handsome blue heads; and _C.
ragusina_ (S.E. Europe) beautiful silver-haired leaves and yellow
flowers.

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.