Muggles believe that Centaurs have the upper part of a man and the body of a horse. They also think that they are wild, savage, lustful, bibulous, and aggressive.
According to Muggles they feed on live flesh and live in the forest of Thessaly. They think that Centaurs have a wild craving for wine and women. They can be hospitable one moment and irrational the next. They have a reputation for betraying people. The first people to see centaurs where the Lapith�s from Thessaly. In medieval times they were called �Sagittarg.�
Astronomically, the Centaurs originate from the Kuiper belt which is a region of the outer Solar System that contains some two hundred objects. They have been sucked out of the Kuiper disk because of Neptune�s gravitational pull and thrown into short-term unstable orbits. They cross the giant planets� orbits as they do so but approach no closer to the Sun than Jupiter.
Birth
It is the belief that Centaurs were born from either Ixion and Hera or Cronus and Philrya. In the case of Ixion and Hera it is believed that they come into the world because the priest Ixion dares to fall in love with the goddess Hera. Zeus (Hera�s husband) punishes the priest by confusing him so that he lands in a cloud thinking it is Hera. Being enamored with the cloud that he thinks is Hera, the cloud gives birth to the Centaurs.
Another myth from the Greeks says that the Titan (Titans were the gods before Zeus took over and became king god) Cronus (Zeus�s brother) and the Nymph (creatures that lived in the woods) relationship. He takes the shape of a horse in order to seduce Philyra. When she sees this half man-half horse abomination, she begs the gods to be changed into a linden tree.
Notable Centaurs
There are only two Centaurs i am going to talk about in this section. One is Chiron (son of Cronus and Philyra) and Pholus. Apollo and Artemis (Zeus�s children) take pity on Chiron and teach him the divine arts of medicine and hunting. Chiron becomes a very popular teacher and founds a school at Mt. Pelion in Thessaly where he teaches great heroes to be as Pollux and Castor (the Dioscuri) (They are twins and end up in the sky as the sign of Gemini.) Peleus, Achilles, Nestor, Odysseus, Actaeon, Diomedes and many of the Argonauts, for whom he makes a maritime chart when they leave for their expedition.
Chiron is accidentally killed by Hercules in the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapiths. Hercules pierces Chiron with one of his famous arrows, dipped in the poisonous blood of the Hydra of Lernae. Chiron has been granted immortality but suffers indescribably that she grants him immortality to Prometheus in order to die. Because of Chiron�s nobility, Zeus does not let him enter Hades (the place where people go when they die and then get judged where they need to go) but places him in the stars as the constellation known as Sagittarius.
Another famous and kind Centaur is Pholus. Hercules asks for hospitality from Pholus who is known for his benevolence. Pholus, as the good host he is, serves a grandiose meal for Hercules. Hercules then takes an extraordinary wine reserved for the Centaurs without permission. When the bottle is opened the odor spreads across the countryside causing the furious Centaurs to surround Pholus� cave and attack Hercules who manages to kill a great number of them and scare the rest away.
Pholus takes no part in the battle but simply begins to bury his kinsmen when Hercules mortally wounds Pholus in the hoof (Hercules has a way of accidentally killing innocent Centaurs). Hercules buries the innocent victim with honorary funeral by a mountain that has since then been called Pholoe.
Websites used: www.bristolschoolofastrology.freeserve.co.uk/centaurs.html ,
www.travel-italy.com/ct/centaurs.html , and www.pantheon.org/articles/c/centaurs.html