![]() ![]() They symbolise lust and the bestial side of man – although it’s worth noting that, in myth, centaurs were both male and female, even if it’s the male ones we tend to hear more about. Where did the myth of the centaur come from? Centaurs were half-man and half-horse, usually depicted with a horse’s body and a man’s head, arms, and torso. According to Michael Wood (in his In Search of the Trojan War ), the Assyrians at this time liked to give their siege engines animal names, strengthening the idea that the ‘Trojan Horse’ may well have been a poetic name, of sorts, even before it first appeared in an actual poem. The device may well have looked a bit like a horse, inspiring the later story. We’re talking about the Trojan Horse, the wooden horse of Troy which the Greeks hid inside and drove up to the gates of Troy so they could infiltrate their enemies’ city.īut if we believe the myth had its basis in some real practice (an approach to mythology known as euhemerism), it perhaps makes more sense to conjecture that the ‘Trojan Horse’ was really a giant battering ram or siege engine, used to breach the city walls of Troy in a more forceful, and less sneaky, manner than wily Odysseus’ plot. ![]() We say the most famous horse in classical mythology is Pegasus, but there is one that is more famous – although it probably wasn’t actually a horse, even a wooden one. Thus the creature combines water with air: springs and wings both suggest creativity and elevation. Curiously, the name of Pegasus is close to the word pege, meaning ‘spring’, and Pegasus is often said to have been born at the Ocean springs. Indeed, the winged horse is often used as a symbol of poetic inspiration. ![]() Pegasus represents man’s ability to rise above his base origins and attain creative and imaginative flight. Pegasus joins this symbolism with divine and skyborne connotations of flight and the heavens. Horses were often associated with the Underworld and, by association, with dark primal forces (including the beastlike energies residing in humans). Probably the most famous horse in classical myth is Pegasus, the flying horse, offspring of the sea-god Poseidon which he sired with one of the Gorgons. In the Second Book of Kings, it is said that Elijah was taken up into heaven on a chariot of fire. Because of their speed and strength, horses were the ideal animals to pull the sun across the sky for Phoebus Apollo, although similar chariot-stories surround Mithras in ancient Rome and Elijah in the Old Testament. In classical mythology, horses are often depicted pulling chariots of important deities. ![]()
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