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51-404: It was first run in 1987 and takes its name from a statue at the racecourse in the form of the mythological creature centaur . Prior to 2000 the race was run over a distance of 1,400 metres (7 furlongs), and having originally been classed as a Domestic Grade 3 race, it was promoted to Domestic Grade 2 status in 2006 and it was promoted to International Grade 2 status in 2007. From 2005 to 2010 it

102-860: A Bronze Age origin for these creatures of myth. A painted terracotta centaur was found in the "Hero's tomb" at Lefkandi , and by the Geometric period , centaurs figure among the first representational figures painted on Greek pottery. An often-published Geometric period bronze of a warrior face-to-face with a centaur is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . In Greek art of the Archaic period , centaurs are depicted in three different forms. There are also paintings and motifs on amphorae and Dipylon cups which depict winged centaurs. Centaurs were also frequently depicted in Roman art. One example

153-617: A daimōn who has obtained the person at his birth by lot, is an idea which we find in Plato, undoubtedly from earlier tradition. The famous, paradoxical saying of Heraclitus is already directed against such a view: 'character is for man his daimon ' ". The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into good and evil categories: agathodaímōn ( ἀγαθοδαίμων , "noble spirit"), from agathós ( ἀγαθός , "good, brave, noble, moral, lucky, useful"), and kakodaímōn ( κακοδαίμων , " malevolent spirit "), from kakós ( κακός , "bad, evil"). They resemble

204-421: A daimōnion (literally, a "divine something") that frequently warned him—in the form of a "voice"—against mistakes but never told him what to do. The Platonic Socrates, however, never refers to the daimonion as a daimōn ; it was always referred to as an impersonal "something" or "sign". By this term he seems to indicate the true nature of the human soul , his newfound self-consciousness . Paul Shorey sees

255-650: A bow is referred to as a sagittarius . Jerome's version of the Life of St Anthony the Great , written by Athanasius of Alexandria about the hermit monk of Egypt, was widely disseminated in the Middle Ages; it relates Anthony's encounter with a centaur who challenged the saint, but was forced to admit that the old gods had been overthrown. The episode was often depicted in The Meeting of St Anthony Abbot and St Paul

306-489: A divine spirit, but, for example, the ills released by Pandora are deadly deities, keres , not daimones . From Hesiod also, the people of the Golden Age were transformed into daimones by the will of Zeus , to serve mortals benevolently as their guardian spirits; "good beings who dispense riches…[nevertheless], they remain invisible, known only by their acts". The daimones of venerated heroes were localized by

357-593: A fierce and valiant race always faithful to the High King Aslan the Lion. In J.K. Rowling 's Harry Potter series, centaurs live in the Forbidden Forest close to Hogwarts , preferring to avoid contact with humans. They live in societies called herds and are skilled at archery, healing, and astrology, but like in the original myths, they are known to have some wild and barbarous tendencies. With

408-456: A fire-breathing dragon on his shoulders, arriving to punish a sinner who has just cursed God. In his Purgatorio , an unseen spirit on the sixth terrace cites the centaurs ("the drunken double-breasted ones who fought Theseus") as examples of the sin of gluttony . C.S. Lewis ' The Chronicles of Narnia series depicts centaurs as the wisest and noblest of creatures. Narnian Centaurs are gifted at stargazing, prophecy, healing, and warfare;

459-489: A proud, elitist group of beings that consider themselves superior to all other creatures. The fourth book also has a variation on the species called an Alcetaur, which is part man, part moose. The myth of the centaur appears in John Updike 's novel The Centaur . The author depicts a rural Pennsylvanian town as seen through the optics of the myth of the centaur. An unknown and marginalized local school teacher, just like

510-551: A relief by Michelangelo . The most common theory holds that the idea of centaurs came from the first reaction of a non-riding culture, as in the Minoan Aegean world , to nomads who were mounted on horses. The theory suggests that such riders would appear as half-man, half-animal. Bernal Díaz del Castillo reported that the Aztecs also had this misapprehension about Spanish cavalrymen. The Lapith tribe of Thessaly, who were

561-498: A river of boiling blood in which the violent against their neighbours are immersed, shooting arrows into any who move to a shallower spot than their allotted station. The two poets are treated with courtesy, and Nessus guides them to a ford. In Canto XXIV, in the eighth circle, in Bolgia 7, a ditch where thieves are confined, they meet but do not converse with Cacus (who is a giant in the ancient sources), wreathed in serpents and with

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612-406: A scale from good to bad. ... [Plutarch] speaks of ‘great and strong beings in the atmosphere, malevolent and morose, who rejoice in [unlucky days, religious festivals involving violence against the self, etc.], and after gaining them as their lot, they turn to nothing worse.’ ... The use of such malign daemones by human beings seems not to be even remotely imagined here: Xenocrates' intention

663-680: A study human skeleton with the skeleton of a Shetland pony , is entitled "Do you believe in Centaurs?". According to the exhibitors, it was meant to mislead students in order to make them more critically aware. Depictions of centaurs in a mythical land located south beyond the world's known continents appear on a map by Urbano Monti from 1587, sometimes called Monti's Planisphere. Centaurs are common in European heraldry, although more frequent in continental than in British arms. A centaur holding

714-489: Is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse that was said to live in the mountains of Thessaly . In one version of the myth, the centaurs were named after Centaurus , and, through his brother Lapithes , were kin to the legendary tribe of the Lapiths . Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as being as wild as untamed horses, and were said to have inhabited

765-433: Is derived from Proto-Indo-European daimon "provider, divider (of fortunes or destinies)," from the root *da- "to divide". Daimons were possibly seen as the souls of men of the golden age , tutelary deities , or the forces of fate. See also daimonic : a religious, philosophical, literary and psychological concept. Daimons are lesser divinities or spirits, often personifications of abstract concepts, beings of

816-727: Is shown as a horse with the torso of a man where the horse's head would be, and is similar to a Greek centaur. A centaur-like half-human, half-equine creature called Polkan appeared in Russian folk art and lubok prints of the 17th–19th centuries. Polkan is originally based on Pulicane , a half-dog from Andrea da Barberino 's poem I Reali di Francia , which was once popular in the Slavonic world in prosaic translations. The extensive Mycenaean pottery found at Ugarit included two fragmentary Mycenaean terracotta figures which have been tentatively identified as centaurs. This finding suggests

867-422: Is the most blessed existence, the highest origin of everything. ‘This is the god. On such a principle heaven depends, and the cosmos.’ The highest, the best is one; but for the movement of the planets a plurality of unmoved movers must further be assumed. In the monotheism of the mind, philosophical speculation has reached an end-point. That even this is a self-projection of a human, of the thinking philosopher,

918-637: Is the pair of centaurs drawing the chariot of Constantine the Great and his family in the Great Cameo of Constantine ( circa AD 314–16), which embodies wholly pagan imagery, and contrasts sharply with the popular image of Constantine as the patron of early Christianity. Centaurs preserved a Dionysian connection in the 12th-century Romanesque carved capitals of Mozac Abbey in the Auvergne . Other similar capitals depict harvesters, boys riding goats (a further Dionysiac theme), and griffins guarding

969-537: Is towards these daemones that we direct purifications and apotropaic rites , all kinds of divination, the art of reading chance utterances, and so on.’ ... This account differs from that of the early Academy in reaching back to the other, Archaic, view of daemones as souls, and thus anticipates the views of Plutarch and Apuleius in the Principate ... It clearly implies that daemones can cause illness to livestock: this traditional dominated view has now reached

1020-561: The Academy , of the daemon as a potentially dangerous lesser spirit: Burkert states that in the Symposium , Plato has "laid the foundation" that would make it all but impossible to imagine the daimon in any other way with Eros , who is neither god nor mortal but a mediator in between, and his metaphysical doctrine of an incorporeal, pure actuality, energeia  ... identical to its performance: ‘thinking of thinking’, noesis noeseos

1071-566: The Gigantes . Philip Jose Farmer 's World of Tiers series (1965) includes centaurs, called Half-Horses or Hoi Kentauroi. His creations address several of the metabolic problems of such creatures—how could the human mouth and nose intake sufficient air to sustain both itself and the horse body and, similarly, how could the human ingest sufficient food to sustain both parts. Brandon Mull 's Fablehaven series features centaurs that live in an area called Grunhold. The centaurs are portrayed as

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1122-721: The Lamian Pheres , twelve rustic daimones (spirits) of the Lamos river . They were set by Zeus to guard the infant Dionysos , protecting him from the machinations of Hera , but the enraged goddess transformed them into ox-horned Centaurs unrelated to the Cyprian Centaurs. The Lamian Pheres later accompanied Dionysos in his campaign against the Indians. The centaur's half-human, half-horse composition has led many writers to treat them as liminal beings , caught between

1173-554: The chalice that held the wine. Centaurs are also shown on a number of Pictish carved stones from north-east Scotland erected in the 8th–9th centuries AD (e.g., at Meigle , Perthshire). Though outside the limits of the Roman Empire , these depictions appear to be derived from Classical prototypes. The John C. Hodges library at The University of Tennessee hosts a permanent exhibit of a "Centaur from Volos " in its library. The exhibit, made by sculptor Bill Willers by combining

1224-428: The daimonion not as an inspiration but as "a kind of spiritual tact checking Socrates from any act opposed to his true moral and intellectual interests." Regarding the charge brought against Socrates in 399 BC, Plato surmised "Socrates does wrong because he does not believe in the gods in whom the city believes, but introduces other daemonic beings..." Burkert notes that "a special being watches over each individual,

1275-549: The 3rd millennium BC. In a popular legend associated with Pazhaya Sreekanteswaram Temple in Thiruvananthapuram , the curse of a saintly Brahmin transformed a handsome Yadava prince into a creature having a horse's body and the prince's head, arms, and torso in place of the head and neck of the horse. Kinnaras , another half-man, half-horse mythical creature from Indian mythology , appeared in various ancient texts, arts, and sculptures from all around India . It

1326-685: The Arabic jinni (or genie ), and in their humble efforts to help mediate the good and ill fortunes of human life, they resemble the Christian guardian angel and adversarial demon , respectively. Eudaimonia ( εὐδαιμονία ) came to mean "well-being" or "happiness". The comparable Roman concept is the genius who accompanies and protects a person or presides over a place (see genius loci ). A distorted view of Homer 's daemon results from an anachronistic reading in light of later characterizations by Plato and Xenocrates , his successor as head of

1377-585: The Hermit by the painter Stefano di Giovanni , who was known as "Sassetta". Of the two episodic depictions of the hermit Anthony 's travel to greet the hermit Paul, one is his encounter with the demonic figure of a centaur along the pathway in a wood. Lucretius , in his first-century BC philosophical poem On the Nature of Things , denied the existence of centaurs, based on the differing rates of growth of human and equine anatomies. Specifically, he states that at

1428-425: The age of three years, horses are in the prime of their life while humans at the same age are still little more than babies, making hybrid animals impossible. Centaurs are among the creatures which 14th-century Italian poet Dante placed as guardians in his Inferno . In Canto XII, Dante and his guide Virgil meet a band led by Chiron and Pholus , guarding the bank of Phlegethon in the seventh circle of Hell,

1479-412: The construction of shrines, so as not to wander restlessly, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects. One tradition of Greek thought, which found agreement in the mind of Plato , was of a daimon which existed within a person from their birth, and that each individual was obtained by a singular daimon prior to their birth by way of lot . Homer 's use of

1530-507: The deities, these figures were not always depicted without considerable moral ambiguity: On this account, the other traditional notion of the daemon as related to the souls of the dead is elided in favour of a spatial scenario which evidently also graduated in moral terms; though [Plato] says nothing of that here, it is a necessary inference from her account, just as Eros is midway between deficiency and plenitude. ... Indeed, Xenocrates ... explicitly understood daemones as ranged along

1581-632: The earth by Centaurs wielding rocks and the branches of trees. In her article "The Centaur: Its History and Meaning in Human Culture", Elizabeth Lawrence claims that the contests between the centaurs and the Lapiths typify the struggle between civilization and barbarism. The Centauromachy is most famously portrayed in the metopes of the Parthenon by Phidias and in the Battle of the Centaurs ,

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1632-536: The exception of Chiron , the centaurs in Rick Riordan 's Percy Jackson & the Olympians are seen as wild party-goers who use a lot of American slang. Chiron retains his mythological role as a trainer of heroes and is skilled in archery. In Riordan's subsequent series, Heroes of Olympus , another group of centaurs are depicted with more animalistic features (such as horns) and appear as villains, serving

1683-528: The exception of the agathodaemon , honored first with a libation in ceremonial wine-drinking, especially at the sanctuary of Dionysus , and represented in iconography by the chthonic serpent . Burkert suggests that, for Plato, theology rests on two Forms : the Good and the Simple; which "Xenocrates unequivocally called the unity god" in sharp contrast to the poet's gods of epic and tragedy. Although much like

1734-526: The horse as a totem . A similar theory was incorporated into Mary Renault 's The Bull from the Sea . Though female centaurs, called centaurides or centauresses, are not mentioned in early Greek literature and art, they do appear occasionally in later antiquity. A Macedonian mosaic of the 4th century BC is one of the earliest examples of the centauress in art. Ovid also mentions a centauress named Hylonome who committed suicide when her husband Cyllarus

1785-485: The kinsmen of the Centaurs in myth, were described as the inventors of horse-riding by Greek writers. The Thessalian tribes also claimed their horse breeds were descended from the centaurs. Robert Graves (relying on the work of Georges Dumézil , who argued for tracing the centaurs back to the Indian Gandharva ), speculated that the centaurs were a dimly remembered, pre-Hellenic fraternal earth cult who had

1836-507: The mythological Chiron did for Prometheus, gave up his life for the future of his son who had chosen to be an independent artist in New York. Other hybrid creatures appear in Greek mythology, always with some liminal connection that links Hellenic culture with archaic or non-Hellenic cultures: Also, Additionally, Bucentaur , the name of several historically important Venetian vessels,

1887-568: The nymph Stilbe . In the latter version of the story, Centaurus's twin brother was Lapithes , ancestor of the Lapiths . Another tribe of centaurs was said to have lived on Cyprus . According to Nonnus , the Cyprian Centaurs were fathered by Zeus , who, in frustration after Aphrodite had eluded him, spilled his seed on the ground of that land. Unlike those of mainland Greece, the Cyprian centaurs were ox-horned. There were also

1938-456: The priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a deity, but rather a "great daimōn" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daimōnion is between divine and mortal" (202d–e), and she describes daimōns as "interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates , Socrates claimed to have

1989-697: The region of Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly, the Foloi oak forest in Elis , and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia . Centaurs are subsequently featured in Roman mythology , and were familiar figures in the medieval bestiary. They remain a staple of modern fantastic literature. The Greek word kentauros is generally regarded as being of obscure origin. The etymology from ken + tauros , 'piercing bull',

2040-519: The rest of the Lapith women on the day of Hippodamia's marriage to Pirithous , who was the king of the Lapithae and a son of Ixion. Theseus , a hero and founder of cities, who happened to be present, threw the balance in favour of the Lapiths by assisting Pirithous in the battle. The Centaurs were driven off or destroyed. Another Lapith hero, Caeneus , who was invulnerable to weapons, was beaten into

2091-502: The same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts , chthonic heroes, spirit guides , forces of nature, or the deities themselves (see Plato's Symposium ). According to Hesiod's myth, "great and powerful figures were to be honoured after death as a daimon…" A daimon is not so much a type of quasi-divine being, according to Walter Burkert , but rather a non-personified "peculiar mode" of their activity. In Hesiod 's Theogony , Phaëton becomes an incorporeal daimon or

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2142-495: The two natures they embody in contrasting myths; they are both the embodiment of untamed nature, as in their battle with the Lapiths (their kin), and conversely, teachers like Chiron . The Centaurs are best known for their fight with the Lapiths who, according to one origin myth, would have been cousins to the centaurs. The battle, called the Centauromachy, was caused by the centaurs' attempt to carry off Hippodamia and

2193-495: The words theoí ( θεοί , "gods") and daímones ( δαίμονες ) suggests that, while distinct, they are similar in kind. Later writers developed the distinction between the two. Plato in Cratylus speculates that the word daimōn ( δαίμων , "deity") is synonymous to daēmōn ( δαήμων , "knowing or wise"); however, it is more probably daiō ( δαίω , "to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot"). In Plato's Symposium ,

2244-480: Was a euhemerist suggestion in Palaephatus ' rationalizing text on Greek mythology, On Incredible Tales (Περὶ ἀπίστων), which included mounted archers from a village called Nephele eliminating a herd of bulls that were the scourge of Ixion's kingdom. Another possible related etymology can be "bull-slayer". The centaurs were usually said to have been born of Ixion and Nephele . As the story goes, Nephele

2295-462: Was a cloud made into the likeness of Hera in a plot to trick Ixion into revealing his lust for Hera to Zeus . Ixion seduced Nephele and from that relationship centaurs were created. Another version, however, makes them children of Centaurus , a man who mated with the Magnesian mares. Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele (inserting an additional generation) or of Apollo and

2346-808: Was a leg of the Global Sprint Challenge series. It has now been replaced as a Japanese leg of the series by the Takamatsunomiya Kinen . 55 kg for three-year-olds, 57 kg for four-year-olds and above. Allowances: Penalties (excluding two-year-old race performance): Centaur A centaur ( / ˈ s ɛ n t ɔːr , ˈ s ɛ n t ɑːr / SEN -tor, SEN -tar ; Ancient Greek : κένταυρος , romanized :  kéntauros ; Latin : centaurus ), occasionally hippocentaur , also called Ixionidae ( Ancient Greek : Ἰξιονίδαι , romanized :  Ixionídai , lit.   'sons of Ixion '),

2397-525: Was first made remains unanswerable. Much the same thought as [Plato's] is to be found in an explicitly Pythagorean context of probably late Hellenistic composition, the Pythagorean Commentaries , which evidently draws on older popular representations: ‘The whole air is full of souls. We call them daemones and heroes, and it is they who send dreams, signs and illnesses to men; and not only men, but also to sheep and other domestic animals. It

2448-496: Was killed in the war with the Lapiths. The Kalibangan cylinder seal , dated to be around 2600–1900 BC, found at the site of Indus-Valley civilization shows a battle between men in the presence of centaur-like creatures. Other sources claim the creatures represented are actually half human and half tigers, later evolving into the Hindu Goddess of War . These seals are also evidence of Indus-Mesopotamia relations in

2499-443: Was linked to a posited ox-centaur or βουκένταυρος (boukentauros) by fanciful and likely spurious folk-etymology. Daimon The Ancient Greek : δαίμων , spelled daimon or daemon (meaning "god", "godlike", "power", "fate"), originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit, such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and later the daimons of Hellenistic religion and philosophy . The word

2550-578: Was not reflected on in ancient philosophy. In Plato there is an incipient tendency toward the apotheosis of nous . ... He needs a closeness and availability of the divine that is offered neither by the stars nor by metaphysical principles. Here a name emerged to fill the gap, a name which had always designated the incomprehensible yet present activity of a higher power, daimon . Daemons scarcely figure in Greek mythology or Greek art : they are felt, but their unseen presence can only be presumed, with

2601-400: Was to provide an explanation for the sheer variety of polytheistic religious worship; but it is the potential for moral discrimination offered by the notion of daemones which later ... became one further means of conceptualizing what distinguishes dominated practice from civic religion, and furthering the transformation of that practice into intentional profanation ... Quite when the point

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