CENTAURS

centaurs, in greek mythology, a race of beings part horse part man, dwelling in the mountains of thessaly and arcadia. the name has been derived (1) from [greek: kentein] (goad) and [greek: tauros] (bull), implying a people who were primarily herdsmen, (2) from [greek: kentein] and the common termination [greek: -auros] or [greek: -aura] ("air") i.e. "spearmen." the former is unsatisfactory partly from the philological standpoint, and the latter, though not certain, is preferable. the centaurs were the offspring of ixion and nephele (the rain-cloud), or of kentauros (the son of these two) and some magnesian mares or of apollo and hebe. they are best known for their fight with the lapithae, caused by their attempt to carry off deidameia on the day of her marriage to peirithous, king of the lapithae, himself the son of ixion. theseus, who happened to be present, assisted peirithous, and the centaurs were driven off (plutarch, _theseus_, 30; ovid, _metam._ xii. 210; diod. sic. iv. 69, 70). in later times they are often represented drawing the car of dionysus, or bound and ridden by eros, in allusion to their drunken and amorous habits. their general character is that of wild, lawless and inhospitable beings, the slaves of their animal passions, with the exception of pholus and chiron. they are variously explained by a fancied resemblance to the shapes of clouds, or as spirits of the rushing mountain torrents or winds. as children of apollo, they are taken to signify the rays of the sun. it is suggested as the origin of the legend, that the greeks in early times, to whom riding was unfamiliar, regarded the horsemen of the northern hordes as one and the same with their horses; hence the idea of the centaur as half-man, half-animal. like the defeat of the titans by zeus, the contests with the centaurs typified the struggle between civilization and barbarism. in early art they were represented as human beings in front, with the body and hind legs of a horse attached to the back: later, they were men only as far as the waist. the battle with the lapithae, and the adventure of heracles with pholus (apollodorus, ii. 5; diod. sic. iv. ii) are favourite subjects of greek art (see sidney colvin, _journal of hellenic studies_, i. 1881, and the exhaustive article in roscher's _lexikon der mythologie_). fig. 34 in article greek art (the west pediment of the temple of zeus at olympia) represents the attempt of the centaurs to carry off the bride of peirithous. centaurus ("the centaur"), in astronomy, a constellation of the southern hemisphere, mentioned by eudoxus (4th century b.c.) and aratus (3rd century b.c.), ptolemy catalogued thirty-seven stars in it. _[alpha]-centauri_ is a splendid binary star. its components are of the 1st magnitude, and revolve in a period of eighty-one years; and since its parallax is 0.75", it is the nearest star to the earth; _[omega]-centauri_, the finest globular star-cluster in the heavens, consists of about 6000 stars in a space of about 20' diameter, of which about 125 variables have been examined. _nova centauri_, a "new" star, was discovered in 1895 by mrs fleming in photographs taken at harvard. centaury (_erythraea centaurium_, natural order gentianaceae), an annual herb with erect, smooth stem, usually branched above, and a terminal inflorescence with numerous small red or pink regular flowers with a funnel-shaped corolla. the plant occurs in dry pastures and on sandy coasts in britain, and presents many varieties, differing in length of stem, degree of branching, width and shape of leaves, and laxity or closeness of the inflorescence. several other species of the genus are grown as rock-plants. centenary (from lat. _centenarius_, of or belonging to a hundred, from _centeni_, distributive of _centum_, hundred), a space of a hundred years, and particularly the celebration of an event on the lapse of a hundred years, a centennial anniversary. the word "centennial" (from lat. _centennis_, from _centum_, and _annus_, a year), though usually an adjective as in "the centennial state," the name given to colorado on its admission to statehood in 1876, is also used as a synonym of centenary.