The former, in placing the battle of the Lapithae and the Centaurs among the scenes wrought on the shield of Heracles[633], says never a word to suggest that either set of combatants were other than human; the contrast between them lies wholly in the weapons they use. The Lapithae have their leaders enumerated, Caineus, Dryas, Pirithous, and the rest; the Centaurs in like manner are gathered about their Chieftains, ‘huge Petraeos and Asbolos the augur and Arctos and Oureios and black-haired Mimas and the two sons of Peukeus, Perimedes and Dryalos.’ The account reads like a description of a fight between two tribes, one of them equipped with body-armour and using spears, the other more primitive and armed only with rude wooden weapons.
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[634].’ And again we hear how Pirithous ‘took vengeance on the shaggy Pheres, and drave them forth from Pelion to dwell nigh unto the Aethices[635].’ 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[636],’ was the teacher both of the greatest warrior, Achilles[637], and of the greatest physician, Asclepios[638]. 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_[639]--ἐξ οὗ Κενταύροισι καὶ ἀνδράσι νεῖκος ἐτύχθη--which Miss Harrison[640] 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 ἀνδράσι 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 the Centaurs, the Callicantzari, were properly men or demons. But one part of the conclusion at which we first arrived, namely that Callicantzari were originally men, is justified by Homer’s and Hesiod’s testimony.