Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/261

 To this representation of the Centaurs Homer also, in the Iliad, consents; for, though he names them Pheres or 'Beasts,' it is quite clear that this is the proper name of a tribe of men—men who dwelt on Mount Pelion and were hardly less valiant than the heroes who conquered them. 'Never saw I,' says Nestor, 'nor shall see other such men as were Pirithous and Dryas, shepherd of hosts, and Caineus and Exadios and godlike Polyphemus and Theseus, son of Aegeus, like unto the immortals. Mightiest in sooth were they of men upon the earth, and against mightiest fought, even the mountain-haunting Pheres, and fearfully they did destroy them .' And again we hear how Pirithous 'took vengeance on the shaggy Pheres, and drave them forth from Pelion to dwell nigh unto the Aethices .' Apart from the name 'Pheres,' which will shortly be examined, there is nothing in these passages any more than in that of Hesiod to suggest that the conflict of the Lapithae and the Centaurs means anything but the destruction or expulsion of a primitive and wild mountain-tribe by a people who, in the wearing of body-armour, had advanced one important step in material civilisation. Yet in some respects the tribe of Centaurs were, according to Homer, at least the equals of their neighbours; for Chiron, 'the justest of the Centaurs ,' was the teacher both of the greatest warrior, Achilles, and of the greatest physician, Asclepios. The only passage of Homer which has been held to imply that the Centaurs were not men comes not from the Iliad but from the Odyssey —[Greek: ex hou Kentauroisi kai andrasi neikos etychthê]—which Miss Harrison translates 'Thence 'gan the feud 'twixt Centaurs and mankind,' inferring therefrom the non-humanity of the Centaurs. It is however legitimate to take the word [Greek: andrasi] in a stricter sense, and to render the line, 'Thence arose the feud between Centaurs and heroes,' to wit, the heroes Pirithous, Dryas, and others; and the inference is then impaired. But in any case the Iliad, the earlier authority, consistently depicts both Chiron and the other Centaurs as human. The tradition of a divine origin must have arisen between the date of the Iliad and the time of Pindar, and from then until now popular opinion must have been divided on the question whether