THE FABLE OF THE CENTAURS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 5251, 16 December 1878, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE FABLE OF THE CENTAURS.

The fable of the Centaurs is a fable of the Highlands. Their haunts were among the fastnesses of the Thessalian and Arcadian mountains. Arcadia, however, was not their earliest home : their earliest home was Thessaly, where they ranged the forests of Mount Pelion, and from thence as far a3 Ossa and the gorge of Tempe, along the great eastern ridge which shuts out the plain of the Enipeus from the sea. The inland plain was from time immemorial the great horse-breed-ing district of the Greek world, and it was natural that, together with mauy another sacred and heroic legend of the race, this legend of the man-horse should spring up among the mountains which fenced it round about. The prodigious nature of the creatures was accounted for by the prodigious circumstances of their birth. They were the children or grandchildren of the murderer Ixion, who, when the gods had granted him purifioation, incorrigibly repaid their clemenoy by seeking to do violence to the queen of the gods, Here. Here, so ran the story, substituted ior herself a cloud in her own likeness (Nephele"); and from the embrace of Ixion and the cloud was descended the monstrous progeny of the Centaurs. With the exception of Cheiron, who was of a different character and parentage, the Centaurs passed with the Greeks as the very types of reasonless lust and impulse. Homer calls them "beasts"as opposed to men—"shaggy beasts of the mountain;" Pindar, ' a " portentous tribe;" the Attic tragedians, a "four-legged outrageousness," a "twoformed, invisible, bestial cavalry, outrageous, lawless, overbearing in strength." Their weapons are huge stones and pine branches ; their occupation, the hunting of hares, foxes, boars, and deer; their diet, raw flesh ; and the taste or even the smell of wine makes them ungovernable. Now and then they come swooping down from their forest glades and precipices, for war or foray among the haunts of men. Their one celebrated warfare was that which they waged to their own undoing against the Lapiths, a race of rough and tough Thessalian heroes, whom the legends of the country represented as settled in the same mountainous regions beneath the slopes of Ossa and Othrys. The King of Lapiths was Peirithoos, and this Peirithoos was the son of Ixion and his wife Dia, or, as some said, of Dia not by her husband Ixion, but by a mightier father, the god Zeu?. The Centaurs and Lapitha then were a kind of cousins ; they had already been at strife about the inheritance of their common progenitor Ixion, and had come to terms concerning that strife, when it happened that the Laplth king, Peirithoos, took to himself a bride, Hippolemia—variously named also Deidameia or Laodameia — and invited the Centaurs to the wedding feast. To the same feast was also bidden the Attic hero Theseus, the friend and companion in arms of Peirithoos. Milk was at first set before the savageguests, and for a while all went well; but when wine was opened they swept away the milk from the board, and seized the silver drinking horns, and in a trice the wine played wildfire in their veins. One of them, Eurytion, was the first to go mad with brute desire; fell upon and seized the bride ; following Mm all the rest of his tribe give way to the same frenzy, and break up tho feast, and seize each upon a youth or maiden among the marriage guests. The Lapith heroes leap to the rescue, with Theseus foremost in the fray beside his friend ; the tables are overturned, and the chargers and wine jar 3 snatched up for weapons, and death is dealt amid the crashing of axes, and brands, and stakes, of wrought stones wrenched from threshold and lintel, nay, of the sacrificial altars themselves, which the combatants tear up and hurl at one another in the 01616*8. All day long rages the fight, and according to some accounts for many days thereafter, till at last human valour prevaila over brute ferocity. Theseus avenges his friend and slays the ravisher Eurytion, and the bravest of the Centaurs perish in like manner by other hands, though not before they have wrought sore havoc among their enemies.—Cornhill Magazine.

For a long time we have been getting golden fishes from the Sandwich Islands. In return wo send them paroquets, but they begin to think that we nave the best of the bargain. Sir Julius "Vogel, the Agent-General, has published a book on "New Zealand and the South Sea Islands, and their Relations to the Empire."

Captaip Burton has made valuable discovories in the land oE Midian, and proceeds to Englund at once to obtain capital for working the mines in the interests of the Khedive.

For a long time we have, been selling American hardware in our Dunediu stores. Our drapers are now beginning to deal in coi.ton goods of American manufacture.

Estimating the cost of gas in England at 2a per 1000 feet, the electric light ia found to be cheaper than gas in the ratio of 21 to 1.

Mr Braaaey has brought before the Royal United Service Institution a proposal ior the establishment of a federal naval union between the Colonies and the Mother Country.

Misß Dodds, of Dalkeith, whose success as a teacher of cookery is so well known in Scotland, is about to crosß tho Atlantic with the view of forming cookery classes in the United States and Canada.

The electric light has been introduced into Sheffield, where Messrs Tasker, Sons, and Co. have commenced to use it ia their works.

It is stated that Mr Archibald I'orbeß, during his American tour, will deliver three lectures every week, receiving £30 for each lecture.

Tho Marquis of Lorno haa determined to sell his residential estate, Dornden, Tunbridge Wells. The value set upon the whole estate is £300,000.

If, after some experience, ii; ia found that the new system of oral instruction is a success in the Boston echoolfi, it will, no doubt, be adopted throughout the States.

A prize of a Sevres vaaa was given to each of the following implements at Paiis: — M'Cormiok'B, Wood's, and Osbome's reaping binders, Deere'a gaag plough, and Johnstone's harvester.