Since antiquity, horses have fired the human imagination. Here are two horselike creatures from ancient Greece.
The legend of the centaur—a creature with the body of a horse and the torso of a man—probably arose when cultures that did not ride horses were invaded by warriors who did. From afar, the horse and rider might have looked like a half-man/half-horse monster, and over time, people created myths to explain them.
According to the ancient Greeks, centaurs were a powerful race of beings who served one of two functions: some were teachers, but others were followers of Dionysus, the god of wine. As such, many of them were fond of drinking and debauchery. (Their penchant for kidnapping maidens represented man’s bestial and violent nature.)
The centaurs’ origins are murky. They were descended from Ixion, who tricked and killed his father-in-law. Because his crime was so heinous, none of the gods would allow him to atone for his evil deed.
Zeus took pity on him, though, and invited him to dinner on Mt. Olympus—where the ungrateful dinner guest immediately set about seducing Hera, Zeus’s wife. When the king of the gods got wind of the plan, he made a double of Hera out of clouds. According to some stories, the fruits of the relationship between Ixion and the cloud were the centaurs. Other legends claim that the centaurs were actually the grandchildren of the pair. Either way, one (Chiron) was different from the rest. Chiron was a wise and skilled medicine man who served as a tutor to many of the Greek mythical heroes. Chiron was also immortal, but when he was accidentally wounded by a poisoned arrow, he suffered so much from the wound that he gave away his immortality to a god named Prometheus (best known for bringing fire to mankind). Chiron was then able to die peacefully, and his descendants were the wise, academic centaurs.
Modern Myth: The centaur character has appeared in everything from the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series to John Updike’s 1964 National Book Award winner, The Centaur. NASA even named its high-energy rocket Centaur. The rocket sends communication satellites into space and is referred to as “America’s Workhorse in Space.”
The winged horse Pegasus was the son of the sea god Poseidon and the snake-haired monster Medusa. He (and his twin brother, the giant Chrysaor) sprang from Medusa’s neck when a hero named Perseus severed her head. (In another version of the same story, Pegasus and Chrysaor sprang from the drops of blood that dripped onto the ground from Medusa’s severed head.)
Using a golden bridle that Athena, the goddess of war, had given him, Greek hero Bellerophon captured and tamed Pegasus. Together, hero and horse set about conquering the world. At this point, though, Bellerophon got too big for his britches—he tried to scale Mt. Olympus and live among the gods. Zeus was in no mood for uninvited guests, though, so he sent an insect to sting Pegasus. This caused the horse to rear and throw Bellerophon, who fell back to Earth to live out his days disabled and blind.
With Bellerophon out of the picture, Pegasus was welcomed into the gods’ abode, where Eos, the goddess of dawn, claimed him. Pegasus was made into a constellation that bears his name, which appears in the spring sky. Modern Myth: In modern culture, Pegasus is known as the symbol of Mobil gas and oil (Exxon Mobil Corp.) and the mascot of TriStar Pictures. And in England during World War II, the country’s parachute forces used Bellerophon astride Pegasus as their insignia to symbolize warriors swooping into battle from above.
In computer lingo, a Trojan Horse is a program that messes up your hard drive. Unlike a computer virus that replicates, the Trojan horse hides in plain sight, waiting for you to think it’s a useful program and execute it.