Hailing from the wilds of 8th century Boeotia, meet my new favorite centaur, with all of the confused mingling of equine and human body parts one would hope for. Shown is just a section of the shoulder of the big Theban amphora it decorated.
I like in particular how experimental the earlier artists were in selecting which bits should be manly and which horsey. This fellow’s back legs are all horse, with much of his front being man except for that foreleg which ends in a distinct hoof. Puzzling!
Centaurs (not unlike satyrs) were intemperate in their appetites for wine and women (often in that order), and this one seems to in the midst of abducting a maiden (she is quite something too with that fancy reticulate pattern on her skirt, lovely belt, rigid flat-feet, and googly eyes) who raises a hand in alarm. He has not gone unchallenged, defending his prize with a brandished tree branch and already with a fletched arrow lodged in his lower back…
It would be sort of fun to associate this with one of the later myths featuring centaurs carrying off fair maidens – one thinks of the famous wedding crashers making off with the Lapith women monumentalized at Olympia, or Nessus attempting to violate Herakles’ Deianeira while ferrying her across a river. But maybe even more so just to know that these incorrigibles were always out there on the periphery,
