'd spotted the buffalo carcass on his back. By now it was a little smelly, to say the least. "Meat for the tribe's table."

"You are going along with Odilon's proposal?" Talitha asked bluntly. When he nodded, she eyed him, and seemed to compare him with the branches of the tree he stood next to, and then muttered cooly, "Good." Then she took two steps towards the shore.

"Venus rises from the waves," Akorax said as gallantly as he could, fighting his aroused state. If she kept up this teasing, he'd pass out.

She gave him a wicked smile, and just as suddenly, looked at him suspiciously. "You do only sire females, don't you?"

"Yes. Or nothing at all."

"Well, we'll find that out soon enough I expect. I only want to dam daughters, and most centaur stallions sire many, many more boys than girls, I'm told. Genetic survival trait, I suppose. You've seen my sisters?"

"At a distance. I'm seeing as much of you now as I did of them. If you are fishing for a compliment -- yes, you are at least as pretty as they are."

Talitha smiled. "So you don't really know what I look like, er, down there?" She pointed at the surface of the water, and smiled again. "You don't know about the female centaurs in Walt Disney's Fantasia, do you?" She shrugged at Akorax' blank stare. "Never mind. I'll have plenty of time to correct your lack of knowlege of the ancient culture. Could you toss me that hair-tie? This wet hair is heavy; but you know that my hair's my pride and joy. When you see it, you'll note that my tail-hair's even more impressive. I just keep it edged; wouldn't cut it for the world." Suddenly, Talitha was sounding utterly domestic. Her human foretorso was almost completely out of the water, and the appearance of the top of her pseudo-hips showed that her equine body was generously endowed with the same color pelt. "Yes. Sorry. I am teasing; but you do have the advantage of me, Akorax. Toss me the blouse and I'll emerge."

Casually, Talitha walked her front end to the upwater side of the lake, near a tumbling rapids. "You know, what the 'legends' say about us are true. Normally we'd take dozens of men-centaurs as mates. My mother was a centauress that had over 200 lovers -- not all at the same time! And had at least as many sons. But daughters -- only us three. She was a small centauress -- though she had our species' true female form, as we have -- and she had us all at once, unfortunately, and we -- I in particular -- was too big: she died in childbirth." Talitha paused, staring at the water, sadly, with a look of regret, as if she were personally responsible for her mother's death. "Anyway, that's why there are so few of us, and why many people believe that there are no such creatures as female centaurs. Of course, female centaurs don't look exactly like males -- at least in this world." She hesitated, and then the tenor of her voice changed to something more -- good-humoredly impish. "Boy, this lake's really deep. I have to walk on myself to keep my head above water. Just a moment."

Akorax watched her front end climb out, and wondered what she was talking about. But in the next few seconds, he reached a sudden revelation as to why female centaurs were insatiable. And why the tribe's armsmen considered them unable to defend themselves, and how the three of them literally did carry the tribe, bag and baggage -- and in one trip! And even though Talitha giggled with self-knowledge as her head-end approached him on the shoreline, Akorax could not help but be pop-eyed and speechless. And in a gesture he thought he'd never ever be able to do -- even but an hour ago -- he clasped his hands together before his division, a suitor courting his lady.

"I am Agorax, son of Orexen --" and here he broke off his formal introduction "How -- how many --"

"-- legs?" Talitha finished for him as she brushed her hair from her eyes. Those green eyes met his levelly, as she considered him. "Two hundred and sixteen," she eventually pronounced, slowly and distinctly. As she reached down for her vest, her first pair of legs, which carried her human torso with ease, performed a graceful curtsey. "One hundred and eight in front, and one hundred eight in back." Talitha draped her quiver about her pseudo-hips and her bow over her human back.

"I am Talitha, Ayacanora's daughter, raised by the Boulder Tribe of the Two-Legged," she said formally, as she placed her delicate left hand upon her slender human belly with its young, smooth and healthy fair skin.

And then conversationally, as if her self-introduction had never occurred: "And if you do the arithmetic, that means that a centauress can be pregnant 54-fold -- I am the equivalent to 54 mythical horse-mares in heat, and -- " at that moment, at about her tenth massive equine pair of forelegs behind her front, four or five forequarters passaged a step or two up onto the higher rocky beach, anxious to approach Agorax so much as to violate the protocol of her body's procession. Talitha twisted her torso about (with a move of magnificent torque), and eyed the disarray of her rebellious body, obviously concerned about her lack of control. "-- as of right now, that mass of mares within me are clamoring for one stallion. It is a dangerous business for a girl-centaur to dam only girls of her own kind -- but that is what I believe I must do. I must be careful to become only a little bit pregnant -- to hold back and to remain unfufilled -- for to try to carry many daughters at once will surely kill me as it did my mother. And that's where your self-control and restraint -- even against my own animal desires -- and your physical dominance over other stallion centaurs -- so that you will defend me against certain mutual attractions with the others -- are important. You may never have any sons, Akorax; but if you are as strong of will as I think you may be, I shall live a long time, and you'll certainly have a lot of grandsons."

Agorax did manage to tilt his head down. Talitha took that as an acceptance of her stated conditions, and their courtship continued.

She winked at him, and fit the sword in its scabbard and muttered something like "worthless piece of junk" and threw it into the far end of the lake.

"Yes, my business parts and half my chests are still underwater, so you'll just have admire the succession of my well-spaced forequarters for awhile. Oh -- don't worry, I'm not where the sword is falling." The centauress reassured the benumbed War and Hunt Chief as he watched her continue to draw equine forebodies from the water, and then, eventually, the start of her series of huge boned and muscled hindquarters.

" -- oh, and don't worry about me coordinating all this -- " she leaned way back and propped herself up with a delicate long-figured hand on her second equine shoulder "-- I've grown up with it, and believe me, your nephew, Curion, is far clumsier than I am." Then she blushed as a number of hindquarters, just out of the water, sidled their flanks into Agorax's distant view -- and now Talitha's belly muscles uprighted her human portion abruptly, and she blushed bright red -- "I must admit, though, that recently my body seems to have a mind of its own, being so hungry for a -- certain stallion." She stopped and exhaled, and then drew breath for such a long time that it concerned Agorax. More than just that tiny nose and delicate mouth must service her numerous and voluminous lungs, but he did not immediately see the mechanism -- and when he did see her collar-like trachea flare as she drew another breath, and the processes continue back under her jaws, on either side, to openings hidden behind her neck's hair -- he could only marvel that such a necessity might be so elegant and lovely. And then, a moment later, as she ended her breath, it disappeared sans any trace that he could see.

"Why is it you seem so shocked, O Great Chief of the centaurs?" she mocked to hide her chagrin at her forwardness. Agorax indeed had said nothing for a long time, but somehow they both knew that that was the male's tendency in courting -- it was his still-dazed eyes that prompted her, as Talitha considered her own question -- "Oh -- you mentioned that you saw only my sister's human portions -- so you did not see all of Alula and Tania at the camp?"

Akorax shook his head up and down.

Talitha laughed quietly. "So, I have been a surprise to you -- although I am sure that you have heard the legends -- and probably disbelieved them. Each of my sisters are the same as I -- complete with 216 legs apiece -- although they're a bit more -- delicately built -- than I, and certainly they don't have my brains. When she was younger, Anaya, who raised us, called us centaurpedes. But we are your centaur females, Akorax."

Akorax was still paralyzed motionless as Talitha's hand ran a delicate finger down the sternum of his huge human chest. Some part of Akorax' brain recognized that she was pleased with him, but he was still silent.

"I hope those magnificent lungs of yours will someday find their voice again," she smiled. "Perhaps when we clasp our four hands together before our people this eventide -- " And suddenly, she twitched the legs of her first few forebodies into the air and back onto the beaten ground of the path. "Now, please, let's go back down the trail -- she glanced again behind herself -- I am out of room on the shoreline, and I want to get the rest of me out of the lake. I do want to brush out and show off my beautiful tail to you. Besides, having a body like this requires an awful lot of nourishment, and you bet I'll cook and eat all of that buffalo on your back -- and every one you can catch from this day on! By the way --" and here Talitha eyed the defunct monster with a hungry look, "-- are lake-dragons good to eat?"

On Zeuxis the Painter

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Data from the Cambridge Biographical Dictionary

Zeuxis [pronounced "zyooksis"], male. Vital dates approximate (ca -5 c); known to have flourished in -413 when the King of Macedonia asked him to decorate his new capital. Painter, born in Heraclea, Greece. He excelled in the representation of natural objects. According to legend, his painting of a bunch of grapes was so realistic that birds tried to peck at the image.

Most famous quote: "Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship."

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Lucian on Zeuxis

Excerpt from Lucian's "Zeuxis or Antiochus" in The Works of Lucian, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press.
Exegesis, D. J. Alway.

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Sometimes it is hard to strike a balance between the subject-matter of a work of art and the quality of its execution, as the Greek writer Lucian relates here:

I want to give you an example from a painter. Zeuxis, that pre-eminent artist, avoided painting popular and hackneyed themes as far as he could (I mean heroes, gods, wars); he was always aiming at novelty and whenever he thought up something unheard-of and strange he showed the precision of his craftsmanship by depicting it. Among the bold innovations of this Zeuxis was his painting of a female Hippocentaur, one moreover that was feeding twin Hippocentaur children, no more than babies. There is a copy of this picture now at Athens made with strict accuracy from the original. Sulla, the Roman commander, was said to have sent off the original with his other trophies to Italy, but I suppose the ship then sank off [Cape Malea, in the southern Peloponnese,] with the loss of all its cargo, including the painting. However that may be, I saw the copy of the painting and will describe it to you as far as I can, though I am certainly no artist, I remember it quite well, as I saw it not long ago in the house of a painter in Athens. The intense admiration I felt at the time for the craftsmanship will perhaps help me in my endeavour to give you a full description.

The Centaur herself is depicted lying on fresh young grass with all the horse part of her on the ground. Her [hind]feet are stretched behind her. The human part is slightly raised up on her [foreleg] elbows. Her fore-feet are not now stretched out, as you might expect with one lying on her side; one foot is bent with the hoof drawn under like one who kneels, while the other on the other hand is beginning to straighten and is taking a grip on the ground, as is the case with horses striving to spring up. She holds one of her offspring aloft in her arms, giving it the breast in human fashion; the other she suckles from her mare's teat like an animal. Towards the top of the picture, apparently on some vantage point, is a Hippocentaur, clearly the husband of her who is feeding her children in two ways. He is leaning down and laughing. He is not completely visible, but only to a point halfway down his horse body. He holds aloft in his right hand a lion's whelp, suspending it above his head to frighten the children in his fun.

The other qualities, not completely discernible by the eye of an amateur like myself, nevertheless display the whole power of his craftsmanship -- such things as precision of line, accuracy in the blending of colours, taste in application of the paint, correct use of shadow, good perspective, proportion, and symmetry. But let the sons of artists appreciate these points, men who make it their business to know them. For my part I praised Zeuxis for this in particular, that in one and the same subject he has shown his extraordinary craftsmanship in so many ways. His husband is completely frightening and absolutely wild; he has a proud mane, being almost completely covered in hair -- not only the horse part of him but his human chest as well and especially his shoulders, and his glance, although his is laughing, is altogether savage, wild, and of the hills.

Such then is the husband. The horse part of the female he made is most beautiful, with a strong resemblance to Thessalian fillies when they are still untamed and virgin. The top half is that of a very beautiful woman, apart from the ears, which alone of her features are those of a satyr. The union and junction of bodies whereby the horse part is fused with the woman part and joined to it is effected by a gradual change, with no abrupt transition; the eye, as it moves gradually from one to the other, is quite deceived by the subtle change. In the case of the young, their babyhood is wild and already fearsome in its gentleness -- I thought this a wonderful touch. I admired too the very babylike way in which both young were looking up at the lion cub as they sucked at the nipple, holding close and nestling against their mother.

Zeuxis thought that this picture would send his viewers into raptures over his skill when they saw it. They certainly applauded it -- what else could they do when they met a sight so lovely to gaze upon? But everyone's warmest praise went to the points they praised in me too just recently; it was the strangeness of the idea, and the freshness of the sentiment of the work, quite unprecedented, that struck them. So when Zeuxis saw that the novelty of the subject was taking their attention and distracting them from the technique of the work, and that the accuracy of detail was taking second place, he said to his pupil: "Come on, Micio, cover up the picture and all of you pick it up and take it home. These spectators are praising only the mere clay of my work, but as to the effects of light, they do not worry much whether they are beautiful and skilfully executed, and the novelty of the subject goes for more than the accuracy of its parts."

That is what Zeuxis said, not without some feeling perhaps. ...

-- Lucian of Samosata, ca +120 to +190.

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Buonaventura Genelli's "Centaur Family," ca 1850.
After Zeuxis.

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Quotations from the Imagines of Philostratus

Translated from the Greek by A. Fairbanks. The Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press, 1960.
Imagines was written approximately +191.

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Imagines, Book II.2 "The Education of Achilles"

... Now Cheiron is painted in every respect like a centaur; yet to combine a horse and human body is no wondrous deed, but to gloss over the juncture and make the two into one whole and, by Zeus, cause one to end and the other to begin in such wise as to elude the eye of the observer who should try to detect where the human body ends, this seems to me to demand an excellent painter. ...

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Imagines Book II.3 "On Female Centaurs"

You used to think that the race of centaurs sprang from trees and rocks or, by Zeus, just from mares — the mares which, men say, the son of Ixion covered, the man by whom the centaurs though single creatures came to have their double nature. But after all they had, as we see, mothers of the same stock and wives next and colts as their offspring and a most delightful home; for I think you would not grow weary of Pelion and the life there and its wind-nurtured growth of ash which furnishes spear-shafts that are straight and at the same time do not break at the spearhead. And its caves are most beautiful and the springs and the female centaurs beside them, like Naïads if we overlook the horse part of them, or like Amazons if we consider them along with their horse bodies; for the delicacy of their female form gains in strength when the horse is seen in union with it. Of the baby centaurs here some lie wrapped in swaddling clothes, some seem to be crying, some are happy and smile as they suck flowing breasts, some gambol beneath their mothers while others embrace them when they kneel down, and one is throwing a stone at his mother, for already he grows wanton. The bodies of the infants have not yet taken on their definite shape, seeing that abundant milk is still their nourishment, but some that already are leaping about show a little shagginess, and have sprouting mane and hoofs, though these are still tender.

How beautiful the female centaurs are, even where they are horses; for some grow out of white mares, others are attached to chestnut mares, and the coats of others are dappled, but they glisten like those of horses that are well cared for. There is also a white female centaur that grows out of a black mare, and the very opposition of the colours helps to produce the united beauty of the whole.

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As an afficionado and unofficial consultant on centaurs, I had a peek through a window at the background of certain technical issues which Ms. Rosenblum encountered while composing "The Centaur Garden." This window came in the form of questions and comments that Mary made on the information highway. I also had the opportunity of reviewing the manuscript.

I'll try to share with you in the following what I observed through the portal:

First, the title of the story is a tribute to Moacyr Scliar's The Centaur in the Garden (Available Press, Ballantine, 1985); but where the novel is a traditional Ibero-American fantasy, "The Centaur Garden" is very definitely Science Fiction. The main imaginative-fictional idea (that is, "what happens if --") of the story is: what are the consequences of human technology (such as Genetic Engineering) used to combine the soma of human and non-human to create a (presumably useful) hybrid? Ms. Rosenblum has treated with this idea in the context of merfolk in several stories (and in her unpublished novel "Selkies"). Interestingly, as relating to centaurs, this situation has rarely been explored: Vonda McIntyre's "Elfleda" (New Directions 12, 1981); Gene Wolfe's "The Woman Who Loved the Centaur Pholus" (Asimov's Dec 1979); and parts of Walter Jon Williams' novel Knight Moves are the few best examples.  Notably, in none of the stories are the created centaurs put to a "robotic" use (in the sense that the centaurs would enter a specialized area of work); but they instead end up being of psychological or esthetic value to their creators or patrons.  This thesis is continued in "The Centaur Garden."

The incidental creation of fantasy archetypes -- merfolk, selkies, centaurs -- by technology has been discussed by Mr. Wolfe in his essay "How Science Will Conquer the World for Fantasy" originally published in Fantasy Newsletter, March 1982, and was included in a recently published (1996) volume of his shorter work. This idea is expressed in all of the above stories: that our genetic engineering of such beings is theoretically far more likely in the next 100 years than most people conceive (including a large number of science fiction editors).  I find a certain deep truth in this concept; yet it has had difficulty in being expressed inside of the existing tropes of the science-fictional genre.  Ms. McIntyre, for example, found it difficult to sell her story to certain publications, their editors' comments being along the line of 'we don't buy myths'.  "The Centaur Garden" is a strong blow against this barrier.  It places the classical centaur (and not just a centauroid alien of some other world) firmly in the context of science fiction.

Now to the story itself. Theme and plot for "The Centaur Garden" came to Mary Rosenblum first: themes of abandonment and estrangement, and of the suppressed passage to adulthood when the dominant elders are nearly immortal; a basic tale of "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl." (More on this later.)

Finding that "centaur" is quite moldable in physical appearance, physiology and personality, Ms. Rosenblum designed the centaur heroine, Ailene, to suit the plot -- that is, from the elements of the plot she worked out what the protagonist would be able to do, and thus her appearance. That Ailene would have to be attractive to Lonzo, her male counterpart, dictated that she have a human countenance (no large pointed ears, no odd facial structures, a human-looking human portion), and plenty of healthy glossy black hair on head, mane and tail. The fact that Ailene would have to jump a nearly impossible chasm with Lonzo on her back dictated a superb athlete, and large hunter-jumper physique -- and thus Ailene became Romanesquely proportioned -- somewhere around nine feet tall (from fore-hoof to top of head) and well over 1000 pounds in weight, with an Amazonian human torso. Compare this with the alternate approach, used by Paul Kidd in the fantasy semi-historical novel Mus of Kerbridge, where the (female) centaurs are in the original Greek style -- that is, quite diminutive (although no less firey).

Rosenblum's design decisions made for interesting consequences: Ailene must eat high-energy human-type food, and plenty of it, for one example.

For another: because Lonzo seems to be small and wiry (he climbs trees easily enough), establishing a level of communication between the two was challenge. Mary turned this into an opportunity: she shows off Ailene's physical capacity to lower to and rise from a couchant position -- and so entering  -- and leaving -- Lonzo's zone of personal interaction. Rosenblum uses the human hand's contact with Ailene's withers as a method of non-verbal communication -- allowing her to indicate dominance by Sebelius and support by Lonzo; and she allows Lonzo to see the punishing alienation and dehumanization that Sebelius puts to Ailene with the grotesque furnishings of her apartment, among other cruel tricks.

This in turn leads to Mary's study of alienation, (in the extreme sense this word approaches the meaning of "alien" in the Space Operatic sense) both blatant, in Ailene's case, and subtle in the case of Lonzo, who can "pass" as a normal human so well that he assumes he is normal, although somehow through his existence he has managed to defer the demise of the world's oldest profession.

Lonzo's alienation is as real as Ailene's. Music and centaurs are inextricably (if accidentally) entwined. Ailene has taken lessons, and she's good at playing the "muse-flute," part of the technological antithesis or counterpoint or background to the bioengineering thesis of the story; but Lonzo is a master striving for an elusive perfection. If you understand this part of the mythos, "the centaur with the cithara", then you discover that Lonzo is as much centaur as Ailene is.

And in the end, Lonzo is most comfortable with Ailene only when they are in close physical contact, leading to an ultimate irony of the story: he falls in love with one of the few creatures who has the freedom to not love him.

For the filkers (science-fiction or fantasy folk-singers) in the crowd, you might be interested that a resonance exists between "The Centaur Garden" and the song "The Witch of the Westmorland." Look at the parallel archetypes: Lonzo as the Wounded Knight; his horse is the mag-lev; and although the birds and hounds are servants of Sebelius Renfrew; we do have a "winding mere" in both, and, of course, the Witch herself is Ailene, right down to the "jet-black mare's body."

Mary had no knowledge of the lyrics until after she'd written the story; and there are substantive differences -- added motifs that are woven into a tapestry; motifs that enrich "The Centaur Garden" beyond a simple folktale. Lonzo is more of a "Wounded Prince," complete with a world-wide net connection in the form of an orb -- and a scepter, too: his muse-flute. Sebelius Renfrew (of the Mounties?) loses his man; but he's obviously not done yet!

Finally, Lonzo's discovery of the true nature of those sparrows, and Ailene's discovery of Lonzo's true nature are enjoyable solutions to mysteries that are the hinges to many good science fiction plots.  The handling of tension and conflict in the story is well-done: it is one of the author's strong suits.  As the longer work, "Travesty," that she had planned for publication some time ago has not appeared, Mary Rosenblum indeed has been working on works of police procedure and detection, putting her skills in this area to good use.  She has also collaborated with James Sarafin to create an excellent futuristic courtroom drama, "One Good Juror," also published in Asimov's.

-- David Alway

Revised 23 April 1997

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Lyrics by Archie Fisher and Stan Rogers; Illustration by Lela Dowling

 

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Historians, desultorily, have carried on an argument since the beginning of this century: were the classical Greek centaurs invented from scratch by the Hellenic artisans and writers -- we'll call this the Re-invention, or R hypothesis for short]; or were they adapted from older cousins, through cultural diffusion? -- we'll call this the Diffusion, or D hypothesis] Of course, I don't mean real, live centaurs; but rather, the idea of centaur as embodied in the images of the past — that is, what some might call the meme. Maybe this debate has the consistency of the famous Borbetomagic arguments as to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but the discussion brings in a lot of what we know (or think we know) about psychology, sociology, classical studies and archaeology. And to refute a Diffusion hypothesis may be one of the more testable propositions in archaeology. I will propose one way of testing later in this essay.

Scholars through the last century have come down on both sides of the argument, and there are many fencesitters. Earliest and foremost of the diffusionists was Georges Dumézil, who made the linguistic argument that the descent of the word "centaur" ("kentauros") derived from the Sanskrit word "gandharva," which is a similar type of creature to be found on (eastern) Indian religious artifacts. He attempted to counter Paul Baur, who noted that the centaurs with human (fore)legs were to be found in Greek art commingled with centaurs with equine forelegs (today's standard). Until Baur, most experts thought that the former were older than the latter. However, I think both Dumézil and Baur missed the point: the former because he was looking for linguistic linkages which even today are debatable, and the latter because it was rather limited in scope. Yet Baur's conclusions gave impetus to the reinventionists. More recent — and explicit — of the published reinventionists is Harvey Nash whose psychological studies lead him to believe in the ease of "centaur making" by the untrained mind when seeing the equestrian for the first time. He admits that Birgitt Schiffler does not seem to support him very well in this thesis, yet this hypothesis constantly gets picked up and passed around in more accessible dictionaries and encyclopedias.

The Reinvention hypothesis has some powerful support. However, I am not convinced for several reasons.

First, Baur's conclusions are limited to what appears in early classical Greek times; and after the "Greek Dark Ages" of ca. -1200 — -1000. Importantly, I have not heard of any centaurs been drawn in Mycenæan palaces before those dark ages; but plenty of winged gryphon-like creatures. Classical centaurs did not appear until the Dorian chaos settled down into the beginnings of the Hellenic city-states. I claim that the turmoil caused by the Assyrian invasions in the east of that time provided the impetus for the mass migrations of refugees, and brought the meme centaur to classical Greece.

Second, there is a source for the centaur image — from the Assyrians — heirs to the Babylonian civilization. The Babylonians had centaur — which the Assyrians may have adapted in several ways — in a winged version. Its Assyrian descendant appears on the stelæ (stone boundary markers) of the middle-eastern kings as early as the twelfth century BC, in the reign of the Babylonian King Meli-Shipak (-1188 — -1174). Many appear to be hunters or archers, and are bimanous quadrupeds, with horse's forelegs. Many have wings.

I think that the "wing" business ties in to the religious divinity that people associated with their creations during that age of civilization. Perhaps one might go so far as to claim that winged centaur has the same origin as the Assyrian man-headed winged bull — they are the remembered visual hallucinations from the days when most civilized people were, as in Julian Jaynes' thesis, schizophrenic. These gods flew in on our nutty ancestors, full-blown, hundreds — or even thousands — of years before the first classical centaur. Indeed, such a thesis offers a reasonable alternative to von Däniken's conviction that there were indeed gods from outer space. I suspect there were gods, which came from the inner space of the febrile mind of humans who thought in a much different way than we do, when Jaynes' conscious "I" was not well established. I believe Nash, referenced above, perhaps unintentionally confirmed Jaynes' arguments. I claim this: The archetypes of several western therianthropic divinities were created sometime in the second millennium BCE, and diffused from their Babylonian-Assyrian source. Centaur was one of these, and so it ended up, transmogrified and reassociated, in Hellenic Greece.

Third, centaur seems to have been initially restricted to the Mediterranean basin, carried about from the Ægean and with the eastern limit of centaur images already being in India. Subsequently, the image seems to be constrained to the lands known by Europeans, until the age of the European ascendancy. As western culture expanded geographically, so did centaur. The reason I hold to this opinion is this: over the years I have come to be able to quickly recognize the centaur pattern (and its variants), and although I have searched diligently for centaur (especially non-hippocentauroids) in nonwestern cultures, I have yet to find a bone fide example of the motif sans Indo-european influence as a primer. Thus it is my belief and claim that centaur is strongly associated with, or "tags," the Indo-european culture. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, however, I'd like to see a reasonable effort at a refutation.

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Tips for Non-Indo-European Centaur Hunting

Avoid the original Indo-european lands. This includes all of Europe, West and Central Asia, and North Africa. For various reasons, I'd avoid all of Africa. This rather limits you to early Sino-Japan, Australia, Oceana, and the Americas. Of these, the pre-Columbian Americas is probably your best bet. Indeed, if you can find an example of pre-Columbian centauroid art found in the Americas, then you have either disproved D — or, just as exciting — you have found a pre-Columbian European settlement in America!

There are also some traps. Don't accept descriptions by western writers about other cultures at anywhere near face value. They have filtered their own cultural archetypes into their own descriptions. The classic case: western historians say that the Aztecs considered Cortez' men as godlike centaurs, because they rode their horses. Gods maybe; but centaurs? Probably not — you are looking through the glass of the Indo-european culture that the writers' belonged to.

Be sure of dating. A successful meme spreads like wildfire. (Indeed, the mixture of cultures is often the crucible of creativity. Several Native American artists have taken centaur and incorporated it so tightly into their own art that it seems to have originated there. The considerable oeuvre of Wendy Rose, where centaur is a major motif, is a case in point. Within its niches (the discussion of which will have to await its own turn.), centaur is surprisingly successful — much more so than what I had thought before embarking on my researches! You don't want to find a centauroid that's dated to 1500±10 years.

If you search in the Americas, be sure that centaur is not a horse-centaur. You'll have trouble convincing me that the motif is free of European influence, because the modern horse was introduced to the New World by the Spaniards.

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Just What Does Centaur Look Like?

For the purpose of your search, (1) centaur is not one of the other therianthropic creatures (especially not faun, satyr or selenid); (2) the centaur form is a sizable six limbed mammal, with two manipulative arms on an upright (usually human) torso and four locomotive legs on the corners of a horizontal lower, generally feral, torso. Wings, tails and other such are optional. The initial pattern I look for is the tell-tale L-shape of the torso. The closest thing in form to a natural example is an insect, the praying mantis in particular. Yes, it can be argued that the science-fictional Thranx are centauroid!

Here is a challenge for the serious: the Diffusion Hypothesis is falsifiable: that is, if you can find an actual example of the centaur motif where any influence from Indo-european culture can be completely discounted, you have effectively disproved D. To make things interesting, I'll award a modest prize (US$100) to the first person who finds such a legitimate example. Because it's my money, I will be the sole judge as to adequacy and proof. In case of a tie, the prize will be divided equally.

Anyone interested?

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Ancient cultures were conservative, and would take and adapt established old items to new applications almost desperately, rather than come up with something from whole cloth. The centaur motif was probably invented once. Falsification of D might be from the Far East, Africa or the New World either pre-Columbian or after the introduction of the horse but before cultural influence began: a six-limbed warrior and antelope, elk or "great dog" in the thought or stories of the Native American before the arrival of the European. I'll admit that it is tough and difficult evidence to find. Many reference works on Native American culture are written by European analysts, so I strongly suspect that the term "centaur" these authors use is either not, strictly speaking, centaur, or is a cultural imposition.

And I wonder, how did the researchers who support the R hypothesis miss such an obvious source for diffusion? The Babylonians hold the claim to inventing the oldest centaur form: indeed, it is the oldest continuously surviving image of centaur in Western culture, passing through war, strife, destruction of empires, the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Age of Reason, and the Modern Age with scarcely a change. One may still see its skeleton today — in the high summer of the northern hemisphere, far to the South. Sometimes, it has been reduced to a man with a small bow and arrow; but in its true apparition, it has a more feral nature, befitting its inclusion in the Ring of Animals, the Zodiac. Half-man, half-horse, represented with wings where the other, newer Centaur of the heavens is not — it is a hunter of the wicked scorpion. The astronomical Babylonians saw it so: In Latin he is, of course, the archer constellation, Sagittarius.

Græco-Roman Centaurs — specifically, the two-armed and four-legged hippokentauroi or horse-centaurs: the "high," "ideal" or "awesome" centaurs — as distinct from the diminished callicantzaris of modern Greek folklore — were familiar to both Greek mythmakers and Roman mythologists. The concept of this bimanous quadruped may have had its origins in more ancient and general indo-european roots, but of course, the Greeks (if not originating the centaur motif themselves) would have been the heirs to those roots, and the Romans were certainly the cultural heirs to the Greeks.

-400—-600 was a time of artistic experimentation. In early Greek art the centaur had two depictions: one was that of the full body of a man with the hindquarters and barrel of a small horse behind. The other depiction — that of a full body of a horse (though it is still sometimes shown as quite diminutive) with the trunk or torso of a human — became more generally accepted. However, the Thessalian tribe of centaurs were not described as hybrids of man and horse until relatively late, and then in Greek literature. The evidence of the art samples I have seen gives credence to the notion that the artists were trying to show that the barbarians were "as wild as horses" and yet retain their appearances as human. The more imaginative artists , may have come upon the combinating technique that produced the classical centaur: some of the more detailed drawings show the forelegs of the centaurs with both human feet and horse hooves, almost "phasing" or shimmering between the two ideomorphs of human and horse. It looks like a literal superposition .

Wild centaurs were described as enemies of Herakles by Hesiod in Shield of Herakles and the famous Kiron, Chiron or Cheiron is named as the son of the nymph Philyra in Theogony as early as the 8th Century BCE. (The spellings "Kiron," "Chiron," "Cheiron" are all used in ancient literature, generally in that order of appearance through time.) But the first description in literary form of centaurs as hybrid creatures was by Pindar in his Pythian Odes. Pindar lived contemporaneously with the famous battle of Marathon (ca. 5th century BCE).

Even the word "centaur" (originally pronounced "kentaur" — the "s" sound we use today is the product of a relatively recent Gothic influence) has had varying origins claimed. There are, apparently three schools of argument: the incautious "dictionary" etymology has been to associate "kentaur" with ken(tein) tauros= bullprodder (where any claim has been made); an alternate proposal associates the word with kent(ein) auros= air pricker, referring to Pindar's version of the ancestry of the centaurs. The third, previously mentioned, was Dumèzil's association of the Scythian "gandharvas" with kentauros. Take your pick.

There is less ancient textual description of the manner and characteristics of centaurs than one would like. But centaurs were popular subjects for vase painters during the last few centuries before the common era, along with many other forms in the visual arts, including metopes of the Parthenon; and in the performing arts, including lost plays by Apollophanes (Centaurs) and Aristophanes (Centaur). Illustrations contemporary with the productions show centaurs being costumed by pairs of actors, much as horses are portrayed today at costume parties.

Pindar took the centaurs to be the grandchildren of Ixion and Nephele (a cloud nymph), who produced the man-shaped monster Centaurus, who in turn mated with the finest mares of Magnesia. Chiron, however, was the son of Cronus and Philyra and either born a centaur or punished with the half-equine shape for rebelling against the Olympian gods. Chiron, who Pindar called "the divine beast," was held to be immortal; the others were not.

Ovid flourished around the beginning of the common era. In his Fasti, he relates in Latin of the death of Chiron due to a bathetic accident. Ovid also tells of the death of Pholus and battles between the Lapiths and the Centaurs (relatives!) at the wedding of Pirithous in Book XII of his Metamorphoses. Metamorphoses contains the first literary reference to a centaur female as a girl-horse, although there is an earlier artistic depiction of a centaur Medusa as a woman-horse, and a later Lucian describes in Zeuxis or Antiochus the pioneering artist Zeuxis (fl. -413) and his centaur matron of twins. Before this, centauresses were conventionally considered to have human form, or their form was not mentioned. This supported the general mythical theme of the counterpoint of the male Centaurs with the female Amazons. It is notable that Chiron's four children, Carystus, Endeis, Melanippe and Ocyrhoë, did not have half-equine forms; although Ocyrhoë was transformed into a horse as punishment for her foretelling the greatness of Heracles. Barthell gives a long list of centaurs mentioned by Ovid.

Around +191, Philostratus (of Lemnos), both elder and younger, wrote Imagines. The second book contains a short essay on female centaurs. Reading the translation by A. Fairbanks, you do get the feeling that all female centaurs are beautiful and bountiful. The essay is delightful — in some ways Philostratus precedes and parallels Disney's treatment of the "centaurettes" in Fantasia some seventeen hundred years later. Also about that time Callistratus described centaurs on the walls of a temple.

The rest of the references to centaurs I have found dating from classical times were generally mentioned in passing or in works of art (often fragments) or derivations from earlier work. We learn that centaurs are fond (and can guzzle a lot of) the fermented grape; and that depictions of centaurs were inlaid — or layed-up or layed-out as the case may be — on chests, boxes or amphoras. With a recapitulation by Apollodorus in the late classical period (100—300 A. D.) toward the end of the Roman Peace, very little other text containing substantial references to centaurs survives the destruction of the fabled Library at Alexandria.

According to Brewer, educated late-classical people believed that centaurs did actually exist, once, thousands of years earlier. Their uneducated contemporaries held that some still existed somewhere in the hills of Greece or an inaccessible district of the Roman Empire. But the reintroduction of centaur in any major way would have to wait until the rediscovery of the classical world by the Renaissance Europeans.

Very few centaurs, other than the Sagittary, appear during the darkest of the Middle Ages (500—1000 A.D.). The main references to the centaur is in the form of the descriptions of the constellations in manuscripts such as Phænomena. Centaurs appear on a number of armorial bearings, as devices or supporters. The "English" king Stephen of the short-lived dynasty of Blois was said to have the arms: Gules, three sagittary or. (The sagittaries are depicted with a leonine appearance.) This was attributed to him having won his great victory during the chilly season of Sagittarius, the last month of fall. Other families, notably Fletcher and Lambert may have had centaurs associated with their arms.

In addition, centaurs appeared in the architecture of churches, cathedrals and monasteries, usually as heraldic or astrological devices; but sometimes as gargoyles, or -- interestingly -- as a symbol of Christ.

The image of centaur, not associated with the sagittary or with an astronomical constellation, depicted or written of during the 6th through 11th centuries in Europe appear to be scarce. I have only three entries in the Catalogue of Centaur Art and Literature dated in this range. Besides Aratus, the only major work is the sculpture Centaur of Aristeas and Papias with His Panpipes. which is dated at about +500, right at the beginning of the early medieval.

"But after me, the deluge."

So must have the first millenium of the common era said to its successor. This was certainly true for the classical centaur image in Europe and during the rediscovery of the classical world during the Renaissance. Early on we see the association of the centaur image in painting with the classical stories. The paintings by Piero diCosimo, Antonio Pollauolo, Tiepolo and Botticelli either explicitly refer to the event in classical mythology (the Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, the Abduction of Deijinira), or the allegorical association of the centaur and the goddess of wisdom. (Incidentally, the image of Hylonome comforting the dying Cyllarus in a detail of the Cosimo work is the first of a female centaur that I have seen in Renaissance art.) In literature, the inclusion of centaurs in Dante's Inferno marks the first extensive reference after the Middle Ages, although there is the aspect of sagittary remaining in them, as they are placed to shoot the malefactors who attempt to escape the River of Blood. Later artists who "did centaurs" included Canova and Poussin. The tendency to associate centaurs with the classical myth or allegory continued well into the 19th century.

Into the mid-1800s, the association of centaurs with the myths which survived the destruction of the classical world, or with direct allegories from that civilization sufficed to supply artists and sculptors with inspiration. For example, Buonaventura Genelli's work, Kentaurenidyl or Kentaurenfamilie (Family of Centaurs), despite its delightful invention, was derived from an earlier fragment [Vogel]. And, toward the end of this "classical" period, Fromentin's romantically wistful Centaurs Practicing Archery of the 1870s is based on the sagittary of the young stallions showing off their skills before the available fillies. But now the centaurs seem to be familiar, almost one's personal or intimate associates, rather than the remote or grand counterparts to heroes. The industrical revolution and the new "modern art," including what we now call Impressionism was taking its toll.

The major clichés about centaurs had been worked through by the beginning of this century.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the major themes (or clichés) about the attributes of centaurs had been worked out. They were:

• The lust and strength of the (male) centaurs, especially in the abduction and rape of (human) women;
• The association of Heracles and other heroes with centaurs, usually in a confrontational manner and the manner of the centaurs' destruction (the centaur traditionally gets the "short end of the stick" in these fights);
• The violence of their unrestrained strength;
• The wisdom (wizardry) of centaurs, and the teaching of lore (the Chironic myth), especially healing;
• The centaurs' mastery of music (especially cithera, flute and similar carried instruments);
• The beauty and bounty of the female centaur;
• The centaurs' mastery of archery (the sagittary) and general skill at arms and the hunt;
• The association of centaurs with the waves, the air, the sky, the insubstantial, sometimes associating wings with centaurs, especially the sagittary.

In to this list the late 19th century artists such as Böcklin added a humor of exaggeration or anachronicity to the images of centaurs that presaged the surrealistic movement. And, too, the problems of that current day also influenced artists. Rodin's Centauress emphasized the tension between the mind (the spiritual) and the body (the carnal) in the exaggerated stance of the filly and girl and the stretched, taut waist.

For centuries, the illustration of a centaur as a realistic creature has been a challenge in the study of art, very much in the way the hand has been studied, albeit with less intensity. The first individual to point this out was Philostratus in the second century of the common era. Windsor McCay apparently was trying to show his mastery at animation while not using human models when he did the animated piece The Centaurs.

The artist most fascinated by centaurs during that period was the German Franz von Stück, who was most well known in the period at the beginning of the 20th century. He drew and painted dozens of centaurs, included in scenes of the fantastic and mythological. The image of the centaur was very popular in German and in other humorous or satirical magazines. The last flourishing of these individuals was Heinrich Kley, whose rapier pen sketches lampooned central European life unmercifully.

It is notable that the majority of fine artists that drew centaurs up to this point were male. It is very possible (perhaps likely) that this is due to the bias of civilization towards the male in any public endeavor. I find it interesting, however, that the image of the male centaur also predominates. Those artists that draw centaurs that I have encountered today are mostly female; and the image of the female centaur predominates (even where it is a male artist — or perhaps especially when it is a male artist). Again, this may be due to a bias introduced by where and what I collect. I wonder if anyone can confirm or refute my two unscientific observations.

The crossing point from the dominance of male centaur images to the prevalence of female images occurred sometime in the 20th century. Points could be argued, but my favorite watershed date is 1940 with the first showing of Walt Disney's Fantasia. Here the centaurs of both sexes are carefully paired. There are female centaurs left over (they are black or African). There are earlier potential crossover points; but Disney's work is the clearest and easiest to point to.

One reason for this particular change might have to do with the frequency of modern young women's fascination for animals (especially horses) in our society. Contrast this with the modern adolescent boys' infatuation with automobiles and other heavy equipment. In either instance there is an instance of a large (adult), powerful and potentially dangerous object that can be learned to be controlled, perhaps so well as to become a "part of oneself," and thus extend the youth's strength, importance in and influence on the world. Perhaps the skill and attributes of the centaur (or rather, the centauress) could be the ultimate goal (fantasy) of the young female equestrian.

A further discussion of the relationship of human societal norms with the behavior, sexual relationships and ratios, and appearance of centaurs generally reveal more close ties: the centaurs' attributes being either the ideal extreme or an exaggeration of the human attributes. The former being an idyllic fantasy, the latter ironic comedy. These facets are reasons for the continued and persistent existence of centaur as a motif in art and literature.

"Now don’t give away anything," said Walt Disney, when discussing with his animators the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony Number Six, "the Pastoral," in Fantasia, "You want [the fact that the nude bathing girls are really female centaurs wading in the ponded brook] as an additional surprise." (As quoted in John Culhane's Walt Disney's Fantasia, published by Harry N. Abrams, 1983.)

With these words a transplanted midwesterner set in motion the most well known sight-gag concerning centaurs in animation history. Although Philostratus in his Imagines anticipated Disney by some 1700 years, I call the ability of a centaur (male or female) to induce this confusion on a human observer the Fantasia Effect.

An odd but instructive way to classify centaurs and their related brethren is to divide them into one of four broad sets as one might divide up diamonds into groups:

1. Centaurs with the Fantasia Effect of the First Water. As a diamond of the first water cannot be seen in H₂O, this group includes the classical centaurs whose upper torsos are dead ringers for the human head and body. Also, if the artist/author populates his or her world with elves (or other two-legged beings) with (say) pointed ears, or whose differing attributes might easily be hidden by some other bodily attribute such as hair, then these centaurs may also be considered relatively "of the first water." [Chang Feng would be a member of this group.]

2. Centaurs with the Fantasia Effect of the Second Water. These include centaurs or related chimera where there are obvious differences, but they can be obscured by clothing, posture or a combination of these. An example might be a full mane on the back, small horns on the head, auxiliary windpipes, etc. Also, centaurs with large pointed ears, if they cannot be confused with elves, but the ears can be concealed by hat, headband or hair. [Tico Alvares would likely be of this group.]

3. Centaurs with the Fantasia Effect of the Third Water. Heavily modified but attractive centaurs, whose relation to human is easy to see. Centauroids with large antlers, bull or cow horns (bucentaurs), or antelope horns; centaurs with the extension of the animal fur or coat on their upper bodies and/or faces; fairy centaurs with prominent antennæ, very long ears, etc. The difference cannot be hidden at all without permanent or semi-permanent major cosmetic or surgical works (polling horns, shaving the body, ear reduction surgery, etc.). [Berenice Wilson would be an example of this group.]

4. Centaurs with the Fantasia Effect of the Fourth Water. Animal headed centaurs. The real Pug-Uglies (or Mug-Uglies) also belong here. [Donna Barr's Steinling character would be of this group.]

Perhaps I can put it more succinctly: A first-water centaur can fool you even if you are looking for it; a second-water centaur can fool you if you are not looking for it; a third-water centaur generally cannot fool you, though you wouldn't object to talking to him or her; and the fourth-water centaur might be hard to relate to.

One might put several degrees to each class. I think a good-natured competition would arise among centaurs or centauresses, if enough human judges of the opposite sex could be found.

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Just what does a centaur look like? How does it behave? What is the race's (feigned) past? And the same for it's anatomy and its physiology?

A centaur is what convention says it is. The rub is that you may pick among several conventions that have been developed, sometimes independently, or devise your own. Here I will try to list some of the more prominent attributes of centaurs not already discussed. I will discard some alternates which are minor or are not (in my mind) particularly sympathetic. Some of these have already been discussed in conjunction with the indefinitely delayed production of the book "The Joy of Horsing Around / A Pillow Book for Centaurs."

Origin.

In modern literature, the physical origin of centaurs generally has been made out to be one of these:

• the descendents of a lost antiquity [Robert Moore Williams];
• the results of a pseudoscientific or alternate evolution [Bonnie Dalzell];
• (arrival of) inhabitants of other worlds or universes [Anderson, Hanson-Roberts, Wheatly, David J. Lake, etc.];
• from magical spells (including the mathematical manipulation of reality) [Jack Chalker];
• from the crossbreeding of human and animal (both "natural" and magical) [Piers Anthony];
• the result of modern surgery [Vonda McIntyre]; and
• the result of genetic engineering [Walter Jon Williams, Mary Rosenblum].

Society.

Many centaurs exist in isolation, especially those in The Last of the Centaurs type of stories. If they exist in groups, they seem to have a simpler pastoral society. In some cases their society seems to be what the artist or author believes is the ideal; in others the society is quite violent (perhaps also the author's or artist's ideal). In others they are exaggerations of the human. Less sympathetically, the centaur society is seen as in the final throes of decadence.

Physiology and Form.

These two are most closely related and have a large set of variants. I exclude those creatures which do not have at least six jointed limbs (two arms with a grasping hand and four legs generally used for walking).

Most centaurs are completely mammalian. The classical Græco-Roman centaur is horse bodied; but some earlier centaurs (of Babylonian or Assyrian origin) are lion-bodied. The sagittaries are often winged or have winglike structures on their backs, and have a leonine form. Some Hellenic centaurs had human front legs and feet and human genitalia, and there seems to have been a competition (including mixtures of the versions) with the current type with four equine legs becoming the standard.

The following feral creatures have been used in modern literature or art as the base for a centaur: horse, zebra, lion, leopard (combined with horse), unicorn, tiger, large cats in general, dog, rat, llama, bull or cow, goat, onager, dragon (not wyvern), deer, elk or moose, antelope, giraffe, camel, and several combinations of the above. In this researcher's opinion, the weirdest combination was Lela Dowling's WindyCon XXXX program book cover illustration of a centaur with a winged-cow body, and a cat-girl's upper torso playing a fiddle. And — Hey, Diddle Diddle — flying over the moon of course. For the brute-force number of different creatures crammed into a single centauroid, the award goes to the creature described in the song "Miss-Conception" by Lackey and Fish, with the attributes of about 15 species.

Hair color has a wide variation among centaurs, too; and in some cases, as in Varley's Gaea books, are blinding in their combination. The centaur's tail can also be much more prominent than the normal feral equivalent. Some have extraordinarily long or elaborated tails (as does Chang Feng, and as in Disney's Fantasia). Varieties of centaurs may have more than four legs, as in Ellison's Medea story collection, sometimes many more. Many varieties have cloven hooves, as in Walter Jon William's Knight Moves.

In general the feral part of the centaur is larger than the human part. How much larger is a matter of taste. My observations indicate that either the human torso is drawn to be much larger than normal or the horse body is made quite a bit smaller. So in most artists' renditions the ratio between the size of animal and human parts approaches 1:1 in a centaur. That is quite different than when the two are taken separately (say as in an equestrian statue). Contrary as I am, my preference is for centaurs with a full-sized feral body and a normal human body. But I seem to be in a minority.

Most centaurs I have seen drawn in detail are depicted with a human navel; but this is by no means the rule. Some centaurs are set so that the "human" hips ride quite high on the fore-shoulders of the feral creature; in other cases the human runs directly into the animal body with very little waist. There are degrees in between. I mildly favor the proportionately long waisted side. In some cases there is a prominent, sharp division between human and feral, say along the edges of muscles; in others, the hair of the equine gradually shortens to the skin of the human trunk.

Centaurs most often are described to have two sets of lungs and hearts. There is a question as to whether the human set is necessary; the most telling argument for the second set is cosmetic: a centaur's human torso should "breath," which increases the strength of the "Fantasia effect" in that individual. Centaurs may have one or two sets of digestive systems. When there are two sets, they are independent (as much as can be): the human stomach eats human food, the horse stomach eats food tolerated by horses. [See C. S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles.] When there is one set, I generally prefer that the food consumed is a mixture of foods tolerated by both horse and human (e.g.: cereals), but what is digestible is more human like than horse, except in quantity. In very large centaurs breathing is thought to be a problem; however, many centaurs are portrayed with a normal human nose and mouth.

Reproduction is usually taken to be similar to the equine's, as in Mary Rosenblum's "The Centaur Garden." The normal convention is for the genitals to be positioned where the horse's would be; however, the alternate convention of positioning the (male) organ in front where a human's would be has support in art and literature, as implied in some of Boris Vallejo's work, and described in Angela Carter's War of Dreams. In some descriptions both sets or three sets exist, as in Chalker's The Hot-Wired Dodo or Varley's Gaea books, respectively. Offspring are usually precocious, both as horse (or other feral creature) and as human.

With the exception of the bucentaurs, most centaurs are very intelligent, even though they may not look it.

While in some cases centaurs age quite quickly with a lifespan similar to the horse as in Arno Schmidt's The Egghead Republic; the more conventional view is that centaurs age at the same rate, or much more slowly than humans, as in Piers Anthony's Xanth series, and in a few cases are immortal or nearly so (the example of Kiron in Jessica Amanda Salmonson's The Swordwoman).

Male centaurs are often strikingly larger than the females (this is not true of horses) both in the human and equine parts. They are generally athletic and some are extremely muscular and imposing. Many grow beards, which become quite prominent as they become elderly.

The convention, dating back to Philostratus, is that Female centaurs are good looking. They are taken to be sexually attractive to both men and stallions. They are athletic; but not usually overpoweringly muscular. Their hair is usually long and well groomed, their flanks being glossy.

There are two contrary conventions as to the voluptuousness of female centaurs. That is, they are either quite angular and flat-chested due to the amount of running they do (Thomas Burnett Swann's description); or they are endowed beyond all but the rarest of human women, and are prodigiously bountiful, as Philostratus originally mentioned, and Chalker and Anthony have elaborated upon. Some types of female centaurs have both breasts and udders, some lack udders; and some lack breasts.

Clothing and Accoutrements.

Some centaurs (especially males) rarely wear anything. Others wear only that which is immediately useful or functional. The most usual things carried are weapons of war or of the hunt (especially bows, quivers, spears, knives, and more traditionally, cudgels (usually made out of treelimbs) and large rocks. The principle exception to this rule are staffs (of magical power or authority) and musical instruments: usually the cithara (harp), flute or panpipes, horns of all types, and the tambour. The female centaur usually limits herself to a blouse or somewhat revealing garment and wears them only when in the potential presence of humans.

Behavior.

Centaurs move with an awkward grace. In some instances they do not have full control over their physical movements. However they are preternaturally speedy and have unusual endurance, so do not mind getting into a race with other centaurs or other species. Centaurs have very few inhibitions in personal relations, and what they consider normal in that vein often gets them into deadly trouble in other societies. Alternately, a few centaurs are said to be very prim, but these are rare. Male centaurs enjoy the company of females, especially women and mermaids, and like to carry them on their backs; perhaps because they cannot run away like a female centaur can. This is also true of female centaurs and male humans, though this is not as frequently portrayed.

When pressed by encroaching "civilization," centaurs generally react badly. Many become hermits.

Relationships with animals.

Generally the relationship between centaurs and animals are quite good and are even intimate. Relations between horses and centaurs is a case in point. It is notable that there is often a small animal (usually a bird or butterfly) associated with centaurs (usually females) in portraits.

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My first encounter with centaur in my childhood is lost in the haze of misty time. I suspect that it may have been a book that contained the imagined figures of the constellations in the sky in elementary school. By the time I was ten, though, I knew what a centaur was; and had a rather sneaking admiration for the imaginary creature, regardless of the fact that centaurs almost uniformly seemed to get "the short end of the stick" in the mythological literature. I don't think I remember the centaurs from Fantasia until I was at least ten or twelve. I remember originally mistaking the bathing centaur girls to be mermaids — I think I had seen Disney's Peter Pan not too long before — and the shock of taking one therianthropic creature for another brought me up short.

I started to do a little research, first in the elementary school library, and then in my junior high school library, first going through all of the encyclopædias under ‘C’ and then looking in all of the mythology books I could find. In the former, the most information available was a paragraph or two describing what a centaur was, and often a rather bad picture, the best being of Baryë's sculpture Theseus and the Centaur Bienor, or of Fromentin's painting Centaurs Practicing Archery, or an engraving of a young male blackhaired centaur rearing up to grasp a branch of a tree, ascribed to the Bettman Archives (whatever that was). In the latter books, I found the distant illustration of a windswept Chiron in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales and Brock's more intimate — yet equally imposing — "Chiron Teaching Jason" in Charles Kingsley's The Heroes. I was impressed by the massive power of the bucentaur illustrated — and represented as the Minotaur — in Edith Hamilton's Mythology. Finally, there was a sketch, used on the endpapers in one of the storybooks on myths and legends which depicted a young and very lean boy centaur extending himself and picking fruit from a tree near Mt. Olympus. This thrilled me: So boys and girls could be centaurs too!

In general the idea of a strong, virile object as a role model seemed to be quite reasonable — after all, this was the Space Age, and anything could be. Some boys had sports stars; not on the ne'er-do-well Detroit Lions, or the Tigers of the late '50s and early '60s — rather they looked farther away: towards Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle and the New York Yankees team.  A very few had their cars (very dangerous objects, noisy and dirty, so the majority restricted themselves to "kitbashing" models of dragsters), the Astronaut Corps had just come about; but to me, these fellows seemed like ordinary — if extraordinary healthy and intelligent — Joes. A few girls (like my older cousins) had horses, and I (who hadn't ridden a horse for more than a minute in my life — and never alone) had the centaur: an intimately controllable engine of power whose "rider" could not fall off.

My 7th and 8th grade instructors mistook my fascination for books and made me a library assistant during studyhall hours. Rather, it curtailed my research into centaurs; and it also curtailed my reading and rereading the science "fact" books, and space exploration books of the fifties and early sixties, usually lavishly illustrated by such artists as Chesley Bonestell. And it kept me from scarfing up all of the Anderson, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc., etc., juveniles I could get my hands on. I was now into full, blazing adolescence — and of the fewer books I read during that time, I particularly remember being impressed by Podkayne of Mars and the young heroine's 90 centimeter chest (and being mathematically inclined, divided that number by 2.54 at least once).

Then in high school real life took over. That classic hell of the nineth and tenth grades treated me rather brutally in a social sense; but that traditional bad business of youth has been experienced and talked about many times by others in other venues. And by the eleventh and twelfth grade, everyone in the academic tracks at school were too busy trying to get into the college of their choice — or really, a college, any college (the Vietnam war was becoming an issue, even in a well-off conservative suburb such as Portage, Michigan) for them to bother with harassing outrageously intelligent young fools like me. The University of Michigan had prestige in my eyes. It was far enough away for me to room away from home. I was a Michigan resident, which made for low tuition. And I had the grades and the SAT scores. So, Michigan became my choice.

I did not read science fiction during those years (age 15—18, 1965—1968), and did not pick up Analog again until I started reading back issues in the East Quad Dorm library in the winter term of 1969. The story that caught my eye was Anne McCaffrey's "Weyr Search" as serialized in Analog. I enjoyed the story immensely — also wondering, what the deuce was Analog (your classic bedrock SF 'zine) doing writing something that looked on the face of it like a classic alternate world medieval setting fantasy novel???

I started picking up SF and Fantasy paperbacks in the Michigan Union bookstore. Beginning in the second semester of my Sophomore year, I became a library assistant, this time in the Graduate Library on campus. My junior high school experience stood me well in getting this minimum wage job, and it paid off my tuition and gave me spending tuppence. More dangerously, I started to prowl the book stacks.

Over the next few years, I did a desultory centaur hunt. I found a few unlikely sources for centaur images, including early numbers of International Studio, and Burlington Magazine. Some of these I have not been able to recover since. (I particularly recall seeing an image of a young centaur resting on the ground while a young faun teases him.) The thought struck me then that perhaps I should record these discoveries; but the rigors of a scientifically oriented academic life pulled me away from this avocation — and I never had the nerve to talk with anyone in the Classical Studies department (yes! there it was! I passed it on the first floor of Angell Hall every day!) about my efforts.

Then I graduated and got a job (or got a job and graduated), and dedicated the next few years of my life to tending and programming computers, a job I still do, but in not quite such a dedicated way. Along the way I picked up a Masters degree in Math at Western Michigan, in 1975. And with the exception of attending one day of K*WestCon (I was somehow disappointed), I remained a reader of Science Fiction. That does not mean I was not being slowly sucked into fandom: during the late seventies I became a subscriber to Locus, and periodically made trips to Curious Books in East Lansing and the several downtown bookstores in Ann Arbor.

But my interested was piqued when the first of several sets of books appeared in the years 1977-1978: Firstly, Piers Anthony's A Spell For Chameleon, in 1977, which depicted both male and female centaur characters (Chester and Cherie) in a sympathetic way, and, although they were minor characters, centaurs became sidekicks and then major characters in the Xanth series even as it continues today. Secondly, that summer, Jack Chalker's Midnight at the Well of Souls appeared. Here, indeed, was a major character (Wu Julee) who turned into a centaur, and ended up at the end of the story as a heroine and none the worse for wear. These initial books of series had me actually looking forward to going to the bookstore more often. In 1978 John Varley published "Gaea" in Analog, and it came out the next year as Titan. The Titanides were modified centauroids, again sympathetically depicted, and eventually became minor protagonists in Demon, the last published Gaea book. Also in 1979, Arno Schmidt's The Egghead Republic was published in English. In 1980, James Kahn's World Enough and Time depicted a handsome (if somewhat prissy) centaur attractive enough to capture the heart of a young woman. In 1982, Crawford Killian's Eyas did much the same thing, yet with a more positive ending.

I followed this late 1970s explosion in the exploration of the centaur motif with delight. It seemed that the imaginative fiction community had picked up on the subject in great numbers. If this were so, perhaps centaurs were being discussed at Science Fiction conventions! I had wheels now (a 1978 ChromeYellow Ford Van), and notwithstanding my 1970’s SF convention experience, in early August of 1982 I went to Ypsilanti and a comicbook(!) con called KingCon listed in Locus and held in the Eastern Michigan University Student Center.

Centaurs were not being talked about at this convention; but a few were being shown, in the art show. I actually picked up a piece for a few dollars (I haven't been able to find it for several years now), and entered a piece of my own ("The Lepidopterist") which actually got an honorable mention. I heard about the "WorldCon" in Chicago; but the membership was steep and the time late, so I drew a bye. I was hooked though: I went for a Saturday to ConClave (a Detroit-area convention) that September — and there I learned a great deal about conventions, and overheard the talk about how wonderful (or terrible) ChiCon, the Chicago World Science Fiction Convention, was. And I saw that there were so many, many people; whose names I had never heard of, and that I could not remember names to their faces, yet they seemed to be so important to rate hugs by half of the other important people there. Normally a very shy person, I felt extraordinarily isolated by this camaraderie; but I decided to do my bit: I started looking at art at the art show and buying same that depicted centaurs. Eventually, I would become well known by other art collecters, and by the artists patronized by my custom. And, at ConClave, I found another corner that had not existed at KingCon: the filk. This I filed away for future reference.

I must have sent away for a membership to the World Fantasy Convention in Chicago in 1983 about the same time I sent in for a membership to ConFusion that winter. ConFusion was my first attempt at filking, and it was at the Plymouth (Michigan) Hilton. I remember trying to carry my musical paraphernalia over the treacherous ice on the hotel sidewalks. I bought a few pieces at that artshow and at ConClave the next fall. But my big connection came at the 1983 World Fantasy Convention: I purchased Ellen Vartanoff's "Milady Centaur" there, and a set of four musical centaur females, handcolored prints for the princely sum of $120, by Christine Mansfield (now Christine Markel-Lampe). I wrote Christine at the address on the back of the pieces. She wrote back, mentioning that a fellow up in Albany, CA, in the east Bay area was interested in putting together a book about centaurs, "The Joy of Horsing Around." She gave me Don Simpson's address.

One thing followed another, and I got to know quite a number of west-coast fandom through that connection. When the book project was delayed (and eventually delayed indefinitely), one of those folks, Gary Traveis, suggested that we put together a number of intermediate projects to keep up interest in the subject. He would do a newsletter, "The Centaurs Gatherum Newsletter," and I agreed to do a bibliography on centaurs, which eventually became The Catalogue of Centaur Art and Literature.

Also, in ‘83 or ‘84, I visited my first Media*West Con. Here I ran across most strongly the equestrienne/centaur fen, including Cathy Ford, editor of Hoofstrikes, and contributors such as Sharon Daugherty and Sandra Williams.

In the year of 1984 I started my researches again, this time in complete earnest. I routed through the books of Western Michigan University all of that summer, putting my references on the mandatory index cards. And in the Spring of 1985 made a trip to the Library of Congress to continue my efforts, filling up notebooks and cards and collecting unmanageable fading blue LofC computer printouts of bibliographies in the process. My brother, Bob, was living in the area, working for the Patent Office, so he let me sleep at his apartment.

I bought a Macintosh computer with 512K and external diskdrive, and a primitive database made by an outfit called StoneWare. I typed in about 400 entries, and printed a copy and had it photoduplicated, just in time for the 1985 WesterCon where it was passed about at a panel on centaurs.

I returned to the LofC that Labor Day weekend, adding to my researches, and put together a second preliminary edition.

The third and final preliminary edition in March of 1986 was the trial run for the CCAL as it appeared that summer. It included the Centaur Alphabet which Margie Price had just completed the year before, and had originally intended for Simpson's Pillow Book project. The complete set in saddlestaple chapbook format, included "The Roll" a listing of centaurs by their name and racename that have appeared in literature; four volumes of main entries, listed by author; and a volume of titles and other cross-references. To spice up the contents, I added a number of illustrations from various fan sources. Of the 300 sets originally printed, I have only a few copies left.

On the other front, Gary Traveis published the first issue of the newsletter, and in the process realized what a time-consuming task it was. The second issue would not be published anytime soon. Then, out of the blue of the Texas sky, came a telephone call from a young USAF airman stationed at Randolph AFB. He had been collecting centaurs since he was twelve. Could he do something to help the cause?

Sure, like, how would you like to edit and publish a centaur fanzine? Or, as it turned out to be, an artzine? So the CGN was reincarnated, using the same technology I had used with the CCAL. Number two came out shortly afterwards, and issues through the twenties.

The editor is now Victor Wren,  and the Centaurs Gatherum (without the Newsletter in the title) still appears, albeit irregularly.

Meanwhile, I'd been purchasing artwork at conventions. I believe had a large hand in establishing a market for centaur-drawing artists in the area, and there are always a few on the SF convention circuit, it seems, everywhere I go. I've been able to establish working arrangements with showing artists and am recognized (for better or worse) by art directors and auctioneers.

Being a centaur fanatic, I had to write about them.  Initially pastiches (I can only describe them with the words "incredible" and "absurd"), then extended stories, such as "The Blue Bow" (inspired by Avram Davidson's "The Prism") and an outline of a series of adventures set in the far future for "The Outrageous Adventures of Jeremiah Jones." Stimulated by an extended correspondence, my first major completed opus was an imitation Xanth novel that I wrote in the early 1980s, with -- of course -- a young female centaur as the protagonist.  At Piers Jacob's suggestion, I submitted it to Del Rey; and it was, in due course, rejected by Lester, complete with a 2-1/2 page type-written letter informing me why he had done so.  I was awed -- and had got the determined amateur's badge of foolhardy courage: a dresser-drawer novel.

My phone bill, racked up while I discuss ideas about centaur stories and illustrations, became fairly substantial, and would be more so if I didn't restrain myself to evenings and weekends.  And, I must admit, the advent e-mail and the Internet, and of unlimited connection time for one low monthly charge, has been a god-send to my centaur-related habit efforts.  The paving of the information highway gave me the stimulus to resume my centaur story-writing efforts.

On GEnie and on Delphi I met (virtually) authors such as Mary Rosenblum and Jack Chalker. As with Piers, I found both of them to be personable and approachable as people, and found my comments and suggestions listened to. In turn, I began to absorb the sense of their conversations, and thus gained a new perspective to writing. More recently, I met Nick O'Donohoe, and found the same to be true with him.

I "met" Sandra Hinkley, of Federal Way, Washington, in the late 1980s through the Centaurs Gatherum Newsletter.  Somehow (and I don't remember when), I started calling her regularly over the phone, as we discussed her town of Timber Falls, Washington, and its centaur inhabitants.  Over the last number of years, I've written bits and pieces of stories in the Timber Falls milieu, always with Sandy's very patient advice and consent. (You may have already guessed that the town, a few miles East of Enumclaw, will be the destination point for Berenice and Garth, the main characters of my current literary effort.) I found it marvelous that Sandra had come to the same conclusion as I that centaurs need not be of magical stock, or aliens from another world, or from an alternate reality; but as the result of sophisticated genetic engineering.  Indeed, she was far more daring than I, postulating that some mad genius had already done it! I expected such an advance to happen hundreds of years in the future. Reviewing the fantastic progress in biotechnology in the last decade, I begin to wonder whether she is more right than I.

But this sounds like a good place to stop -- before I wax too verbosely philisophical.  I've got to get busy revising Essay 6!

Abstract

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The author has found a wide variation in classical centaur sizes (usually the measured height of the equine portion) observed by investigators. The descrepancies seem to be largest between textual descriptions and field drawings. The author can resolve some by re-assessing the method of measurement by the writers; however, the most acceptable conclusion (beyond plain error by a few of the many observers) is to postulate a wide population variance in size for centaurs, or allow for the possibility of several populations, or varieties of centaurs, with much a larger diversity than earlier thought.

We have noted a fairly large divergence between the size of classical horse-centaurs as described in Literature and in Art. Although not all writers have described centaurs as large creatures and not all artists have described centaurs as (relatively) small creatures, this strongly tends to be true. In addition we have found that very few (or no) observations have been made of centaurs whose size conform to a modal point which a statistically normal distribution would predict that point to be (near the mean or median).

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On Measuring the Size of Centaurs

Despite several estimates of weight, the most common measure of centaur physique has been height. However, the measurement most commonly demanded (equine height at the shoulder of a standing centaur) is notoriously tricky to measure as is well known by horse breeders and showers. The reason being that there are (at least) two potential measures: (1) measurement from the ground to the point or fullness of the feral shoulder (h₁), and (2) measurement to the top of the shoulder at the forelegs (h₂). This second measure is generally leads to a value of about 10% to 20% larger. A third measure is from forehoof to the top of the human head (h₃ [the Hinkley Measure]), and an uncorrected use of this value can lead to wild overestimates; however, careful use of a "Human Torso Metric" can adjust these values to give a reasonable approximation of height1 or height2. We shall adjust measures to height1 in this monograph.

Another point of concern is the units of measure. The "hand" (commonly 4 inches) has been often used; however, the decimeter (0.1 meters) is now used in scientific work. Note that we shall use the decimeter or metric hand, which is slightly smaller than the traditional hand (having a ratio of 39.37/40.00).

A Human Torso Metric

We can adjust overall h₃ to h₁ by application of a "Human Torso Metric." This is a statistical reduction function [which must account for human sexual dimorphism]: for females it is approximately 8 to 10 hands; for males it is about 9 to 12 hands. In percentage terms, h₁ is generally between one-third to two-thirds of overall h₃. The metric also includes some adjustment for the overall size of the centaur. The variation of the metric is quite large (several decimeters in either direction), due to the fact that many centaurs have prominent hip-shoulder structures while others do not. In addition it seems that some centaur varieties have an equine sexual dimorphic size ratio that sometimes matches the human ratio between men and women, sometimes the smaller animal ratio between stallion and mare, and sometimes the human ratio in the human part and the horse in the horse part. The Torso Metric can only give a broad estimate as to what is reasonable -- and is intended only to give such a rough picture.

To further confuse the issue, note that qualitative phenotypes expressed by the mimetic components of each variety of centaur varies even when the heights of the centaurs are nearly the same across observed subspecies. Such characteristics as extremely long pointed ears reaching above the crown, the evidence of one, two or more horns on the head, the fullness of hair on the head all affect the application of the metric as well as the projection of a separate or combined hip/shoulder complex distinguish many.  Wherever possible, we have attempted to discount the effect of these appurtenances.

A Weight Metric Does Not Correlate With a Height Metric

Weight metrics (a function of body weight to height) are less well developed. The problem is that accurate weights are conventionally estimated by the length of the centaur and the diameter of his or her equine barrel rather than the height. Indeed the barrel parameter is a squared one: thus weight is usually more a measure of build rather than of height. [For reference to the exact formula, see: Evans, James Warren, The Horse, page 331. San Francisco, CA:W. H. Freeman and Company, 1977.]

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Reviewing the Data for Authors

Centaurs have been described by many authors and have been illustrated by at least as many artists. Here are a few of the most salient references. First, the authors: In his novel Eyas Crawford Killian describes centaurs being tall enough so that a tall human could just look over their backs, [Killian, Crawford, Eyas, page 92. New York, NY: Bantam Books, Inc., 1982.] that is, h₁ of at least 14 hands. (A tall man would be 18 hands high, less 4 hands for various adjustments.) John Varley introduces the centaur-like Titanides in Titan,[Varley, John, Titan. New York, NY: Berkley-Putnam, 1979.] first of the Gaea series, the author describes Titanides (Centaurs) as "overpowered," in Titan and three meters tall overall and 1.5 meters at the shoulder in Demon.[Varley, John, Demon. New York, NY: Berkley, 1984.], which implies an enormous human torso. Jack Chalker describes a young female centaur named Tael in the Well of Souls stories as being well over two meters tall. This is an overall h₃ measurement, I would infer, of between 22 and 24 hands; but adjustment using a "Human Torso Metric" can reduce this measurement to no less than about 14 hands. Note also that Tael is only fifteen years old and is called "naive." Poul Anderson's Ishtarian centaurs, although leonine, not equine, are described to have the stature of small horses (at least 14 decimeters). [Anderson, Poul, Firetime. New York, NY: Ballantine, 1974; TOR Books, 1985.] Cherie Centaur in Piers Anthony's Xanth series is large enough to carry the young adult human Bink on her back with little trouble.[Anthony, Piers, A Spell for Chameleon. New York, NY: Del Rey-Ballantine, 1978.] Thus we find a general agreement among these authors for a value for h₁ of at least 14 hands and perhaps a bit more.

On the smaller side we find that writer Thomas Burnett Swan's centaurs are generally quite diminutive, having face-to-face encounters with nymphs and dryads.[Swann, Thomass Burnett, Green Phoenix. New York, NY: DAW Books, 1972. See also other "pre-human" series books by this author.] For special reasons -- he is a winged flying kentaur -- writer Charles Harness' Kedrys in The Ring of Ritornel has an equine body somewhat "less than pony sized." [Harness, Charles, The Ring of Ritornel, p57. New York, NY: Berkley Publ., 1968.] These two authors' descriptions are more consistent with artist's renditions, which we will discuss next.

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Reviewing the Data for Artists

The preponderance of smaller centaurs are to be found in artistic renditions: In Terrie Smith's centaur drawings, the

overall scale is difficult to determine; but drawings by Terrie Smith show horses to be substantially larger than centaurs. An eighteen hand horse mare being almost as tall as the centaur overall. Mary Lynn Skirvin's illustrations show the human torso quite large in proportion to the horse body.

Illustration "To Market, To Market" by Terrie Smith
Note the diminutive size of the centaur female compared to the grade riding horse.

Such sizes would indicate a shoulder h₁ more like 8 to 11 hands tall for these depicted centaurs. Drawings done in conjunction with Wise and Fey's "Principles of Centaurian Design," and the description of heights indicate a value for h₁ of 10 to 11.5 hands[Wise, James A., and David Fey, "Principles of Centaurian Design," in Proceedings of the Human Factors Society, 25th Annual Meeting, 1981.]; illustrations by Christine Markel-Lampe, April Lee, Margaret Price, Donald Kephart and others are consistent with h₁ values of anywhere between 9 to 12 hands, as are illustrations by the more classical and romantic artists. That is centaurs are described as somewhat more pony-sized. This "Wise/Fey" size (an average of about 10.5 hands for h₁) seems to be the most popular among artists.

There are a few artists who generally depict centaurs as larger horse-bodied. Most notable are those of Sandra Williams and early works by Lela Dowling.

"Dream Weaver" by Sandra Williams
Note the normal-sized human torso on an extremely tall equine body.
This is the exception, rather than the rule, in illustrations of the classical centaur.

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Exhibiting the Descrepancy

It is easy to fault writers about their measurement of the size of their subjects. Descriptions of centaurs often suffer from exaggeration, especially during the excitement of encounter. Classical centaurs are dynamic, powerful creatures, and the smallest adults observed often weigh much more than their human equivalent. It is easy to equate mass with height, although scientific observation shows less correlation between the two.  This "error" is the converse of the phenomenon that some anthropologists attribute as an advantage that humans have of the "bluff" of upright locomotion: that is, to appear bigger than the organism really is.

On the other hand some artists might be accused of reducing the equine body size of centaurs in order to more clearly depict the human portion -- or to portray the sympathy towards the subject felt by the observer in anthropomorphic terms. This neotenic or "cartooning" effect has been observed. But the consistency of many observations would lead the observer to believe the average height of a centaur were as much as half a meter less than described by various writers. It is also possible that centaurs have grown in size over the centuries, just as their equine counterparts have; but the convention of the illustration of diminutive centaurs persists. The cavalcade on the Elgin Marbles (which depicts equestrians, not centaurs) shows the parallel situation in the equine-human world -- the same could be true of centaurs.

With this in mind, we attempt to match the various observations by authors and artists against a statistical distribution with a mean at 12.5 hands and somewhat skewed to the right (the curve can be normalized by adopting a logrithmic scale for height). We find that the empirical data fit poorly to a single distribution model of h₁ observed in classical centaur populations in art and literature. This statistic is scattered wildly with a high variation from the nominal.

Indeed the alleged population between the mean and the median is scarcely represented in the sample. No empirical mode for any single author or artist exists between 11.5 and 12.5 hands! Hence, each and every one of the authors and artists mentioned in this paper must be in error, or -- more likely -- there are at least two "independent" populations of centaurs.

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We Must Reject the Single Population Distribution Hypothesis

And so rejecting the single population distribution, we could adopt a population distribution consisting of several sub- species or varieties. A simple trial involution of the data yields a model with two varieties of centaurs postulated.  This hypothesis (of two basic types of centaurs, one "Lesser" and the other "Greater") is quite popular, and is sometimes called the "Graeco-Roman Centaur" theory.  That is, the smaller centaurs are more akin to the classical Greek centaurs as shown on Amphora and other pottery, and would match the Greek's philosophical sense of proportion. The Romans, on the other hand, with their more comedic philosophy, would welcome a disproportionately large centaur -- especially one who was female.

It should be noted that the Graeco-Roman model does more nearly match the data.

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A Problem with the Graeco-Roman Centaur Size Hypothesis

However, we find that, on closer inspection of the literature and art, that the observers (especially in the drawings) report a large variety in heights of centaurs by the same observer -- and even in the same population. For example Smith has found and drawn centaurs (which she calls "high centaurs") that are substantially taller than the standard centaurs she has studied, and other varieties of centaurs which co-exist and even interbreed with the centaurs of The World as shown in the following figure.

Illustration of Dutch (Left) Quarrelling with Godfrey by Terrie Smith
Note the extreme difference in sizes between specimens of the same species.
Dutch's sister is mated to Godfrey, and Godfrey's sister is mated to Dutch's brother.

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Excluded Data Points

There are also reports of classical centaurs suffering from a rare malady called Dapplegrim's Disease, a long-bone form of giantism where the victim's h₃ may reach 5--6 meters.  ["Diagnostic Notes on the Afflictions of Centaurs," by Christine Shannon, MD, and Jefferson Armstrong, DVM, (unpublished).] We have discarded such outliers from our survey sample.

Illustration from Review Pre-Print of Shannon and Armstrong's "Diagnostic Notes"
Patient "Chesapeake" shown at age 16 exhibiting flagrant case of Dapplegrim's Disease.
Classical centaurs with such developmental abnormalities were excluded from this study.

Note also that we have not discussed "alien" centaurs, non-classical centaurs (especially the draco-centaur) and many centaur variants (such as the two-headed giant centaur Arciteni [Sechi, S. M., and J. A. Keith, The Bestiary, p16. Greenwich, CT: Bard Games, 1986.]) and other therianthropic creatures in this paper. If these were included, the range of sizes would be even more varied.

Lokiana Nennen (eight-legged Sleipnirian centauress) and Friend
Non-classical centaurs were excluded from this study

Hence, we have found that there are many diverse varieties of centaurs. But only those which could be termed normal healthy "classical" hippocentaurs are reflected in our model.

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Conclusion

Because of the wide variety of observations of classical centaurs in the last few centuries, we must come to the amazing conclusion that no two observers examined in this study have seen the identical group or tribe of centaurs. Since this is the case, a statistical analysis of the data is fruitless. We need more data.

On one hand we are heartened by the mimetic diversity of centaur, despite the evolutionary "bottleneck" thought to have nearly extinguished the classical centaur in the early medieval era; this can be contrasted to the genetic uniformity of the Cheetah, also thought to have undergone a parallel genetic near-extinction some thousands of years ago. But the variety of centaurs is also a problem: if serious academic research is to go forward, large sums will be required to build and maintain the collections of art and literature that depict all the different kinds centaurs and their many lifestyles.

We certainly hope that many detailed observations and investigations can be made in the future.

Every four years have blitzed us with the Olympic Games. Considering the number of "homers" in the NBC broadcasting booth (both "free" and triple-cast), I decided to avoid watching. Perhaps I am too cynical. However, there is a joy in young people competing in athletics. And, of course, this author has toyed with the idea of centaurs or other therianthropic creatures participating in sports for almost two decades. And the idea is not a new one in imaginative fiction.

Given that most swimming events would be dominated by the merfolk — see L. Sprague DeCamp’s story "Nothing in the Rules" — what set of athletic games would centaurs enjoy and excel at? Obviously track and field. Of course, some events, like the pole-vault would have to be eliminated; but others could be substituted. So here are my thoughts:

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Of course, there is Track & Field (m, f)

• Run (free-style), over distances: 400m (about 1/4 mile); 800m (1/2 mile); 1600m (a little over a mile); 2400m (about 1-1/2 mile); 5km (3 miles); 10km (6 miles); 20km (12 miles); 40km (the centaur marathon, 25 miles); 80km (50 miles); 200km (160 miles); 400km (300 miles); 800km (the "centaur 500")
• Steeplechase: 800m;1600m; 2400m; 5km
• Trots and Paces: 2400m; 5km; 10km; 20km
• Long-jump (running)
• High-jump (running)
• Course-jumping
• Rally course-running
• Various pole-races
• Javelin
• Shot-put
• Harness pulling
• Weight lifting
• Weight carrying
• Bare knuckle boxing
• Sumo-style wrestling

Hearkening back to the original Greek games, we have Music and Dance (m, f, mixed)

• Dressage
• Singing (accompanied by self)
• Harp (Lyre) playing
• Flute playing

And, of course, some more modern Team Games (m, f, mixed)

• Polo
• Lacrosse
• Soccer
• Relay races
• Team dressage

For those who are Jack’s of all trades, but masters of none, we have the various Decathlons:

• Male: 400m sprint; 2400m steeple-chase, trot and pace (combined); 40km endurance run; Shot-put; Long-jump; Course-jump/Archery (combined); Men's Pankration; Dressage; Weight Lift and Pull; Singing and Playing Harp (Lyre)
• Female: 400m sprint; 2400m trot and 2400m pace (combined); 40km endurance run; Javelin; Course-Jump/Archery (combined); Rally Course-Running; Dressage; Weight Lift and Pull; Playing Flute
• Colt or Filly: 400m sprint; 1600m run; 5km or 10km endurance run; Course-Jump; Archery; Harness tug-of-war; Dressage; Playing Flute; Playing Harp (Lyre); Pole-bend-ing (simplified rally)

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The above is a typical all-purpose stadium for centaurs. The most noticeable difference are the dimensions: four times the linear dimensions of a standard human football stadium, it envelopes 16 times as much area. The dimensions are approximate, but allow for a 1600 meter (about 1 mile) length for the carefully tended grass or dirt oval track. The short, 400 meter runs can be accommo-dated easily as straight-aways along the spectator side. Longer runs start and end on the oval, and may go cross-country (at exit 3 and entry 4). Events that require only a restricted space, such as weight lifting, combined boxing and wrestling (the pankration), are performed in one of the smaller "rings" on the left (1). Events that require some additional space, such as dressage, team dressage (dance), the musical contents, youth course-jump, pole-races and rally course running are performed in the larger ring on the right (2). Harness pulls, weight carries, and the running long-jumps and high-jumps take place on the long "infield strip" (5). Stationary archery, Javelin, Shot-put, etc., events, take place from the semi-ring (6) over the cleared multi-purpose field. Polo, Lacrosse, Soccer, and most course-jumping take place on the sodded multipurpose "in"field.

Simplified Time Line for Centaur

The following is a very much simplified outline of Centaur through history. Note that all times are approximate, and neither them nor the categories should not be taken too literally.

Historical Events	Folklore	Pheres	Chiron / Sagittarius
-1400			Winged Archers on King's Stelæ Assyria/Babylonia
The Classical Dark Age	Ghandarva? G. Dumezil derivation		He-Bani / Bull-Centaur?
-800		Wild Kentaurs mentioned by Hesiod (physical form not described)	Archer Sign Established in Zodiac
The Rise of the Greek City-States	Bull-prodder? Dictionary derivation	Cloud-stabber? Mühll derivation	Kiron (Kiron) spelling
-400		"Kentauros" used
The Hellenic and Hellenistic World	Centaurs with four horse legs become dominant in Art	Man-horse form and descent described by Pindar Conventionally, females are human	In art Chiron often distinguished by having human front legs
0		Acceptance of female centaur form as half horse in texts by Ovid, Philostratus and Lucian	Chiron, his offspring described in Ovid 's Metamorphosis
The Roman Emperors			Philostratus' Education of Achilles
		Nessus described by Callistratus	Cheiron spelling
+400
The destruction of the Library at Alexandria			Christian religion co-opts the Chiron mystery, punning Chi-Rho = ChRistos = ChiRo(n)
+500
Dark Ages		Sculptures — Aristeas & Pappias	St. Francis and the Centaur (?)
			Medieval Sagittaries often portrayed as leonine
+1100			Arms of English King Stephen (Blois): Gules, three sagittary or.
The Crusades			Sagittary on the Cathedral at Rheims
+1300
The Classical Rediscovery		Centaurs as guardians in Hell described in The Inferno by Dante	Chiron in Limbo with Virtuous Pagans as described by Dante
		Battle of the Centaurs and Lapiths as described by Ovid, drawn by Pollauolo
		Pallas Athena and the Centaur by Botticelli
+1500
Discovery and Exploration of the New World	Spanish Conquistadores and their horses taken to be single creatures. (But as classical centaurs???)

Centaurs during the European Ascendency
(Contemporary Tropisms)

Folklore (Callicantzari)	Literature & Art (Centaurs)	Symbolic (Chiron)	Astronomy and Exploration (Centaur / Saggitarius)
Wildness	1700s & 1800s Art (Reprise of Classics, Connected Dichotomy)	Medicine (Healer)	Constellation Centaurus added to the Southern Hemisphere
Wontoness	Early 1900s Art (Decorative)	Education (Sage and Teacher)	Sagittarius "Milk Dipper" asterism found to be near the center of the Galaxy from the point of view of earth
Sexual Appetites	Popular Art (Parody, Illustration)	Music (Kithara)
Diminished in stature; hoofed humans	Fantasy Stories (Doomed ending, Cannon-fodder, Untenable state)	Strength (Centaur rocket)
	Science Fiction (Non Humanoid Aliens)	Intellect (Centaur programming language)

Remarks in response to Larry Kestenbaum (an urban preservationist member of the Michigan Society of Amateur Publishers) about the problems of commuting, and the impact that automobiles make on modern American living.

For close to twenty years I have been acutely aware of the sort of thing Larry has mentioned: Why is the automobile such a major thing in everyday American life? So much has the personal gasoline-powered vehicle dominated commuting life that there must be some reason behind it.

Oddly, my interest in Science Fiction generally, and centaurs in particular, led me to a piece of the puzzle. It is outlined in Poul Anderson's Fire Time. In this story, the native sophont Ishtarians are leonine centauroids (no relation to Windy!). Poul has his cultural xenologist, Goddard Hanshaw, explain why the rural dominates the urban in their civilization, just asthe suburban and exurban dominates ours, in the day of the automobile. The first reason has to do with the biology of other theroids, which does not pertain directly, so I will not quote it here --

"But second is the matter of commute time. That's what made it possible for a fairly high culture to develop among scattered ranches.

"Look. Throughout Earth's history, the range of everyday activity has been limited by how long it takes to go between home and work. It's always been about the same time, roughly an hour. That's true whether a Babylonian peasant was walking to his most distant field or a bureaucrat in Mexico City [the leading city on Anderson's future Earth -- DJA] catches an airbus from his villa outside Guaymas. You can find exceptional individuals and exceptional circumstances, yes. But by and large it doesn't pay us to spend more than about one twelfth of an Earth rotation going to and fro. Whenever we had to do that as a regular thing, we'd soon move closer to the worksite, maybe founding a new settlement, or we'd get work closer to home. Even primitive hunters camped near where the game was. Even electronic communications haven't abolished the principle, merely changed its application to certain classes of society.

"Things are different on Ishtar. The Ishtarian afoot can travel faster than a man, including a man on a horse, and for much longer at a stretch without tiring. ...

"Therefore ranchers could carry out many different kinds of operation over very wide areas. When they got to the point of wanting fixed marts at spots where it was desirable to locate other sedentary industries, why, they went ahead and started 'em. The town, the city can send its farmers out far enough to keep itself fed and produce a surplus. Certain kinds of specialists live there. But mainly the population is floating, because for most [local] families the ranches are a better, actually a more interesting environment.

"It's a misnomer to speak of 'civilization' on this planet. Shucks, the word doesn't have fewer syllables than 'literate culture.' But I guess we're stuck with the habit."

[Anderson, Poul, Fire Time, Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, NY, 1974. (hc) pp 88--89.  Quotes are in the text.]

Anderson then goes on to note that structures of the Ishtarian polis stood well apart, that no particular type of dwellers or industries agglomerated together, and many made do with booths or tents rather than permanent buildings. The observer notes that the city "sprawled."

What caught my eye when I read this passage was the comparison to Earth. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the one hour commute time (one-way) was a reasonable maximum for 90% to 99% of the commuting populace. The average time is generally quite less, currently (according to the Census Bureau, about 20 minutes in the U.S.). Over the years I have attempted to flesh out Anderson's off-the-cuff observation, ending up with this graph, showing a function of population (y-axis) against a function of commute time. It's still a wavy-handed hypothesis -- the curve is close to a Chi-distribution (with a low degree-of-freedom) or a Normal Curve with log(p_t) on the x-axis.

When I personally decided to move to the exurban suburbs, the knowledge of this fact was a boon in choosing a location, as I knew that I'd be reasonably comfortable with a 25-to-30 minute commute.

And, when speculating, this gives me a tool to work with when I look at what modern American civilization would be like if the automobile were to be taken away precipitously. -- Or what our 'civilization' would look like if all commuters were turned into centaurs (or other similar forms) capable of traveling (say) 50--70 kilometers-per-hour on a sustained basis.

Until about ten or fifteen years ago, I considered this 'what-if' a tongue-in-cheek fantasy. A laugh and a grin upon seeing (in the mind's eye) a perfectly accoutered man or woman's torso, complete with briefcase in hand, conjoined with a large, four-legged (at least) amalgam of fast therian creatures directly below. As did Varley and Chalker, I played around with the concept more as a day-dream, wistfully pointing to that far-off time when somatic forms could be somehow genetically engineered. Then along came people who took genetic engineering seriously. The human genome project became not just a conversation topic, but a real activity. And now it is not just science -- it has turned into a technology -- biotechnology, in a way I had not expected. Now, science-fiction stories come out with "roachsters," sophant pigs, sentient chili, plant-people, and centaurs that are created by genetic engineers -- not found on some far-off planet, or created by some vastly superior race or supreme being.

---

My dystopia for a future civilization is one where attempts to control world population have failed. It is one where individuals who are not either fabulously wealthy or live outside the pale -- individuals like you and me -- are consigned to tiny cubicles. Perhaps each is made into a permanent couch-potato, with stimulating implants in the brain; eating, procreating, sleeping, and dreaming life away. This is why I have a hard time accepting the argument that improved communications will ameliorate the need to commute, bringing the job directly to the home of the worker. Frankly, being house-bound all day is boring, and dangerous to one's health.

Rather, I think we need a means to provide room for the other living organisms around us (and that are not directly dependent on us), and legitimize our physical presence in the world or worlds of the future. Reducing our numbers by reasonable means over a period of time will help. Yes, it is difficult to convince people (by non-coercive means) that immortality is not derived from the number of offspring or the indefinite continuation of one's genetic line, but from the quality of the support of one's offspring (to be K-oriented, not r-oriented ,as the biologists say it); but I believe it must be done. To make humans a physically larger, more intelligent, more powerful, a longer-lived species, with confidence in what they can do in this world, not in some soon-to-come here-after, is another.

Frankly, given the choice between a dystopia like the one I outlined above, and radical changes in my body structure, I'd rather be a centaur!

---

Below are two candidates for an instance of Anderson's 'literate culture' as they might appear in the late 21st century. If you believe they were designed by committee, you'd probably be right. Here is a description:

The Lepidopterist

The male is a scientist, (but then, everyone is a scientist) specializing in butterfly collecting. He reports his findings, if he can catch his specimen, through the radio-telementy antenna sprouting from his head.

He has six legs for technical reasons: it was genetically easier to replicate both fore and hindlimb-count without attempting to suppress the second pair of hindlegs. This deviation from the classical centaur is advertised as a feature. (Thus, ever, salesmanship.) The enormous lungs of the lower body are served by auxiliary wind-pipes extruding about the neck from above the collar. Both these and his hearts are adapted and enhanced from the antelope; the three-toed hooves come from the horse (or horse ancestors). The man's back and spine are cat-like along the entire length, and flexible, allowing for bursts of speed, and for needed agility when grooming himself.

The tails form two functions: first, they form a counterweight, especially useful for high-speed change of directions. Second, they contain the digestive system, and the reproductive system for both males and females. This is actually an adaptation from the class hexapoda. The lower body is covered with short hair (which grows thicker and longer in cold weather). Nothing's perfect: on frigid, windy days, he must wear tubular sweaters on his delicate antennae.

---

Laughing at the Lepidopterist

The female is an anthropologist, a keen observer of human nature, who is laughing her head off at the foolishness of her fellow mortal. The basic structure is similar to the male. Worthy of note are the caudal thoracic cavities, found only on the woman: these serve as protection and support to each developing offspring (who develop in pairs, one in each tail), which, delivered rearward, has no pelvic girdle to constrain its size. Hence gestation periods can be very lengthy, and yet child-birth is relatively easy.

---

Both examples are probably over-sized and over-powered for simple commuting; but you get the general idea. Here could be our descendents that live both in a rural, pastoral setting, and yet can commune with their society as they wish.

The upshot? Our 21st century denizens will have managed to reduce their commuting time to as close to zero as any hard technology (short of instant matter transmission) will bring us.

And -- as Poul Anderson pointed out -- it is not a really a civilization; but a "literate culture" -- for the cities of today become little but a set of monumental buildings, such as those in Chicago's Parks District. Of course, Larry and the folks like him will have the foresight to select a number of houses of the 20th century or earlier as best examples of their type, and these will be faithfully preserved for posterity, right?

Perhaps now many of you will understand why I am so reticent to dismiss fantasy (after all, centaurs have been around in art and literature for more than 3000 years) as bunk. Rather Science Fiction is an intension of fantasy. Yes, the above scenario is still highly unlikely, but it does appear to me that, even today, the "Infinite-Improbability Drive" is chugging full-bore, and I am not laughing quite so hard.

 

Currently Listening Follow The Leader By Korn it's on see related

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